Quotations Index - Z

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QUOTATIONS INDEX

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Zig Ziglar

"It's your attitude not your aptitude that determines your altitude."

"When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there."
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Émile Zola

* "If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way."

"Truth and justice, so ardently longed for! How terrible it is to see them trampled, unrecognized and ignored!"
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Quotations Index - Y

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QUOTATIONS INDEX

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Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

* "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."  [attributed in the movie, "Tora Tora Tora."]
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William Butler Yeats

* "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
[The Second Coming]
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Brigham Young

"Honest hearts produce honest actions."
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Quotations Index - X

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QUOTATIONS INDEX

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Quotations Index - W

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QUOTATIONS INDEX

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Henry A. Wallace

* "With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
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Neale Donald Walsch

"Every individual undertaking, every individual thought, word, or action which leads to the transformation of the Self and to the lifting of any other being, is of extraordinary importance. It is not necessary to move mountains to move mountains. It is necessary only to move pebbles."
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William Arthur Ward

* "The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change and the realist adjusts the sails."
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George Washington

"If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."

"If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical Society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it; and if I could now conceive that the general Government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution."  [letter to the United Baptists in Virginia, 1789]

"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light."
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James Watt

"A lie can run around the world before the truth can get its boots on."
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John Wayne

“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”

“Government has no wealth, and when a politician promises to give you something for nothing, he must first confiscate that wealth from you -- either by direct taxes, or by the cruelly indirect tax of inflation.”

“Life's hard. It's even harder when you're stupid.”

“Thanking people is dangerous business. A name always slips your mind.”

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.”
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Simone Weil

"The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, 'What are you going through?'"
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Chaim Weizmann

* "A law is something which must have a moral basis, so that there is an inner compelling force for every citizen to obey."

* "Miracles sometimes occur, but one has to work terribly hard for them."
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Jim Wern

"I like messy people; people who don’t fit in a box or stay between the lines, but who’s integrity is greater than any rule book and who’s loyalty is stronger than blood."
_____

Charles Wesley

"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can."
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Edwin Percy Whipple

"Cheerfulness in most cheerful people, is the rich and satisfying result of strenuous discipline."
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Edith Wharton

* "Life has a way of overgrowing its achievements as well as its ruins."

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time."
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Marcia Wieder

"One of your most powerful inner resources is your own creativity." [ascribed]
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Warren Wendel Wiersbe

"If you want to enjoy the rainbow, be prepared to endure the storm."  [ascribed]
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Oscar Wilde

“In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.”

"It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist.  It produces a false impression."  

"The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity."

"What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities."
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Terry Tempest Williams

"Our sense of community and compassionate intelligence must be extended to all life forms, plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and human beings. This is the story of our past and it will be the story of our future."
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Oprah Winfrey

"Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possiblity."
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John Wooden

* "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
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William Wordsworth

"That best portion of good people's lives,
Their little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love."
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Frank Lloyd Wright

"Early in life, I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasions to change."
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N. T. Wright

* "The line between good and evil does not lie between 'us' and 'them,' between the West and the rest, between Left and Right, between rich and poor. That fateful line runs down the middle of each of us, every human society, every individual. This is not to say that all humans, and all societies, are equally good or bad; far from it. Merely that we are all infected and that all easy attempts to see the problem in terms of 'us' and 'them' are fatally flawed."  [Surprised by Scripture]
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Cardinal Donald Wuerl

* "Bad ideas sometimes begin with a good impulse. The “loss of the sense of sin” arises, I believe, from a misguided notion of tolerance. Democracies thrive because of a neighborly forbearance of differences of opinion. Tolerance does not, however, require us to abandon our convictions or deny the existence of moral standards. Tolerance does not demand that we call "good" what is evil or "evil" what is good. Nor does forgiveness of an action mean that we approve the action; in fact, we can only forgive something that is a genuine offense."
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Quotations Index - V

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QUOTATIONS INDEX

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Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry

"That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere is almost certain to be false."
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Arthur H. Vandenberg

"It is less important to redistribute wealth than it is to redistribute opportunity."
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Iyanla Vanzant

"Just do what you do and do it well. Stop worrying about what other people are doing, or what they will say about what you are doing. Just do what you do to the best of your ability. Whether people like or agree with what you do is not the issue."
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Virgil

"Fortune favors the brave."

* "Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus." = "But meanwhile time flies; it flies never to be regained."
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Voltaire

* "En général, l’art du gouvernement consiste à prendre le plus d’argent qu’on peut à une grande partie des citoyens, pour le donner à une autre partie." = "In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other."

"La morale est la même chez tous les hommes, donc elle vient de Dieu; le culte est différent, donc il est l’ouvrage des hommes." = "Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men."

"Qu’est-ce que la tolérance? c’est l’apanage de l’humanité. Nous sommes tous pétris de faiblesses et d’erreurs; pardonnons-nous réciproquement nos sottises, c’est la première loi de la nature." = "What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly — that is the first law of nature."

