General Quotes
All quotes are the attributed artist's work.
"I hate mineral water freaks. Drink from the tap and take what's coming to you... Nature does what it must; we do what we can... You can't lob an H-Bomb into your neighbor's backyard... If you're and artist, you're an artist, for f***'s sake... It's a natural impulse to want others to believe the best of you. It's virtual morality... Go through life as heroically as you can. And if you can't go through it heroically, then go through it pathetically, to give other people hope... The world is lousy with wisdom, and yet we never learn from it." Ralph Steadman
"In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons." -- King Croesus (550 B.C.)
"Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death." -- Rebecca West - (British writer - 1960)
"Death is something you can do nothing about. Nothing at all. But youth is a quality, and if you have it you never lose. it." -- Frank Lloyd Wright - 1958
"....I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: 'When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain.' " -- Voltaire - "Philosophical Dictionary" (1764)
"Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die." -- Alfred Lord Tennyson - "Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854)
"It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior." -- George Santayana - "Persons and Places" (1944)
"We are all in a race for dear life: that is to say, we are fugitives from death." -- Theodor Reik - "The Need to Be Loved" (1963)
"BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"Your son at five is your master, at ten your slave, at fifteen your double, and after that, your friend or foe, depending on his bringing up." -- Hasdai Ibn Shaprut - (10th century)
"We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes - (American poet - 1890)
"Carpe diem, quam minimus credula postero. Seize today, and put as little trust as you can in tomorrow." -- Horace - (35 B.C.)
"There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one's own industry or by the stupidity of others." -- Jean de la Bruyere - "Les Characteres" (1688)
"An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward." -- Herman Melville - "Moby Dick" (1851)
"But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." -- Herman Melville - "Moby Dick" (1851)
"He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear." -- Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580)
"It has been often said that he who begins life by stifling his convictions is in a fair way to ending it without any convictions to stifle." -- John Morley - "On Compromise" (1874)
"It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes... Three generations of imbeciles are enough." -- Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes - "Buck v. Bell" (1927)
"With savages the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination... There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of men." -- Charles Darwin - "The Descent of Man" (1871)
"Perhaps the saddest thing to admit is that those who rejected the Cross have to carry it, while those who welcomed it are so often engaged in crucifying others." -- Nicholas Berdyaev - (Russian religious philosopher)
"PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes. Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings -- they are so trite, so threadbare.... None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teachings cannot go far wrong... Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire." -- Norman Douglas - (English writer - 1917)
"Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety." -- Ben Hecht - (American journalist - 1947)
"The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody." -- Robert Ingersoll - (American lawyer - 1866)
"In every unbeliever's heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic's Hell." -- H. L. Mencken - "A Mencken Chrestomathy" (1949)
"Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics." -- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. - (American historian - 1962)
"Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge." -- Arthur Schopenhauer - (German philosopher - 1851)
"If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart." -- Arthur Schopenhauer - (German philosopher - 1851)
"That we should cease to exist, that we should live and so profoundly will our existence, only to face annihilation a few years hence, is a thought from which men recoil, not pausing to ask why such simple non-existence should be filled with such dread for them, but dreading it nonetheless. It is from this calamity that religion promises salvation, and upon this promise its strength and appeal entirely rests" -- Richard Taylor - (20th century American philosopher)
"But Christ could certainly not have established the Church. That is, the institution we now call by that name, for nothing resembling our present conception of the Church--with its sacraments, its hierarchy, and especially its claim to infallibility--is to be found in Christ's words or in the conception of the men of his time." -- Leo Tolstoy - "The Kingdom of God is Within You" (1893)
"The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate..... Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us." -- James Madison - "A Memorial and Remonstrance" (1784)
"Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it." -- Edward Albee - (An American dramatist - 1966)
"The need to express one's self in writing springs from a maladjustment of life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action." -- Andre Maurois - "The Art of Writing" (1960)
"Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius's crater for an inkstand.... To produce a mighty book you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on a flea, though many there be that have tried it." -- Herman Melville - "Moby Dick" (1851)
"He that studies books alone will know how things ought to be; and he who studies men will know how they are." -- Charles Colton - "The Lacon" (1829)
"Never complain and never explain." -- Benjamin Disraeli - (English Statesman - 19th century)
"There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other." -- John C. Calhoun - (American statesman - 1837)
"LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society.... Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy...." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Benjamin Disraeli - (English Statesman - 19th century)
"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a peace of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." -- John Donne - (1623)
"Happy the Man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own; He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd today." -- John Dryden - (1685)
"A man can be right and president, but he can't be both at the same time." -- Mr. Dooley - (American satirist - 1900)
"When depreciated, mutilated, or debased coinage (or currency) is in concurrent circulation with money of high value in terms of precious metals, the good money automatically disappears." -- Sir Thomas Gresham - (c. 1560)
"We are in danger of developing a cult of the Common Man, which means a cult of mediocrity." -- President Herbert Hoover - (1919)
"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy to be called an idea at all." -- Elbert Hubbard - (American writer - 1910)
"As a rule, we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use." -- William James - "The Principles of Psychology" (1890)
"There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it." -- William James - "The Principles of Psychology" (1890)
"Philosophy asks the simple question, What is it all about?" -- Alfred North Whitehead - "Science and the Modern World" (1925)
"To admit poverty is no disgrace for a man; but, to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful." -- Thucydides - "History of the Peloponnesian War" (c. 413 B.C.)
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." -- George Santayana - "The Life of Reason" (1906)
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana - "The Life of Reason" (1906)
"History is the propaganda of the victors." -- Ernst Toller - (German playwright - 1935)
"As a rule, people are afraid of truth. Each truth we discover in nature or social life, destroys the crutches on which we need to lean." -- Ernst Toller - (German playwright - 1935)
"If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if we see Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible." -- Harry S Truman - 1941
"All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway." -- Harry S Truman - 1947
"President Roosevelt proved that a President could serve for life. Truman proved that anyone could be elected. Eisenhower proved that your country can be run without a President." -- Nikita Khrushchov - (1960)
"Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent, is robbery. If they will not work, neither shall they eat." -- Populist Party of America - 1892
"What kind of truth is this which is true on one side of a mountain and false on the other?" -- Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580)
"A precedent embalms a principle." -- Lord Stowell - (attorney General of England - 1800)
"The certainties of one age are the problems of the next." -- Richard Tawney - "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" (1926)
"A man's greatest work is to break his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all the things that have been theirs, to hear the weeping of those who cherished them, to take their horses between his knees and to press in his arms the most desirable of their women." -- Ghengis Khan (c. 1200)
"Against stupidity, the very gods fight in vain." -- Friedrich von Schiller - (German dramatist - 1806)
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: >From bondage to spiritual faith; >From spiritual faith to great courage; >From courage to liberty; >From liberty to abundance; >From abundance to selfishness; >From selfishness to complacency; >From complacency to apathy; >From apathy to dependency; >From dependency back into bondage. -- The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic Alexander Fraser Tyler (1748 - 1813)
"Nemo Me Impune Lacessit [Lat.] No one injures me with impunity." -- Motto of Scotland
"Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? [Lat.] Who shall guard the guardians?"
"Silent Leges Inter Arma [Lat.] The laws are silent in time of war."
"Ultima Ratio Regum [Lat.] The final argument of kings: war."
