cyberdelix.net

anecdotes and gathered wisdom compiled from numerous sources

freedom and liberty	people and character
time and change	American Indian quotations
science and technology	money
knowledge and wisdom	politics
power and peace	religion
achievement	art
nature	underclassified

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freedom and liberty

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"The price of liberty is less than the cost of oppression." -- Unknown
"Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided that he infringes not on the equal freedom of others." - Herbert Spencer, 1851
"The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of persuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it." -- John Stuart Mills, 1859
"I detest your views, but I am prepared to die for your right to express them." -- Voltaire, 1694 - 1778
"We, the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts - not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution." -- Abraham Lincoln
"Prejudice is the reason of fools." -- Voltaire
"A right delayed is a right denied." -- Martin Luther King
"Freedom has a thousand charms to show, that slaves howe'er contented, never know." -- William Copwer, 1731-1800
"Never could any increase of comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty." -- Hilaire Belloc
"The golden rule is that there are no golden rules." -- George Bernard Shaw
"If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable." -- John F. Kennedy
"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies." -- C.S. Lewis
"Those who give up liberty in order to attain security will soon find that they have neither." -- Benjamin Franklin
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance." -- Abraham Lincoln
"The prestige of the government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition laws. Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced." -- Albert Einstein
"The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable." -- James Madison, 1789
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" -- Patrick Henry
Where the government fears the people there is liberty; where the people fear the government, there is tyranny." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The moods of the people are not dictated by government" -- Richard Benson, 1996
"To announce that there must be no criticism ... is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable" -- Theodore Roosevelt
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." -- Stephen Biko, 1971
"An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Sed quis custodiet ispos custodes?" -- Satires, VI, line 347 Juvenal, C. 100 C.E.
"He who controls the present, controls the past; he who controls the past, controls the future." -- Eric Blair (George Orwell), 1984
"There comes a point where it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees." -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law." -- Edward R. Murrow
"No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right." -- the Magna Carta (1297)

time and change

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"Human history is becoming more and more a race between education and catastrophe." -- H.G. Wells
"The future is the past in preparation." -- Pierre Dac
"We must see to it that enthusiasm for the future does not give rise to contempt for the past." -- Pope Paul VI
"Weep not that the world changes - did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were cause indeed to weep." -- William Cullen Bryant, American poet (1794-1878)
"No one really knows enough to be a pessimist." -- Norman Cousins
"Beyond each corner new directions lie in wait." -- Stanislaw Lec
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- Santayana
"Don't let yesterday use up too much of today." -- Will Rogers
"The past is always a rebuke to the present." -- Robert Penn Warren
"Time's glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light." -- William Shakespeare
"No sensible decision can be made without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be." -- Isaac Asimov
"If something can't go on forever, it won't." -- Herb Stein

science and technology

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"The quick harvest of applied science is the useable process, the medicine, the machine. The shy fruit of pure science is understanding." -- Lincoln Barnett
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
"Technology is just a way of organising the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it." -- Max Frisch
"Science clears the fields on which technology can build." -- Werner Heisenberg
"If there is a technological advance without a sociolological advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery." -- Michael Harrington
"Technological advance has merely presented us with a more efficient means for going backwards." -- Aldous Huxley
"What scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying." -- Nikita Khruschev
"I'm sorry to say there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours." -- John F. Kennedy
"It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are." -- Clive James
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." -- Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
"The world has achieved technical brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants." -- Omar N. Bradley, American military general (1893-1981)
"With the monstrous weapons man already has, we are in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents." -- Omar N. Bradley, US General
"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship god but to create him." -- Arthur C. Clarke
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"This is so simple, a 6-year-old child could understand it. Quick, get me a 6-year-old child." -- Groucho Marx