"Tous les hommes seraient donc nécessairement égaux, s’ils étaient sans besoins. La misère attachée à notre espèce subordonne un homme à un autre homme: ce n’est pas l’inégalité qui est un malheur réel, c’est la dépendance." = "All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence."

"Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it. Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty. My thought is no more subject to authority than is sickness or health."
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Quotations Index - U

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QUOTATIONS INDEX

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Quotations Index - T

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QUOTATIONS INDEX

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Rabindranath Tagore

"Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation."
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Newton Booth Tarkington

"Cherish all your happy moments; they make a fine cushion for old age."  [ascribed]
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Mildred Taylor

     "We have no choice of what color we're born or who our parents are or whether we're rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we're here."  [Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry]
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Zachary Taylor

* "The legislative and judicial branches of the Government present prominent examples of distinguished civil attainments and matured experience, and it shall be my endeavor to call to my assistance in the Executive Departments individuals whose talents, integrity, and purity of character will furnish ample guaranties for the faithful and honorable performance of the trusts to be committed to their charge. With such aids and an honest purpose to do whatever is right, I hope to execute diligently, impartially, and for the best interests of the country the manifold duties devolved upon me. In the discharge of these duties my guide will be the Constitution, which I this day swear to "preserve, protect, and defend.""  [Inaugural Address, Monday, March 5, 1849]
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Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

* "I will venture to lay it down as a general principle, that there are no better means for securing the continuance of peace, than to have it known that the possessions in the neighbourhood of a foreign state are in a condition to repel attack. I am firmly persuaded that among nations, weakness will never be a foundation for security."  (1816)
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Corrie Ten Boom

"The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation."

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength."
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Mother Teresa

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one."

"It is not how much you do, but how much Love you put into the doing that matters."

* "Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier."
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Nikola Tesla

"My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists."
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Margaret Thatcher

* "A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the State as servant and not as master: these are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend."

* "I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end."
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Dylan Thomas

* "A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him."
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Henry David Thoreau

"It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive."

* "You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment."
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Rep. Mac Thornberry

* "Power and influence in the world come from having capability plus the will to use it."
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Alexis de Tocqueville

* "Administrative centralization only serves to enervate the peoples that submit to it, because it constantly tends to diminish their civic spirit."

* "A government, by itself, is equally incapable of refreshing the circulation of feelings and ideas among a great people, as it is of controlling every industrial undertaking."

* "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

* "History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies."

* "I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run."  [Democracy in America]

* "It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants."

* "It [government] covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd.  It does not break men’s wills, but softens, bends, and guides it; it seldom enjoins, but often inhibits action; it does not destroy anything, but prevents much being born; it is not at all tyrannical, but it hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd."

* "It [government] provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their inheritances.  Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living?  Thus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties."

"Once it [government] leaves the sphere of politics to launch out on this new track, it will, even without intending this, exercise an intolerable tyranny.  For a government can only dictate precise rules.  It imposes the sentiments and ideas which it favors, and it is never easy to tell the difference between its advice and its commands."

* "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."

* "The morals and intelligence of a democratic people would be in as much danger as its commerce and industry if ever a government wholly usurped the place of private associations."

* "The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help.  That is a vicious circle of cause and effect."

* "There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it."

* "Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all."  [Democracy in America]
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Leo Tolstoy

* "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
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Emilio James Trujillo

"It takes as much stress to be a success as it does to be a failure."
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Harry S. Truman

* "A man cannot have character unless he lives within a fundamental system of morals that creates character."
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Desmond Tutu

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world."
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Mark Twain

"Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

* "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. It was here first."

"Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."

* "It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that."

"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig."

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session."

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself."

"The difference between the almost-right word and the right word is ... the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years."
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Neil deGrasse Tyson

"A conspiracy theorist is a person who tacitly admits that they have insufficient data to prove their points. A conspiracy is a battle cry of a person with insufficient data."

"All the while, the glorious sun pours immaculate free energy down upon us, more than we will ever need. Why can’t we summon the ingenuity and courage of the generations that came before us? The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. What’s our excuse?"

* "Pretending to know everything closes the door to finding out what’s really there."
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Quotations Index - S

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QUOTATIONS INDEX

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A. Sachs

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."
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William Safire

* "Do not put statements in the negative form.

And don't start sentences with a conjunction.

If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a

great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.

Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.

De-accession euphemisms.

If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague."

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Carl Sagan

* "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

* "Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid."

"Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known."

* "The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science."

* "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."

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John Charles Salak

"Failures are divided into two classes: 1. Those who thought and never did. 2. Those who did and never thought."
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Herbert Samuel

"The virtue of some people consists wholly in condemning the vices in others."
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George Santayana

"Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand."
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Robert W. Sarnoff

"Advertising is the foot on the accelerator, the hand on the throttle, the spur on the flank that keeps our economy surging forward."
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Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

* "Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil wisdom."
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Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

"If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself."

"For most Americans the Constitution had become a hazy document, cited like the Bible on ceremonial occasions but forgotten in the daily transactions of life."