"The wicked have only accomplices; voluptuaries have companions in debauch, self-seekers have partners, politicians attract partisans; the generality of idle men have attachments; princes have courtiers, and virtuous men alone have friends." -- Voltaire - "Philosophical Dictionary" (1764)
"Do not be afraid of enemies; the worst they can do is to kill you. Do not be afraid of friends; the worst they can do is betray you. Be afraid of the indifferent; they do not kill or betray. But only because of their silent agreement, betrayal and murder exist on earth." -- Bruno Yasienski - "The Plot of the Indifferent" (1937)
"To get the bad customs of a country changed and new ones, though better, introduced, it is necessary first to remove the prejudices of the people, enlighten their ignorance, and convince them that their interests will be promoted by the proposed changes, and this is not the work of a day." -- Benjamin Franklin (1781)
"There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things..... Whenever his enemies have occasion to attack the innovator they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable." -- Niccolo Machiavelli (1513)
"He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted ... must at least retain the semblence of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions ..." -- Niccolo Machiavelli (1513)
"For government consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do [it] harm." -- Niccolo Machiavelli
"It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free." -- Niccolo Machiavelli
"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." -- Charles de Gaulle
"Once you stop fearing government, the government fears you." -- Robert D. Graham, tax rebel
"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." -- Mignon McLaughlin, writer
"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting." -- Charles Bukowski
"No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it." -- 16 Am. Jur., Sec. 177 late 2d, Sec. 256
"Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery." -- Benjamin Disraeli
"The ultimate consequence of protecting men from the results of their own folly is to fill the world with fools." -- Herbert Spencer
"If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." -- Samual Adams, American Revolutionary
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -- George Bernard Shaw
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." -- William Pitt the Younger, British prime minister
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." -- Albert Einstein
"Man is a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired." -- Mark Twain
"Politics consists in the art of taking votes from the poor and money from the rich under the pretext of protecting each from the other." -- Anonymous
"Prediction is extremely difficult. Especially about the future." -- Niels Bohr
"There are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there." -- Indira Gandhi
"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought." -- Albert Szent-Gyoergi
"Wise men talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something." -- Plato
"Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don't want them to become politicians in the process." -- John F. Kennedy
"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have." -- Emile Chartier
"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is." -- Horace Walpole
"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal." -- Jane Austen, letter of December 24, 1798
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom." -- Unknown
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." -- Ambrose Redmoon
"The greatest mistake you can make in this life is to be continually fearing that you will make one." -- Elbert Hubbard
"The past gives us experience and memories; the present gives us challenges and opportunities; the future gives us vision and hope." -- William Arthur Ward (1921-1994), Journalist
"Just remember--when you think all is lost, the future remains." -- Robert Goddard (1882-1945), Physicist and rocket scientist
"The human race is divided into two classes--those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, 'Why wasn't it done the other way?'" -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) U.S. Supreme Court justice
"There is a time to let things happen and a time to make things happen." -- Hugh Prather Minister and counselor
"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." -- George Washington (1732-1799) 1st U.S. President
"In peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons." -- King Croesus (550 B.C.)
"Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death." -- Rebecca West - (British writer - 1960)
"Death is something you can do nothing about. Nothing at all. But youth is a quality, and if you have it you never lose. it." -- Frank Lloyd Wright - 1958
"....I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: 'When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain.' " -- Voltaire - "Philosophical Dictionary" (1764)
"Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die." -- Alfred Lord Tennyson - "Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854)
"It would repel me less to be a hangman than a soldier, because the one is obliged to put to death only criminals sentenced by the law, but the other kills honest men who like himself bathe in innocent blood at the bidding of some superior." -- George Santayana - "Persons and Places" (1944)
"We are all in a race for dear life: that is to say, we are fugitives from death." -- Theodor Reik - "The Need to Be Loved" (1963)
"BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"Your son at five is your master, at ten your slave, at fifteen your double, and after that, your friend or foe, depending on his bringing up." -- Hasdai Ibn Shaprut - (10th century)
"We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes - (American poet - 1890)
"Carpe diem, quam minimus credula postero. Seize today, and put as little trust as you can in tomorrow." -- Horace - (35 B.C.)