knowledge and wisdom

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"If I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." -- Isaac Newton
"Genius is patience" -- Isaac Newton
"Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind." -- Leonardo Da Vinci
"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life." -- Sandra Carey
"Good judgement comes from experience; and experience, well, that comes from bad judgement." -- Anonymous
"This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." -- Horace Walpole
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure." -- Mark Twain
"Man is an infant, with the toys of a child, and delusions of adulthood." -- A. Cygni
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." -- Mark Twain
"Work to become, not to acquire." -- Confucius
"This fellow's wise enough to play the fool, and to do that well craves a kind of wit." -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Einstein (1875-1955)
"Problems cannot be solved with the same kind of thinking that created those problems." -- Albert Einstein
"Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters will need a pounding." -- Abraham Kaplan
"Smart is when you believe only half of what you hear. Brilliant is when you know which half to believe." -- Orben's Current Comedy
"To tyrants, indeed, and bad rulers, the progress of knowledge among the mass of mankind is a just object of terror; it is fatal to them and their designs." -- Henry Brougham, Scottish statesman and historian (1778-1868)
"Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least." -- Earl of Chesterfield
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." -- Jonathan Swift
"Mark it, nuncle :- have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest, lend less than thou owest, ride more than thou goest, learn more than thou trowest; leave thy drink and thy whore, and keep in-a-door, and thou shalt have more .. than two tens to a score." - Fool, King Lear act i, scene iv, William Shakespeare
"The great artist is the simplifier." -- Hens Frederic Arniel, Swiss poet & philosopher (1821-1881)
"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Chaos often breeds life when order breeds habit." -- Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918)
"Tell the truth and run" -- old Yugoslav proverb
"There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail." -- Aldous Huxley
"Why, tell, moral laws in time have length past their relation, purpose, strength?" -- William Baylebridge
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." -- Confucius
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it." -- Samuel Johnson 1709-1784
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." -- Mark Twain
"Rem tene; verba sequenter." (Grasp the subject; the words will follow.) -- Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder, 234-149 BC
"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy." -- Horatio
"I have never let schooling interfere with my education." -- Mark Twain
"The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest people of past centuries." -- Descartes
"To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large -- this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone" -- Aldous Huxley
"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." -- Rudyard Kipling, 1923
"The more you know, the more you see" -- Aldous Huxley
"Change your thoughts and you change your world." -- Marcus Aurelius
"Seeing consists of the grasping of structural features rather than the indiscriminate recording of detail." -- Rudolf Arnheim
"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something." -- Frank Capra
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
"The best way to win is to let your rival defeat himself." -- Sun Tzu (paraphrased by Zbigniew Brzezinski)
"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it." -- John Locke
"Quotation confesses inferiority." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The truth is rarely pure, and never simple." -- Oscar Wilde
"... whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth..." -- Sir Walter Raleigh

power and peace

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"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved through understanding." -- Albert Einstein
"If you want to keep a man down in a ditch you must stay there with him." -- Goethe
"Oh, it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." -- William Shakespeare
"Peace may cost as much as war, but it is a better buy." -- Anonymous
"Mercy is mightiest in the mightiest" -- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run." -- Mark Twain
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." - Freire
"Love your neighbours, but don't pull down the fence." -- Chinese proverb
"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." -- Indira Gandhi
"Fight the fighters, not their wars." -- London graffiti
"We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools." -- Martin Luther King
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." -- Martin Luther King
"It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die." -- Stephen Biko
"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history." -- ex-US Vice President Dan Quayle
"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." -- C. P. Snow
"The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong." -- Georges Bidault
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Herman Goering
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State." -- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels
"The great enemy of the Truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive and realistic." -- John F. Kennedy
"In the beginning is the word. Where one begins by corrupting language, worse corruptions swiftly follow." -- Salman Rushdie
"A power over a man's support is a power over his will." -- Alexander Hamilton
"So the principles of warfare are: Do not depend on the enemy not coming, but depend on our readiness against him. Do not depend on the enemy not attacking, but depend on our position that cannot be attacked." -- Sun Tzu
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." - Gandhi
"Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience." -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." -- Lord Acton (1834-1902)
"America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies of our European nations." -- Napoleon
"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." -- Winston Churchill
"Let every Nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend or oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty". -- John F Kennedy
"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
"A time comes when silence is betrayal." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men." -- Abraham Lincoln