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Laura Schlessinger

"The people and circumstances around me do not make me what I am, they reveal who I am."
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John Schnatter

* "If you don’t care of the people who are doing the heavy lifting, they will burn your castle down." [Washington Post - Irish Castles, 5-19-2014]
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Arthur Schopenhauer

"The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped."

"Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man."  [The Basis of Morality]
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Charles M. Schulz

* "Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong.' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'"
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Albert Schweitzer

"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing."

"Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light."
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Gen. Winfield Scott

"Brave Rifles!  Veterans!  You have been baptized in fire and blood and have come out steel."
[1847 address to U.S. cavalrymen during the Mexican War]
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Frank Scully

* "Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"

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Seneca

"A great step toward independence is a good-humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment."

"Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing."

* "Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power."

"When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind."

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Rod Serling

* "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy; and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is, that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone."

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Dr. Seuss

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living; it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

* "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
 You can steer yourself in any direction you choose."
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Eric Sevareid

* "Brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those, who profit by postponing it, pretend"
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William Shakespeare

* "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."

* "Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice."

* "I say there is no darkness but ignorance."

"No legacy is so rich as honesty."

* "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

* "This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

"To be furious, is to be frighted out of fear."
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George Bernard Shaw

* "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend
 on the support of Paul."

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Fulton J. Sheen

“Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.”

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Walid Shoebat

"As long as you reject the cross, you will bow to the Crescent. It matters not how many candels you light after each terror attack or how many anti-terror demonstrations you march in, as long as Christ is not the center of your cause, you will bow to the Muslim crescent, like it or not."
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George P. Shultz

"He who walks in the middle of the road gets hit from both sides."

* "I learned in business that you had to be very careful when you told somebody that's working for you to do something, because the chances were very high he'd do it. In government, you don't have to worry about that."

"The minute you start talking about what you're going to do if you lose, you have lost."
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Beverly Sills

* "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
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Gene Simmons

* "If you have never been to the moon, you can’t issue policy about the moon."
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Samuel Smiles

* "The greatest slave is not he who is ruled by a despot, great though that evil be, but he who is in the thrall of his own moral ignorance, selfishness, and vice."

"We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery."
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Brandon Smith

* "The ultimate and final goal of evil is to obscure and destroy our very conception of evil itself, to change the inherent moral fiber of all humanity until people can no longer recognize what is right and what is wrong."
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Harold J. Smith

"More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them."
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Margaret Chase Smith

* "My creed is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned but not bought."
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Stephen A. Smith
[ESPN radio host and TV commentator]

* "When you make the mistake of jumping to emotional conclusions and being factually incorrect, your cachet diminishes."  [28 Mar 2014]
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Ralph W. Sockman

* "Our growth depends not on how many experiences we devour, but on how many we digest."
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Socrates

* "A State arises ... out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants. Can there be any other origin of a State? ... Then, as we have many wants, and many persons are needed to supply them, one takes a helper for one purpose and another for another; and when these partners and helpers are gathered together ... the body of inhabitants is termed a State." [Plato's Republic, book 2]

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life."

* "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

"The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions."
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Solon

"He that has learned to obey will know how to command."
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

* "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life."  [Harvard Class Day speech, 1978]
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Sun Tzu

* "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."
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Susan Sontag

"The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own."
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Julia Sorel

"If you're never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never
 take any chances."

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Herbert Spencer

* "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."

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Joseph Stalin

"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."

* "I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this - who will count the votes, and how."

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?"
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Ben Stein

"I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty...This is my highest and best use as a human."
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Edith Stein

[Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross]

* "One could say that in case of need, every normal and healthy woman is able to hold a position. And there is no profession which cannot be practiced by a woman."

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Sir James Fitzjames Stephen

"Originality consists in thinking for yourself, not in thinking differently from other people."

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Abel Stevens

"Politeness is the art of choosing among one's real thoughts."
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Robert Louis Stevenson

"All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind."

* "I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered."

* "In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented."

"So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend."

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Harlan Fiske Stone

* "Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality."
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W. Clement Stone

"Thinking will not overcome fear, but action will."
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Harriet Beecher Stowe

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."
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Kenneth Stroupe
[University of Virginia political scientist]

"They weren't required to do anything they weren't doing anyway, or go anywhere they weren't already going."  [on voter registration drives at rock concerts in 2004; most of those registered did not follow through by voting]
_____

Jonathan Swift

* "Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company."
_____

Charles R. Swindoll

"Each day we make deposits in the memory banks of our children."

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes."

_____

Sayyid Syeed
[National Director for the Office for Interfaith & Community Alliances for the Islamic Society of North America]

"Our job is to change the Constitution of America"
_____

Publilius Syrus

"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."
_____

Wislawa Szymborska

"History counts its skeletons in round numbers.  A thousand and one remains a thousand, as though the one had never existed."

