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1. "What about the creative state? In it a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences, and out of the mixture he makes a work of art. Such seems to be the creative process. It may employ much technical ingenuity and worldly knowledge, it may profit by critical standards, but mixed up with it is this stuff from the bucket, this subconscious stuff, which is not procurable on demand." ~ E. M. Forster (1951)
"If the test of truth lay in a show of hands or a counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with far more reason than the Catholic Church, to the proud motto, Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus (Always, everywhere, and by all), as the sure and certain credential of its own infallibility." ~ James George Frazer, 'The Golden Bough' (1890)
"A man who sells his conscience for his interest will sell it for his pleasure. A man who will betray his country will betray his friend." ~ Maria Edgeworth (1812)
"Just the minute the FBI begins making recommendations on what should be done with its information, it becomes a Gestapo." ~ J. Edgar Hoover
"The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent." ~ J. Edgar Hoover (1956)
2. "Falsehood, like poison, will generally be rejected when administered alone; but when blended with wholesome ingredients, may be swallowed unperceived." ~ Richard Whately (1787-1863)
"I stand four-square for reason, and object to what seems to me to be irrationality, whatever the source. If you are on my side in this, I must warn you that the army of the night has the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and, by its very nature, is immune to reason, so that it is entirely unlikely that you and I can win out. We will always remain a tiny and probably hopeless minority, but let us never tire of presenting our view, and of fighting the good fight for the right." ~ Isaac Asimov
"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" ~ Isaac Asimov
"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism." ~ Barry Goldwater, acceptance speech (16 Jul 1964)
3. "Enjoy the blessing of strength while you have it and do not bewail it when it is gone, unless, forsooth, you believe that youth must lament the loss of infancy, or early manhood the passing of youth. Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age — each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season." ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, 'Cato Maior de Senectute' [On Old Age] (44 BC)
"For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked." ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." ~ J. R. R. Tolkien, 'The Return of the King' (1955)
"I am politically incorrect, that's true. Political correctness to me is just intellectual terrorism. I find that really scary, and I won't be intimidated into changing my mind. Everyone isn't going to love you all the time." ~ Mel Gibson
4. "Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights." ~ Benjamin Rush
"The American war is over; but this far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government, and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government after they are established and brought to perfection." ~ Benjamin Rush, letter to Price (25 May 1786)
"Victor Hugo wrote in his diary substantially this sentiment, 'Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.' The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing of government, in education, and in employment. It must not be stayed or denied." ~ Everett Dirksen
"I do not know whether I am a liberal. I think I am a garden variety conservative. If I remember my Latin, I think the word ‘liberal' was derived from the word ‘liver,' meaning free, and the suffix ‘al' means ‘pertaining to.' So the word ‘liberal' means pertaining to freedom. If that is it, I am a genuine, unmitigated, unreconstructed, unregenerated, 100-percent, dyed-in-the-wool liberal, in the sense of my devotion to freedom, and that means the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and everything else that is the embodiment of the principles of freedom." ~ Everett Dirksen [Congressional Record, February 17, 1960. In debate on civil rights bill (S2526)]
5. "How improvident of the Almighty to limit man's intelligence without limiting his stupidity." ~ Konrad Adenauer
"We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon. In an instant age, perhaps we must relearn the ancient truth that patience, too, has its victories." ~ Konrad Adenauer
"Hypocrisy, the lie, is the true sister of evil, intolerance, and cruelty." ~ Raisa Gorbachev
"Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it." ~ Walter F. Mondale
6. "The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions; but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun." ~ Kahlil Gibran
"The truly religious man does not embrace a religion; and he who embraces one has no religion." ~ Kahlil Gibran
"They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom." ~ Kahlil Gibran
"You cannot train a horse with shouts and expect it to obey a whisper." ~ Dagobert D. Runes
"Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one." ~ Sam Rayburn
"No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut." ~ Sam Rayburn
"I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision." ~ Carl Sandburg
7. "The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody, except the saint." ~ Charles Peguy, "Un Nouveau théologien" (1911)
"Freedom is not an idol, or an end, but a prerequisite condition of human worth. Man needs a margin to move about in and try himself out and show what he is worth and attract grace." ~ Charles Peguy