achievement

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"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." -- Will Rogers
"He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools." -- Confucius
"The worlds stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going." -- David Starr Jordan
"Perfection, then, is finally achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de St. Exup�ry
"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"What matters isn't how well you play when you're playing well. What matters is how well you play when you're playing badly." -- Martina Navratilova
"If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BC
"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm." -- Vince Lombardi
"Make yourself necessary to somebody." -- Emerson
"The wider the brim, the smaller the property" -- bush saying
"Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it." -- Winston Churchill
"A sunny temper gilds the edges of life's blackest cloud." -- Guthrie
"Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." -- David Lloyd George
"Try not to be a man of success, but rather, try to become a man of value." -- Albert Einstein
"If the success or failure of this planet, and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do; How would I be? What would I do?" -- Buckminster Fuller
"Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get." -- George Bernard Shaw
"An idle mind is the devil's workshop, and idle hands his tools." -- anon
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood or assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." -- Antoine de Saint Exupery
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -- Mahatma Gandhi
"I always try to form every disaster into an opportunity" -- John D. Rockefeller
"Few will ever achieve the greatness to affect history itself. But each of us can work to change a small portion of world events, and, in the totality of all these acts, will be written the history of mankind." -- Bobby Kennedy
"Decay is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence." -- Buddha's last words
"If everyone swept in front of his own door, the streets would be clean." -- Anonymous
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde
"Only a stone is silent and offendeth not." -- taraindreams@AT@yahoo.com
"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." -- Sir Winston Churchill
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." -- Sir Winston Churchill
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." -- Muhammad Ali
"Correction does much, but encouragement does more." -- Goethe
"Motivation is everything. You can do the work of two people, but you can't be two people. Instead, you have to inspire the next guy down the line and get him to inspire his people." -- Lee Iacocca
"A word of encouragement during a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after success." -- Anonymous
"Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain." -- Mark Twain
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them." -- Henry David Thoreau
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor" -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"Those who are lifting the world upward and onward are those who encourage more than criticize." -- Elizabeth Harrison
"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"My grandfather once told me that there were two types of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition."�-- Indira Ghandi

people and character

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"Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set." -- Francis Bacon
"Character is much easier kept than recovered" -- Thomas Paine
"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." -- Oscar Wilde
"The coward regards himself as cautious; the miser, as thrifty." -- Publilius Syrus
"Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it." -- Bovee
"What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering." -- George Bernard Shaw
"Brevity is the soul of wit." -- William Shakespeare
"I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability." -- Oscar Wilde
"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess." -- Oscar Wilde
"Jupiter has loaded us with a couple of wallets: this one, filled with our own vices, he has hung at our backs; the other, heavy with those of others, he has hung before." -- Phaedius, circa 8 AD
"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done." -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret." -- Ambrose Bierce
"Anger manages everything badly." -- Stadius
"While we are postponing, life speeds by." -- Seneca (3BC - 65AD)
"Blessed is the person who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact." -- George Eliot
"Be careful of your thoughts; they may become words at any moment." -- Lara Gassen
"O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" -- Sir Walter Scott
"Never make a defence or apology before you be accused." - Charles I, King of England
"A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman is as bad as she dares." -- Elbert Hubbard
"Nonchalance is the ability to remain down to earth when everything else is up in the air." -- Earl Wilson
"Think with the wise, but talk with the vulgar." -- Greek Proverb
"He that hath no brother hath weak legs" -- Persian proverb
"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self." - Aristotle
"Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold" -- Zelda Fitzgerald
"Who travels alone, without lover or friend, but hurries from nothing, to nought at the end." -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities." -- Aldous Huxley
"Be nice to people on your way up because you'll need them on your way down." -- Wilson Mizner
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man." -- Mark Twain
"Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room." -- Blaise Pascal
"What time hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit." -- William Shakespeare
"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." -- Oscar Wilde
"Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company." -- George Washington
"We must be the change we wish to see." -- Ghandi
"Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life." -- Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca
"It is bad luck to be superstitious" -- Unknown
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it within us or we will find it not." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Life is a daring adventure or nothing." -- Helen Keller
"One should never make one's debut in a scandal. One should reserve that to give interest to one's old age." -- Oscar Wilde
"A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." -- Francis Bacon
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist after he grows up." -- Pablo Picasso
"The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart." -- Mencius
"The child is father of the man." -- Wordsworth
"A man who has lost his sense of wonder is a man dead." -- William of Saint Thierry
"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest." -- Henry David Thoreau
"With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity." -- Keshavan Nair
"A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one." -- J. Pierpoint Morgan
"Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who makes its laws." -- Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743-1812)
"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." -- Abraham Lincoln
"The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." -- President Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address, January 17, 1961
"I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty." -- John D. Rockefeller
"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster...when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts." -- Francis M. Voltaire
"There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times." -- Francis M. Voltaire
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad." -- Aldous Huxley