_____

Quotations Index - R

________

QUOTATIONS INDEX

________

_____

Michael Ramsey
[100th Archbishop of Canterbury]

* "Reason is an action of the mind; knowledge is a possession of the mind; but faith is an attitude of the person. It means you are prepared to stake yourself on something being so."
_____

Ronald Reagan

* "An America that is militarily and economically strong is not enough. The world must see an America that is morally strong with a creed and a vision. This is what has led us to dare and achieve. For us, values count."

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

"Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them."

"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves."

"How can we love our country and not love our countrymen, and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall?"   [first inaugural address]

"If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be one nation gone under."

"I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born."

“One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project."

"Our enemy is no longer Red Coats, but red ink."

* "Our national dialog should reflect the rich diversity of our free, pluralist society, and that diversity should be one of our greatest prides."

"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things."

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

"The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much."

"There are no easy answers but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right."

"To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last - but eat you he will."

"Trust, but verify."

"Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence."

"We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added."

_____

Red Cloud

"I hope the Great Heavenly Father, who will look down upon us, will give all the tribes his blessing, that we may go forth in peace, and live in peace all our days, and that He will look down upon our children and finally lift us far above this earth."

"In 1868, men came out and brought papers. We could not read them and they did not tell us truly what was in them. We thought the treaty was to remove the forts and for us to cease from fighting. But they wanted to send us traders on the Missouri, but we wanted traders where we were. When I reached Washington, the Great Father explained to me that the interpreters had deceived me. All I want is right and just."

"Look at me - I am poor and naked but I am the chief of a nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love."

"The Great Spirit raised both the white man and the Indian. I think he raised the Indian first. He raised me in this land, it belongs to me. The white man was raised over the great waters, and his land is over there. Since they crossed the sea, I have given them room. There are now white people all about me. I have but a small spot of land left. The Great Spirit told me to keep it."

* "They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they kept only one; they promised to take our land, and they did."

"Whose voice was first sounded on this land? The voice of the red people who had but bows, and arrows...What has been done in my country I did not want, did not ask for it; white people going through my country... When the white man comes in my country he leaves a trail of blood behind him...I have two mountains in that country... The Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountain. I want the great father to make no roads through them. I have told these things three times; now I have come here to tell them the fourth time."
_____

Senator Harry Reid

"Congress is finishing this year less popular than a cockroach."  [19 Dec 2013]
_____

Jules Renard

"The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world's dreadful injustice."
_____

Eddie Rickenbacker

"Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared."

"The four cornerstones of character on which the structure of this nation was built are: Initiative, Imagination, Individuality and Independence."
_____

Will "Story" Rivera

"Search for ourselves first, dig deep to understand and accept ourself wholeheartedly, there are many parts of ourselves that we need to uncover, to face with courage, nurture and heal, to accept responsibility for our choices, we must cover every nook and cranny of our souls with unconditional love; this will be one of the most fulfilling relationships we ever have in our lives." -
_____

Tony Robbins

* "There is always room in your life for thinking bigger, pushing limits and imagining the impossible."
_____

Chief Justice John Roberts

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
_____

Jim Rohn

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment."

"One person caring about another represents life's greatest value."  [ascribed]

"The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly."
_____

Shalom Rokeach

"Let a good person do good deeds with the same zeal that an evil person does bad ones."
_____

Mitt Romney

* "If you have to tell people you are strong, you aren't.  If you have to show you are not weak, you are!"
_____

Mickey Rooney

"You always pass failure on your way to success."  [ascribed]
_____

Eleanor Roosevelt

* "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

"You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give."
_____

Franklin D. Roosevelt

* "Lost Ground can always be regained--lost time never!"

"We have in the darkest moments of our national trials retained our faith in our own ability to master our own destiny."
_____

Theodore Roosevelt

"Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all."

* "I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do: That is character!"

"To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."
_____

Murray Rothbard

* "This, by the way, is the welfare state in action: It's a whole bunch of special interest groups screwing consumers and taxpayers, and making them think they're really benefiting."
_____

Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran

* "Saying Death to America is easy. We need to express Death to America with Action"
_____

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?"
_____

Don Miguel Ruiz

"Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering."
_____

John Ruskin

"Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life; anarchy and competition the laws of death."  [wrong]
_____

Bertrand Russell

"In all affairs, it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."

* "The stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
_____

Keri Russell

"Sometimes it's the smallest decisions that can change your life
 forever."
_____

Edward Rutledge

* "I am resolved to vest the Congress with no more Power than that is absolutely necessary, and to use a familiar Expression, to keep the Staff in our own Hands; for I am confident if surrendered into the Hands of others a most pernicious use will be made of it."  [letter to John Jay, 29 Jun 1776]
_____

Quotations Index - Q

________

QUOTATIONS INDEX

________

_____

Anna Quindlen

"If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all."
_____



_____

Quotations Index - P

________

QUOTATIONS INDEX

________

_____

Thomas Paine

* "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right."

* "Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one."

* "Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. ... The first is a patron, the last a punisher."  [Common Sense]

* "Time makes more converts than reason."