"But whatever may be the cause of this unparalleled growth in population, intelligence, and wealth, one thing is clear — that the Government must keep pace with the progress of the people. It must participate in their spirit of enterprise, and while it exacts obedience to the laws and restrains all unauthorized invasions of the rights of neighboring states, it should foster and protect home industry and lend its powerful strength to the improvement of such means of intercommunication as are necessary to promote our internal commerce and strengthen the ties which bind us together as a people." ~ Millard Fillmore, Third annual message to Congress (6 Dec 1852)
8. "For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking." ~ Stephen Hawking (1985)
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.... We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet." ~ Stephen Hawking (2010)
"A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it." ~ Lewis H. Lapham, "Citizen Goetz" in Harper's (March 1985)
"It is the ignorance of the past that invites the despairing of the present, which in turn leads to the marketing of dead-end politics with ad campaigns for a lost golden age. As often as not the nostalgic sales pitch (city upon a hill, amber waves of grain, majestic purple mountains) is the contrivance of a reactionary status quo floating the speculation on a redeeming tomorrow with subprime borrowings from an imaginary yesterday." ~ Lewis H. Lapham, "Ignorance of Things Past" - Harper's (May 2012)
9. "If an individual wants to be a leader and isn't controversial, that means he never stood for anything." ~ Richard Nixon
"No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic." ~ Richard Nixon
"The greatness comes not when things go always good for you, but the greatness comes when you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes; because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember: Others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win, unless you hate them. And then, you destroy yourself." ~ Richard Nixon, Speech to the assembled White House staff before his final departure (9 August 1974)
"I think it would be a great tragedy ... if we had our two major political parties divide on what we would call a conservative-liberal line. I think one of the attributes of our political system has been that we have avoided generally violent swings in Administrations from one extreme to the other. And the reason we have avoided that is that in both parties there has been room for a broad spectrum of opinion." ~ Richard Nixon, speech to California's Commonwealth Club (1959)
"We are apt to form romantic and exaggerated notions about the moral innocence of our ancestors. Ages of ignorance and simplicity are thought to be ages of purity. The direct contrary, I believe, is the case...In the middle ages, not only the most flagrant violations of modesty were frequently practised and permitted, but the most infamous vices. Men are less ashamed as they are less polished." ~ Thomas Warton (1774)
10. "It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist." ~ Lord Acton (1877)
"The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections." ~ Lord Acton (1877)
"By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion." ~ Lord Acton (1877)
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority." ~ Lord Acton (1887)
"Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn "reasonable" and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive." ~ Sinclair Lewis, in 'It Can't Happen Here' (1935)
11. "Unless your government is respectable, foreigners will invade your rights; and to maintain tranquility you must be respectable; even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government." ~ Alexander Hamilton (1788)
"Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things." ~ Alexander Hamilton (1788)
"In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution." ~ Alexander Hamilton, 'The Federalist Papers No.1' (1787)
"There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty. The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible." ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel (1972)
12. "If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed." ~ Edmund Burke (1796)
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." ~ Edmund Burke
"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves." ~ Edmund Burke (1791)
"People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous." ~ Edmund Burke (1777)
"Young man, there is America — which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world." ~ Edmund Burke (1775)
13. "Those who violate the rules of a language do not enter new territory; they leave the domain of meaningful discourse. Even facts in these circumstances dissolve, because they are shaped by the language and subjected to its limitations." ~ Paul Feyerabend, 'Conquest of Abundance' (posthumous, 2001)
"A free society is a society in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power. A tradition receives these rights not because of the importance (the cash value, as it were) it has for outsiders but because it gives meaning to the lives of those who participate in it." ~ Paul Feyerabend, 'Science in a Free Society' (1978)
"Even the weeds provide food for higher forms of creation, and hold the land from erosion against the inevitable day of cultivation." ~ Alfred C. Fuller
"Comfort can be a dangerous thing. You stick around home all the time where it’s safe and nothing ever changes, and before you know it, you get set in your ways and you quit learning, you quit changing, you don’t grow anymore." ~ Frank E. Peretti
14. "We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Most certainly I am! I cannot escape my responsibility by saying the State will do all that is necessary. It is a tragedy that nowadays so many think and feel otherwise." ~ Albert Schweitzer, 'The Spiritual Life' (1947)
"Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith." ~ Albert Schweitzer, 'The Spiritual Life' (1947)
"Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage." ~ Albert Schweitzer, 'The Spiritual Life' (1947)
15. "The greater the obstacle, the greater the glory in overcoming it; and difficulties are but the maids of honor to set off the virtue." ~ Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin), 'The Blunderer' (1655)
"However gross the flattery, the most cunning are easily duped; there is nothing so impertinent or ridiculous which they will not believe, provided it be seasoned with praise." ~ Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin), 'The Miser' (1668)
"To be governed is to be, at every operation, every transaction, noted, counted, registered, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished." ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)
"When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly." ~ Edward Teller (1908-2003)
"When you poison a man in order to sell him the antidote, you don’t boast about it afterward to the victim!" ~ Robert Silverberg
16. "In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." ~ Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794)
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom." ~ Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794)
"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past." ~ Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794)
"Postponing happiness until "all your ducks are in order" means never because life is not that clean, fair or predictable. It isn’t what happens to you that defines your life, it is what you do with it that does." ~ Laura C. Schlessinger (b. 1947)
17. "All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shriveled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut." ~ Anne Bronte, 'Agnes Grey' (1847)
"A man may fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame someone else." ~ Knox Manning (1904 - 1980)
"There is nothing so impenetrably stupid as the illusion of the strong who believe in their strength." ~ Evelyn Scott (1923)
"Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." ~ David Lloyd George (1863 - 1945)
"A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman." ~ David Lloyd George (1863 - 1945)
"The finest eloquence is that which gets things done; the worst is that which delays them." ~ David Lloyd George (1863 - 1945)
18. "If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or other, in some place or other, the volcano will break out and flame up to heaven." ~ Daniel Webster
"Nothing is more deceptive or more dangerous than the pretence of a desire to simplify government. The simplest governments are despotisms; the next simplest, limited monarchies; but all republics, all governments of law, must impose numerous limitations and qualifications of authority, and give many positive and many qualified rights." ~ Daniel Webster, speech (7 May 1834)
"There are persons who constantly clamor. They complain of oppression, speculation, and pernicious influence of wealth. They cry out loudly against all banks and corporations, and a means by which small capitalists become united in order to produce important and beneficial results. They carry on mad hostility against all established institutions. They would choke the fountain of industry and dry all streams." ~ Daniel Webster, speech (12 March 1838)
"There is nothing in the world so dangerous, or so overwhelming as stupidity; perhaps there is no more of it now than there has been at any time, but I do not think the witless of past generations had so much power. The powers of darkness are the powers of misdirected knowledge." ~ Gwethalyn Graham, 'Swiss Sonata' (1938)
"For every person who's stepped out of line and lived to regret it, there are two people who stayed in line because they got their values mixed and lost their nerve, and who have lived to regret it still more. You don't hear about those people because they're still in line where they don't show." ~ Gwethalyn Graham, 'Earth and High Heaven' (1944)
"Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they've stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments." ~ Kevin Costner (2000)
19. "Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for." ~ David Starr Jordan
"The questions which for years were in dispute between the State and General Government, and which unhappily were not decided by the dictates of reason, but referred to the decision of war, having been decided against us, it is the part of wisdom to acquiesce in the result, and of candor to recognize the fact." ~ Robert E. Lee
"So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained." ~ Robert E. Lee - Statement to John Leyburn (1 May 1870), as quoted in R. E. Lee : A Biography (1934) by Douglas Southall Freeman
"Our constitutions purport to be established by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people' consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given." ~ Lysander Spooner
20. "If there is anything that keeps the mind open to angel visits, and repels the ministry of evil, it is pure human love." ~ N. P. Willis (1806-1867)
"A simple way to determine whether the right to dissent in a particular society is being upheld is to apply the town square test: Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it's a fear society." ~ Natan Sharansky, 'The Case for Democracy' (2004)
"A lack of moral clarity is also the tragedy that has befallen efforts to advance peace and security in the world. Promoting peace and security is fundamentally connected to promoting freedom and democracy." ~ Natan Sharansky, 'The Case for Democracy' (2004)
"That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains." ~ Susan Vreeland (b. 1946)