"There are only two ways by which to rise in this world, either by one's own industry or by the stupidity of others." -- Jean de la Bruyere - "Les Characteres" (1688)
"An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward." -- Herman Melville - "Moby Dick" (1851)
"But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." -- Herman Melville - "Moby Dick" (1851)
"He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear." -- Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580)
"It has been often said that he who begins life by stifling his convictions is in a fair way to ending it without any convictions to stifle." -- John Morley - "On Compromise" (1874)
"It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes... Three generations of imbeciles are enough." -- Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes - "Buck v. Bell" (1927)
"With savages the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination... There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of men." -- Charles Darwin - "The Descent of Man" (1871)
"Perhaps the saddest thing to admit is that those who rejected the Cross have to carry it, while those who welcomed it are so often engaged in crucifying others." -- Nicholas Berdyaev - (Russian religious philosopher)
"PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes. Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings -- they are so trite, so threadbare.... None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teachings cannot go far wrong... Has any man ever attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire." -- Norman Douglas - (English writer - 1917)
"Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety." -- Ben Hecht - (American journalist - 1947)
"The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody." -- Robert Ingersoll - (American lawyer - 1866)
"In every unbeliever's heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic's Hell." -- H. L. Mencken - "A Mencken Chrestomathy" (1949)
"Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics." -- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. - (American historian - 1962)
"Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge." -- Arthur Schopenhauer - (German philosopher - 1851)
"If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart." -- Arthur Schopenhauer - (German philosopher - 1851)
"That we should cease to exist, that we should live and so profoundly will our existence, only to face annihilation a few years hence, is a thought from which men recoil, not pausing to ask why such simple non-existence should be filled with such dread for them, but dreading it nonetheless. It is from this calamity that religion promises salvation, and upon this promise its strength and appeal entirely rests" -- Richard Taylor - (20th century American philosopher)
"But Christ could certainly not have established the Church. That is, the institution we now call by that name, for nothing resembling our present conception of the Church--with its sacraments, its hierarchy, and especially its claim to infallibility--is to be found in Christ's words or in the conception of the men of his time." -- Leo Tolstoy - "The Kingdom of God is Within You" (1893)
"The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate..... Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us." -- James Madison - "A Memorial and Remonstrance" (1784)
"Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it." -- Edward Albee - (An American dramatist - 1966)
"The need to express one's self in writing springs from a maladjustment of life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action." -- Andre Maurois - "The Art of Writing" (1960)
"Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius's crater for an inkstand.... To produce a mighty book you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on a flea, though many there be that have tried it." -- Herman Melville - "Moby Dick" (1851)
"He that studies books alone will know how things ought to be; and he who studies men will know how they are." -- Charles Colton - "The Lacon" (1829)
"Never complain and never explain." -- Benjamin Disraeli - (English Statesman - 19th century)
"There never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other." -- John C. Calhoun - (American statesman - 1837)
"LABOR, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society.... Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy...." -- Ambrose Bierce - "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Benjamin Disraeli - (English Statesman - 19th century)
"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a peace of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." -- John Donne - (1623)
"Happy the Man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own; He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have liv'd today." -- John Dryden - (1685)
"A man can be right and president, but he can't be both at the same time." -- Mr. Dooley - (American satirist - 1900)
"When depreciated, mutilated, or debased coinage (or currency) is in concurrent circulation with money of high value in terms of precious metals, the good money automatically disappears." -- Sir Thomas Gresham - (c. 1560)
"We are in danger of developing a cult of the Common Man, which means a cult of mediocrity." -- President Herbert Hoover - (1919)
"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy to be called an idea at all." -- Elbert Hubbard - (American writer - 1910)
"As a rule, we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use." -- William James - "The Principles of Psychology" (1890)
"There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it." -- William James - "The Principles of Psychology" (1890)
"Philosophy asks the simple question, What is it all about?" -- Alfred North Whitehead - "Science and the Modern World" (1925)
"To admit poverty is no disgrace for a man; but, to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful." -- Thucydides - "History of the Peloponnesian War" (c. 413 B.C.)