* "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.  [The American Crisis, 1776]
_____

Stathi Pappas

* "The stuff that everybody says is too hard to do? Do that. Really learn it. And then you’ll be worth your weight in gold."
_____

Louis Pasteur

"Chance favors the prepared mind."
_____

General George S. Patton

* "I’d rather have a German division in front of me than a French division behind me."

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."
_____

Cesare Pavese

"Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals, you will never find the right answer.  It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances."
_____

Drew Pearson

"It's the job of a newspaperman to spur the lazy, watch the weak, expose the corrupt."

"I've always tried to emphasize the personal side of journalism. It makes my points about clean government more effective and it does not put people to sleep the way some of my thumb-sucking colleagues do."
_____

William Penn

"Those people who are not governed by God will be ruled by tyrants."
_____

Pericles

* "Just because you do not take an interest in politics does not mean politics will not take an interest in you."  [c. 430 B.C.]
_____

Laurence J. Peter

"An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today."
_____

Samantha Pickreign

"Better to have spent a life reaching for a dream that never came true, than to have slept through a life that never had a dream."
_____

Leonard Pitts, Jr.

"If we don't tell our stories, someone else will."
_____

Edgar Allan Poe

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."
_____

Michael Pollan

* "Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food."
_____

Neil Postman

"Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see."
_____

Eleanor Powell

"What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God."
_____

J. M. Power

"If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up."
_____

Marcel Proust

"Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."

_____

Pythagoras

* "Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please."
_____

Quotations Index - O

________

QUOTATIONS INDEX

________

_____

Mary O'Connor

"It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is
praised. The mosquito is swatted."  [ascribed]
_____

Georgia O'Keefe

"Nobody sees a flower, really--it is so small we haven't time, and to see takes time."
_____

George Orwell

"Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious."

_____

Joel Osteen

"No matter what's happening, choose to be happy. Don’t focus on what's wrong. Find something positive in your life."

"The first place we lose the battle is in our own thinking. If you think it’s permanent then it’s permanent. If you think you’ve reached your limits then you have. If you think you’ll never get well then you won’t. You have to change your thinking. You need to see everything that’s holding you back, every obstacle, every limitation as only temporary."

* "You cannot expect to live a positive life if you hang with negative people."
_____

Ovid

"Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish."
_____

Quotations Index - N

________

QUOTATIONS INDEX

________

_____

John Naisbitt

* "The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many."
_____

John Neal

"A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise
 against, not with the wind."
_____

Mike Needham

* "Remember, when the other side is accusing you of playing politics on the most important issues, it may just be a sign that you’re the one with clearer vision."
_____

Jawaharlal Nehru

* "Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think."
_____

Richard Nelson

"There may be more to learn from climbing the same mountain a hundred times than by climbing a hundred different mountains."
_____

Benjamin Netanyahu

* "The root cause of terrorism lies not in grievances but in a disposition toward unbridled violence. This can be traced to a world view which asserts that certain ideological and religious goals justify, indeed demand, the shedding of all moral inhibitions."
_____

Isaac Newton

"He is not Eternity or Infinity, but Eternal and Infinite; he is not Duration or Space, but he endures and is present. He endures for ever and is every where present; and by existing always and every where he constitutes Duration and Space."

"Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy"
_____

Friedrich Nietzsche

* "He who fights against monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you stare persistently into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you."
_____

Anaïs Nin

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
_____

Dr. Steven Novella

* "Favoring information that supports our current beliefs is a cognitive bias common to Homo sapiens, but ideology tends to take this simple bias to a new level. It can lead to the systematic distortion or denial of science, and render belief systems immune to logic and evidence."
_____

Quotations Index - M

________

QUOTATIONS INDEX

________

_____

Niccolò Machiavelli

* "A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent."

* "The Romans never allowed a trouble spot to remain simply to avoid going to war over it, because they knew that wars don't just go away, they are only postponed to someone else's advantage. Therefore, they made war with Philip and Antiochus in Greece, in order not to have to fight them in Italy."

"When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred."
_____

James Madison

* "A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty."
_____

Bill Maher

* "If we're ever going to get anything done in this country, we have to not hate everybody who doesn't agree with us all time."  [21 Mar 2014]
_____

Erin Majors

"A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle."
_____

Imam Johari Abdul Malik
[Chairman of Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations]

"Before Allah closes our eyes for the last time you will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America - that's where we are now - to being the first religion in America."
_____

Robert Mallet

"How many pessimists end up by desiring the things they fear, in
 order to prove that they are right?"
_____

William R. Manchester

"Today's Europeans and Americans who reached the age of awareness after midcentury when the communications revolution lead to expectations of instantaniaty are exasperated by the slow toils of history. They assume that the thunderclap of cause will be swiftly followed by the lightening bolt of effect."

"One would have thought that in the days of peace the progress of women to an ever larger share in the life and work and guidance of the community would have grown, and that, under the violences of war, it would be cast back. The reverse is true. War is the teacher, a hard, stern, efficient teacher. War has taught us to make these vast strides forward towards a far more complete equalisation of the parts to be played by men and women in society."