21. "History is not truth versus falsehoods, but a mixture of both, a mélange of tendencies, reactions, dreams, errors, and power plays. What's important is what we make of it; its moral use. By writing history, we can widen readers' thinking and deepen their sympathies in every direction. Perhaps history should show us not how to control the world, but how to enlarge, deepen, and discipline ourselves." ~ Gretel Ehrlich, 'Heart Mountain' (1988)
"So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy." ~ Roger Baldwin (1884-1981)
"The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamor. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition." ~ Israel Zangwill (1864 - 1926)
"Between the great things we cannot do and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing." ~ Adolphe Monod (1802-1856)
"It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils." ~ Stonewall Jackson (1824-1863)
"People who are anxious to bring on war don't know what they are bargaining for; they don't see all the horrors that must accompany such an event." ~ Stonewall Jackson (1824-1863)
22. "No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece 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 promitory 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 (1572-1631)
"When any of the four pillars of government are mainly shaken or weakened — which are religion, justice, counsel and treasure — men need to pray for fair weather." ~ Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
"'You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.' This canon is the mother of all canons against heresy; the causes of error are two; the ignorance of the will of God, and the ignorance or not sufficient consideration of his power." ~ Francis Bacon, "De Hæresibus" (1597)
"America is a model of force and freedom and moderation — with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people." ~ Lord Byron (1788-1824)
"The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mood of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; for happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up." ~ Charles Langbridge Morgan (1894-1958)
23. "Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime." ~ Potter Stewart, Dissenting, United States v. Ginzburg, 383 U.S. 463 (1965)
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." ~ Potter Stewart, Concurring, Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964)
"I think that the court has misapplied a great constitutional principle. I cannot see how 'official religion' is established by letting those who want to say a prayer say it. On the contrary, I think that to deny the wish of these school children to join in reciting this prayer is to deny them the opportunity of sharing in the spiritual heritage of the nation." ~ Potter Stewart, Dissenting, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962)
"Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely, is, therefore, a great step towards happiness." ~ Stendhal
"I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny. Is the present system, which the British administration have adopted for the government of the colonies, a righteous government - or is it tyranny?" ~ John Hancock: Boston Massacre Oration - 5 Mar 1774
24. "When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares." ~ Henri Nouwen, 'Out of Solitude' (1974)
"True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. ~ Edith Wharton, 'The Writing of Fiction' (1925)
"How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be "American" before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? ~ Edith Wharton, Letter to Barrett Wendell (19 July 1919)
"Let me ask you outright, gentle reader, if there have not been hours, indeed whole days and weeks of your life, during which all your usual activities were painfully repugnant, and everything you believed in and valued seemed foolish and worthless?" ~ E.T.A. Hoffmann, 'The Golden Pot and Other Tales' (1815)
"It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war." ~ Frederick the Great (1712-1786)
25. "Moral evil is the immorality and pain and suffering and tragedy that come because we choose to be selfish, arrogant, uncaring, hateful and abusive." ~ Lee Strobel (b. 1952)
"The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?" ~ Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
"I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues." ~ W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
"The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel." ~ W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
"Now the world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger." ~ W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
26. "No nation has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment." ~ Claude Adrien Helvetius, 'De l'esprit...' (1758)
"Discipline is, in a manner, nothing else but the art of inspiring the soldiers with greater fear of their officers than of the enemy. This fear has often the effect of courage: but it cannot prevail against the fierce and obstinate valor of people animated by fanaticism, or warm love of their country." ~ Claude Adrien Helvetius, 'De l'esprit...' (1758)
"To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain." ~ Claude Adrien Helvetius, 'De l'homme...' (posth., 1773)
"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster." ~ General Douglas MacArthur
"Duty, Honor, Country — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn." ~ General Douglas MacArthur, speech at West Point (12 May 1962)
27. "I believe it is the duty of each of us to act as if the fate of the world depended on him. Admittedly, one man by himself cannot do the job. However, one man can make a difference.... We must live for the future of the human race, and not for our own comfort or success." ~ Admiral Hyman G. Rickover (1900-1986)