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." -- George Santayana - "The Life of Reason" (1906)
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana - "The Life of Reason" (1906)
"History is the propaganda of the victors." -- Ernst Toller - (German playwright - 1935)
"As a rule, people are afraid of truth. Each truth we discover in nature or social life, destroys the crutches on which we need to lean." -- Ernst Toller - (German playwright - 1935)
"If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if we see Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible." -- Harry S Truman - 1941
"All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway." -- Harry S Truman - 1947
"President Roosevelt proved that a President could serve for life. Truman proved that anyone could be elected. Eisenhower proved that your country can be run without a President." -- Nikita Khrushchov - (1960)
"Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent, is robbery. If they will not work, neither shall they eat." -- Populist Party of America - 1892
"What kind of truth is this which is true on one side of a mountain and false on the other?" -- Michel De Montaigne - "Essays" (1580)
"A precedent embalms a principle." -- Lord Stowell - (attorney General of England - 1800)
"The certainties of one age are the problems of the next." -- Richard Tawney - "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" (1926)
"A man's greatest work is to break his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all the things that have been theirs, to hear the weeping of those who cherished them, to take their horses between his knees and to press in his arms the most desirable of their women." -- Ghengis Khan (c. 1200)
"Against stupidity, the very gods fight in vain." -- Friedrich von Schiller - (German dramatist - 1806)
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: >From bondage to spiritual faith; >From spiritual faith to great courage; >From courage to liberty; >From liberty to abundance; >From abundance to selfishness; >From selfishness to complacency; >From complacency to apathy; >From apathy to dependency; >From dependency back into bondage. -- The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic Alexander Fraser Tyler (1748 - 1813)
"Nemo Me Impune Lacessit [Lat.] No one injures me with impunity." -- Motto of Scotland
"Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? [Lat.] Who shall guard the guardians?"
"Silent Leges Inter Arma [Lat.] The laws are silent in time of war."
"Ultima Ratio Regum [Lat.] The final argument of kings: war."
"The wicked have only accomplices; voluptuaries have companions in debauch, self-seekers have partners, politicians attract partisans; the generality of idle men have attachments; princes have courtiers, and virtuous men alone have friends." -- Voltaire - "Philosophical Dictionary" (1764)
"Do not be afraid of enemies; the worst they can do is to kill you. Do not be afraid of friends; the worst they can do is betray you. Be afraid of the indifferent; they do not kill or betray. But only because of their silent agreement, betrayal and murder exist on earth." -- Bruno Yasienski - "The Plot of the Indifferent" (1937)
"To get the bad customs of a country changed and new ones, though better, introduced, it is necessary first to remove the prejudices of the people, enlighten their ignorance, and convince them that their interests will be promoted by the proposed changes, and this is not the work of a day." -- Benjamin Franklin (1781)
"There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things..... Whenever his enemies have occasion to attack the innovator they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable." -- Niccolo Machiavelli (1513)
"He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted ... must at least retain the semblence of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions ..." -- Niccolo Machiavelli (1513)
"For government consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do [it] harm." -- Niccolo Machiavelli
"It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free." -- Niccolo Machiavelli
"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." -- Charles de Gaulle
"Once you stop fearing government, the government fears you." -- Robert D. Graham, tax rebel
"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." -- Mignon McLaughlin, writer
"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting." -- Charles Bukowski
"No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it." -- 16 Am. Jur., Sec. 177 late 2d, Sec. 256
"Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery." -- Benjamin Disraeli
"The ultimate consequence of protecting men from the results of their own folly is to fill the world with fools." -- Herbert Spencer
"If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." -- Samual Adams, American Revolutionary
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -- George Bernard Shaw
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." -- William Pitt the Younger, British prime minister
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." -- Albert Einstein
"Man is a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired." -- Mark Twain
"Politics consists in the art of taking votes from the poor and money from the rich under the pretext of protecting each from the other." -- Anonymous
"Prediction is extremely difficult. Especially about the future." -- Niels Bohr
"There are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there." -- Indira Gandhi
"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought." -- Albert Szent-Gyoergi
"Wise men talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something." -- Plato
"Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don't want them to become politicians in the process." -- John F. Kennedy
"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have." -- Emile Chartier
"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is." -- Horace Walpole
"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal." -- Jane Austen, letter of December 24, 1798
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom." -- Unknown
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." -- Ambrose Redmoon
"The greatest mistake you can make in this life is to be continually fearing that you will make one." -- Elbert Hubbard
"The past gives us experience and memories; the present gives us challenges and opportunities; the future gives us vision and hope." -- William Arthur Ward (1921-1994), Journalist
"Just remember--when you think all is lost, the future remains." -- Robert Goddard (1882-1945), Physicist and rocket scientist
"The human race is divided into two classes--those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, 'Why wasn't it done the other way?'" -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) U.S. Supreme Court justice
"There is a time to let things happen and a time to make things happen." -- Hugh Prather Minister and counselor
"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." -- George Washington (1732-1799) 1st U.S. President