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary; it fulfils the same function as pain in the human body, it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things."
_____

Nelson Mandela

"What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead."   [at Walter Sisulu’s 90th birthday celebration, Johannesburg, May 18, 2002]
_____

Reginald B Mansell

“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities; an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.”
_____

Rhonda Marlow

"A smile on your face can be felt on anothers heart."
_____

John Marshall

"The power to tax is the power to destroy."  [McCulloch v. Maryland]
_____

Gen. George C. Marshall

* "The most important thing for the world today in my opinion is a spiritual regeneration which would reestablish a feeling of good faith among men generally. Discouraged people are in sore need of the inspiration of great principles. Such leadership can be the rallying point against intolerance, against distrust, against that fatal insecurity that leads to war. It is to be hoped that the democratic nations can provide the necessary leadership."
_____

George R.R. Martin

"A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge."
_____

Groucho Marx

"I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be."
_____

Abraham Maslow

"Education is learning to grow, learning what to grow toward, learning what is good and bad, learning what is desirable and undesirable, learning what to choose and what not to choose."

"If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life."

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be."
_____

John C. Maxwell

"The longer you wait to do something that you have decided to do, the less probability of you actually doing it."
_____

Anne McCaffrey

"When bad fortune occurs, the unresourceful, unimaginative man looks about him to attach the blame to someone else; the resolute accepts misfortune and endeavors to survive, mature, and improve because of it."

"Exchange information, learn to speak sensibly about any subject, learn to express your thoughts, accept new ones, examine them, analyze. Think objectively. Think toward the future."
_____

Tim McCarver

"Good habits are as easy to form as bad ones."
_____

Robert J. McCracken

"We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls."
_____

Frank McGee

"Welcome the task that makes you go beyond yourself."  [ascribed]
_____

Bryant McGill

"Each person you meet is a lesson to be learned."
_____

Herman Melville

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
_____

H.L. Mencken

* "Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage."
_____

John Merline

* "In effect the government has become primarily a massive money-transfer machine, taking $2.6 trillion from some and handing it back out to others."  [Investor’s Business Daily, 13 Apr 2014]
_____

James A. Michener

"If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life."
_____

John Milius

"Egotism is not a good quality. It's not something to be admired or even tolerated. It wouldn't be tolerated in a field commander and it shouldn't be tolerated in a movie director."
_____

Henry Valentine Miller

"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience."

"If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without."

"Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything."

* "In this age, which believes that there is a short-cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way, in the long run, is the easiest."

"No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance."
_____

John Milton

* "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."  [Areopagitica, published 23 Nov 1644]

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

"They also serve who only stand and wait."
_____

Margaret Mitchell

* "Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect."
_____

Kenji Miyazawa

"We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey."
_____

Molière

"It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I'm right."

_____

Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery

* "The United States has broken the second rule of war. That is: don't go fighting with your land army on the mainland in Asia. Rule One is, don't march on Moscow. I developed those two rules myself."

_____

U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D. N.Y.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."

_____

Abdur-Rahman Muhammad

[a former member of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)]

* "This loathsome term [Islamophobia] is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics."

_____

José Mujica
president of Uruguay

“The tie is a useless rag that constrains your neck. I’m an enemy of consumerism. Because of this hyperconsumerism, we’re forgetting about fundamental things and wasting human strength on frivolities that have little to do with human happiness.”

“I believe that life is a marvelous adventure. And it’s worthwhile to start again 20 times over.”

“I’m not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live. My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I’m the son of my history. There have been years when I would have been happy just to have a mattress.”

“Be yourself and don’t try to impose your criteria on the rest. I don’t expect others to live like me. I want to respect people’s freedom, but I defend my freedom. And that comes with the courage to say what you think, even if sometimes others don’t share those views.”

“It’s important not to forget anything, but I think looking to tomorrow is necessary. You can’t live off memories. It’s important to look to the past, but also to lose respect for it.”

“The only good addiction is love. Forget everything else.”
_____

Lewis Mumford

* "The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion."

_____

Edward R. Murrow

"No one can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices."

_____

Robert Musil

"One does what one is; one becomes what one does."
_____

John Myers

* "A panicked crowd is not going to listen to what you have to say no matter how well reasoned it is argued. Opposing it is like opposing a cattle stampede. If you stand in its path, you will surely be trampled to death."

* "The problem with crowds is they have no ear for reason. Once a contagious fear grabs hold, a crowd loses all sense of objectivity all reason. Truth is meaningless. There is no way on Earth that you are going to reverse it until the hysteria has run its course."
_____

Caroline Myss

"We are not meant to stay wounded. We are supposed to move through our tragedies and challenges and to help each other move through the many painful episodes of our lives. By remaining stuck in the power of our wounds, we block our own transformation. We overlook the greater gifts inherent in our wounds — the strength to overcome them and the lessons that we are meant to receive through them. Wounds are the means through which we enter the hearts of other people. They are meant to teach us to become compassionate and wise." -

_____

Quotations Index - L

________

QUOTATIONS INDEX

________

_____

Fiorello Henry La Guardia

"I am certain that the good Lord never intended grapes to be made into grape jelly."