American Indian quotations

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"In this world the unseen has power." -- Apache
"It is no longer good enough to cry peace, we must act peace, live peace, and live in peace." -- Shenandoah
"Strive to be a person who is never absent from an important act." -- Osage
"Men in search of a myth will usually find one." -- Pueblo
"The one who tells the stories rules the world." -- Hopi
"Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance." -- Lakota
"It takes a whole village to raise a child." -- Omaha
"Everything the Power does, it does in a circle. -- Lakota
"Man has responsibility, not power." -- Tuscarora
"With all things and in all things, we are relatives." -- Lakota

money

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"Poverty often deprives a [person] of all spirit and virtue. It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright." -- Benjamin Franklin
"Beware the little expenses. A small leak can sink a great ship." -- Benjamin Franklin
"Before borrowing from a friend decide which you need most." -- W.G.P.
"Money is like an arm or leg: use it or lose it." -- Henry Ford

politics

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"Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him." -- Charles de Gaulle
"Conservative: a statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." -- Ambrose Bierce, American author (1842-1914)
"If you cannot convince them, confuse them." -- Harry S. Truman
"Reader, suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." -- Plato
"Public office is the last refuge of the incompetent." -- Boies Penrose
"Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least." -- Robert Byrne
"Vote for the man who promises least. He'll be the least disappointing." -- Bernard M. Baruch
"It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in." -- London graffiti
"Democracy is the worst system of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." -- Winston Churchill
"Politics, n. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage." -- Ambrose Bierce
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." -- Winston Churchill
"These are the times that try men's souls." -- Thomas Paine
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president, or any other public official..." -- Theodore Roosevelt
"What the realist fears is the consequences of idealism." -- Brent Scowcroft
"The first mistake in public business is the going into it." -- Benjamin Franklin
"No man will carry out of the presidency the reputation which carried him into it." -- Thomas Jefferson
"Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind the slime of a new bureaucracy." -- Franz Kafka
"Senate, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors." -- Ambrose Bierce
"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." -- Ronald Reagan
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." -- Donald Rumsfeld (former US Secretary of Defense)
"The greatest evil is not in those sordid dens of crime that Dickens loved to paint. ... It is conceived and ordered ... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men." -- C.S. Lewis
"Fear not the path of truth, fear the lack of people walking on it." -- Robert Francis Kennedy
"When I was a boy I was told that anyone could become president; I'm beginning to believe it." -- Clarence Darrow
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." -- Richard Nixon, 1972
"The worst thing an advocate can do is to defend his cause ... with bad arguments" -- Nietzsche
"Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim." -- George Santayana

art

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"The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all." -- Oscar Wilde
"A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody has read." -- Mark Twain
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." -- T.S. Elliot
"Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Art is the lie that makes us realise the truth." -- Pablo Picasso
"Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not persuade, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible." -- W. B. Yeats
"If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay - in solid cash - the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy." -- Aldous Huxley

religion

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"I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose" -- Clarence Darrow, 1930
"what you call God I call Nature" -- Thomas Alva Edison
"For 1700 years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm" -- Voltaire, 1767
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." -- Voltaire
"Science is the record of dead religions." -- Oscar Wilde
"It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain" -- Mark Twain
"I cannot imagine a god who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modelled after our own - a god, in short, who is but a reflection in human frailty. Neither can I beleive that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbour such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." -- Albert Einstein
"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no supernatural authority behind it" -- Albert Einstein
"I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that men who do not believe, and this will include my father, brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine." -- Charles Darwin
"The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world." -- Bertrand Russell
"Why has a religious turn of mind always a tendency to narrow and harden the heart?" -- Robert Burns
"Finding that no religion is based on facts, and cannot therefore be true, I begin to reflect what must be the condition of mankind to train from infancy to believe in errors" -- Robert Owen
"If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go." -- John Burroughs, American essayist (1837-1921)
"In the final analysis, for the believer there are no questions, and for the non-believer there are no answers." -- Haffetz Hayyim

nature

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"Nature takes away any faculty that is not used." -- W. R. Inge
"There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments - there are only consequences." -- Robert G Ingersoll
"The goal of life is living in agreement with nature." -- Zeno (335-263 B.C.)
"Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man" -- Stewart Udall
"The Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask." -- Nancy Newhall
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
"What's the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" -- Henry David Thoreau
"Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
"Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children." -- Kenyan Proverb
"We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive." -- Aldo Leopold
"In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught." -- Baba Dioum
"Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty." -- Albert Einstein
"Unless someone like you cares a whole lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." -- from Dr. Seuss' The Lorax

underclassified

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"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it." -- Steven Wright
"Between two evils, I always like to take the one I've never tried before." -- Mae West
"Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up." -- Wilson Mizner
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." -- Earl Wilson
"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds (women) and fast cars. The rest I just squandered." -- George Best
"It should be the function of medicine to help people die young as late in life as possible." -- Dr Ernst Wynder
"Why is it we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved." -- Mark Twain