"The true measure of a man is his private life. A man who has corrupt morals in his private life will be corrupt in his public life." ~ John Witherspoon (b. 1942)
"For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force...it is necessary to make a man better not by force but by persuasion. We neither have authority granted us by law to restrain sinners, nor, if it were, should we know how to use it, since God gives the crown to those who are kept from evil, not by force, but by choice." ~ Saint John Chrysostom (c. 349–407), 'On the Priesthood', Book II
"If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics – it does not matter that they should be accurate, or even intelligible, so long as there is enough of them." ~ Lewis Carroll, 'Three Years in a Curatorship, By One Whom It Has Tried' (1886)
"Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes." ~ Judge Learned Hand, Helvering v. Gregory, 69 F.2d 809, 810-11 (2d Cir. 1934)
28. "Congress, simply by requiring businesses to provide some employee benefit, gets businesses to cough up millions of dollars that have the illusion of not being taxes." ~ John Perkins (b. 1945)
"Though many illusions are of a character we should gladly cherish, yet the sooner we lose some of them, the sooner we gain the power of seeing clearly into things. The one who possesses least has the best chance of becoming wise. The man who travels, and reflects, loses illusions faster than he who stays at home." ~ Sir Henry Morton Stanley, 'Autobiography' (1909)
"Socialism is a return to primitive conditions." ~ Sir Henry Morton Stanley, 'Autobiography' (1909)
"Religion acts as a moral gardener, to weed out, or suppress, evil tendencies, which, like weeds and nettles, would shoot up spontaneously in the wonderful compost of the garden, if unwatched." ~ Sir Henry Morton Stanley, 'Autobiography' (1909)
"The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among non-believers if any Christian, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false." ~ Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible." ~ Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
"Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do." ~ Thomas Aquinas (1273)
29. "We are only here below as in an inn on a journey. Let us, then have the feelings of travelers. We should think a man very strange who attached himself much to his inn. The wise Christian will not do this." ~ Eugenie de Guerin, letter (1840)
"Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not in conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war." ~ William McKinley, Speech at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, NY (5 Sep 1901)
"Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to speak the truth, but already to possess it." ~ Romain Rolland (1866-1944)
"Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material." ~ Anton Chekhov, Letter to A.S. Suvorin (4 Jan 1889)
"Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms." ~ Anton Chekhov, Letter to A.S. Suvorin (27 Dec 1889)
30. "Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change, windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print." ~ Barbara W. Tuchman, Library of Congress speech (17 Oct 1979)
"A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any human activity." ~ Barbara W. Tuchman, 'The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam' (1984)
"Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts." ~ Barbara W. Tuchman, 'The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam' (1984)
"Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt: Simple Truths message to Congress (29 Apr 1938)
"Freedom to learn is the first necessity of guaranteeing that man himself shall be self-reliant enough to be free. Such things did not need as much emphasis a generation ago, but when the clock of civilization can be turned back by burning libraries, by exiling scientists, artists, musicians, writers and teachers; by disbursing universities, and by censoring news and literature and art; an added burden, an added burden is placed on those countries where the courts of free thought and free learning still burn bright. If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt: Address to the National Education Association (30 Jun 1938).
"No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of its minorities." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt: Letter to Walter Francis White, NAACP president (25 Jun 1938)
31. "Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward." ~ Thomas Merton
"The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there." ~ Thomas Merton
"Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair." ~ Thomas Merton, 'No Man Is an Island' (1955)
"It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes." ~ Thomas Merton, 'Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander' (1966)
"It is a kind of pride to insist that none of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God — acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him and dependent, by His will, on material things, too." ~ Thomas Merton, 'The Seven Storey Mountain' (1948)
"The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there." ~ Thomas Merton
"Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair." ~ Thomas Merton, 'No Man Is an Island' (1955)
"It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes." ~ Thomas Merton, 'Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander' (1966)
"It is a kind of pride to insist that none of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God — acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him and dependent, by His will, on material things, too." ~ Thomas Merton, 'The Seven Storey Mountain' (1948)
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