"I think the reporter should get his facts straight before he distorts them."

* "Politics is very much like taxes - everybody is against them, or everybody is for them as long as they don't apply to him."

"The devil is easy to identify. He appears when you're terribly tired and makes a very reasonable request which you know you shouldn't grant."

"There is no Democratic or Republican way of cleaning the streets."

"To the victor belongs the responsibility of good government."

_____

Anne Lamott

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up."
_____

Michael Landon

"Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows."

"Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows."
_____

Lao-tzu

"He who conquers others is strong;  He who conquers himself is mighty."

“The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others as it transforms”

"We listen to it and do not hear it; Its name is The Inaudible."
_____

Eva Lassman
[Holocaust survivor, 1919-2011]

"When we are able to instill in people a desire to respect and be tolerant of all humanity, we may eventually have peace.  If not, we will continue to experience the inhumanity of war and terrorism, and the deaths of children and other innocent victims of violence."
_____

D. H. Lawrence

* "Money poisons you when you've got it, and starves you when you haven't."

* "Their whole life depends on spending money, and now they’ve got none to spend. That’s our civilization and our education: bring up the masses to depend entirely on spending money, and then the money gives out."
_____

Albert Lee

"I don't care enough to care about why I don't care."
[age 23 in 2004, on voting]
_____

Robert E. Lee

"But feeling that valour and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen." [in General Order No. 9, announcing his surrender]

_____

Madeleine L'Engle

"I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as is needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love."

"We rebel against the impossible. I sense a wish in some professional religion-mongers to make God possible, to make him comprehensible to the naked intellect, domesticate him so that he's easy to believe in. Every century the Church makes a fresh attempt to make Christianity acceptable. But an acceptable Christianity is not Christian; a comprehensible God is no more than an idol."

"When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable."
_____

John Lennon

"The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility."

_____

Doris Lessing

* "The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion."

* "Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this."

_____

Oscar Levan

"What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left."  [ascribed]

_____

C.S. Lewis

* "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less."

* "I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands ‘Thus saith the Lord’, it lies, and lies dangerously." ["Willing Slaves of the Welfare State" (1958)]

* "Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts…"  [The Screwtape Letters]

* "In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They 'cash in'. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants' 'science'-- they didn't think much of Hitler's racial theories or Stalin's biology. But they can be muzzled." ["Willing Slaves of the Welfare State" (1958)]

"Let us not be deceived by phrases about 'Man taking charge of his own destiny'. All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?" ["Willing Slaves of the Welfare State" (1958)]

* "No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened." [The Great Divorce]

* "Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, `Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything - God and our friends and ourselves included - as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred." [Mere Christianity]

"The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State's honey and avoiding the sting?" ["Willing Slaves of the Welfare State" (1958)]

"What can be better than to get out a book on Saturday afternoon and thrust all mundane considerations away till next week?"  [The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis]

_____

G. Gordon Liddy

"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."

_____

Abraham Lincoln

"And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years."

"Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties."

"I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it."

* "Our popular Government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled - the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains - its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war."  [Special Session Message, July 4, 1861]

* "Truth is generally the best vindication against slander."

"What I cannot do, of course I will not do; but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed."
_____

Vince Lombardi

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will."

"The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor."
_____

George Lois

"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by orginality, overcomes everything."
_____

Martin Luther

"By God's grace, I know Satan very well. If Satan can turn God's Word upside down and pervert the Scriptures, what will he do with my words -- or the words of others?"
_____

John Lyly

"He that loseth his honesty hath nothing else to lose."
_____

Joseph Russell Lynes, Jr.

"Cynicism--the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence."
_____

Quotations Index - K

________

QUOTATIONS INDEX

________

_____

Mikhail Kalashnikov
[(10 Nov 1919 – 23 Dec 2013) designer of the AK-47 assault rifle.]

"I'm proud of my invention, but I'm sad that it is used by terrorists ... I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work — for example a lawn mower."

"I sleep well. It's the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence"

* "I created a weapon to defend the borders of my motherland. It's not my fault that it's being used where it shouldn't be. The politicians are more to blame for this."

variation:
"My aim was to create armaments to protect the borders of my motherland. It is not my fault that the Kalashnikov was used in many troubled places. I think the policies of these countries are to blame, not the designers."

"During the Vietnam war, American soldiers would throw away their M-16s to grab AK-47s and bullets for it from dead Vietnamese soldiers." - Mikhail Kalashnikov, July 2007 at a ceremony marking the rifle's 60th anniversary.

"Blame the Nazi Germans for making me become a gun designer.... I always wanted to construct agricultural machinery."

