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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."
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Immanuel Kant
* "We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."
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Casey Kasem
* "And don't forget: keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars."
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Reginald W. Kaufman
"Compromise is never anything but an ignoble truce between the duty of a man and the terror of a coward."
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Nikos Kazantzakis
"Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality."
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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."
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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."
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Thomas a Kempis
"First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others."
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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."
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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
"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
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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."
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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."
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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."
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Ayatollah Khomeini
Former Supreme Leader of Iran
* "Gender equality was "one of the biggest mistakes of Western thought."
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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."
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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."
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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."
* "More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies."
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."
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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]
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Paul Klee
"Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see."
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Arthur Koestler
"Habit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straitjacket of which the wearer is unaware."
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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?"
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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."
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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."
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