"After the collapse of the great and mighty Soviet Union so much crap has been imposed on us, especially on the younger generation. I wrote six books to help them find their way in life."
_____

Immanuel Kant

* "We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."
_____

Casey Kasem

* "And don't forget: keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars."
_____

Reginald W. Kaufman

"Compromise is never anything but an ignoble truce between the duty of a man and the terror of a coward."
_____

Nikos Kazantzakis

"Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality."
_____

John Keats

* "Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject."
_____

Helen Keller

"Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight."

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

"So much has been given to me. I have no time to ponder that which has been denied."

"The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision."

"Your success and happiness lie in you... Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties."
_____

Thomas a Kempis

"First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others."
_____

John F. Kennedy

"All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents."

"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

"No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space."

"Our system and our freedom permit the legislative to be pitted against the executive, the State against the Federal Government, the city against the countryside, party against party, interest against interest, all in competition or in contention one with another."

"The time to repair a roof is when the sun is shining."
_____

Robert F. Kennedy

* "At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any Western society."

"Just because we cannot see clearly the end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey. On the contrary, great change dominates the world, and unless we move with change we will become its victims." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use — of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

_____

Johannes Kepler

"I demonstrate by means of philosophy that the earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides; that it is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars."
_____

Ken Keyes, Jr.

"A loving person lives in a loving world....A hostile person lives in a hostile world....everyone you meet is your mirror."
_____

John Maynard Keynes

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.  Indeed the world is ruled by little else.  Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."
_____

Ayatollah Khomeini
Former Supreme Leader of Iran

* "Gender equality was "one of the biggest mistakes of Western thought."
_____

Soren Kierkegaard

"Daring the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk."

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."

"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."
_____

Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others."

"Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites - polar opposites - so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. We've got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time."

"The time is always right to do what is right."
_____

Rudyard Kipling

"Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old."

"Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story."

"Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem — for purely religious purposes, of course—to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate."

* "More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies."

"Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack."

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."
_____

Andrew Kirell

* "Cable news and the Internet have many things in common, one of which is that they are both populated by lots of shameless attention-seekers." [MEDIAite, 11 Apr 2014]

_____

Paul Klee

"Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see."
_____

Arthur Koestler

"Habit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straitjacket of which the wearer is unaware."
_____

Maryla Korn
[Holocaust survivor]

"Maybe by talking and telling our stories, we can restrain another little monster from coming up.  How can I not talk?"
_____

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within."
_____

Paul Winter Kurtz

"Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom." ~ Paul Winter Kurtz

"Free inquiry requires that we tolerate diversity of opinion and that we respect the right of individuals to express their beliefs, however unpopular they may be, without social or legal prohibition or fear of success."

"If there are any lessons to be learned from history, it is that we should be skeptical of all points of view, including those of the skeptics. No one is infallible, and no one can claim a monopoly on truth or virtue. It would be contradictory for skepticism to seek to translate itself into a new faith. One must view with caution the promises of any new secular priest who might emerge promising a brave new world—if only his path to clarity and truth is followed. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to temper the intemperate and to tame the perverse temptation that lurks within."
_____

Quotations Index - J

________

QUOTATIONS INDEX

________

_____

Andrew Jackson

"Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives,
 stop thinking and go in."
_____

Dresden James

"A truth's initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn't the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn't flat.  "When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic."

* "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."
_____

William James

"Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune."  [ascribed]
_____

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser
[President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy]

* "Our society was built on embracing the rights of everyone to be free. It is incongruous with our values to blindly coddle a medieval mindset that relegates women to second class citizens and believes that a man or a family’s honor is more valuable than the life of a daughter or wife."
_____

Richard Jefferies

* "Let us get of these indoor narrow modern days, whose twelve hours somehow have become shortened, into the sunlight and the pure wind. A something that the ancients thought divine can be found and felt there still."
_____

Thomas Jefferson

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have."

* "He who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

* "This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."

"When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property."

* "What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
_____

Gov. Bobby Jindal

* "Here’s the great thing about the American dream: It’s not about equality of outcomes, it’s equality of opportunity. The great thing about the American dream is that circumstances of your birth don’t determine your outcomes as an adult."
_____

Steve Jobs

* "The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it."
_____

Gerald W. Johnson

"No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time saddled with a responsibility."
_____

Dr. Samuel Johnson

"Clear your mind of can't."

"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

"Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks."

"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."

"The future is purchased by the present."

"Those that have done nothing in life are not qualified to judge of those that have done little."

"You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument."  [ascribed]
_____

F. P. Jones

"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again."
_____

Erica Jong

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't."
_____

James Joyce

"A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."
_____

Carl Jung

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become."

"The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet."
_____

Justin Martyr

* "Reason directs those who are truly pious and philosophica to honor and love only what is true, declining to follow the opinions of the ancients, if these be worthless. For not only does sound reason direct us to refuse the guidance of those who did or taught anything wrong, but it is incumbent on the lover of truth, by all means, and if death be threatened, even before his own life, to choose to do and say what is right."  [First Apology, addressed to Emperor Titus Aelius Adrianus Antoninus Pius Augustus Caesar, c. 140]