QUOTES

Submissions welcome here. This shall be nothing but a collection of quotes which either amuse or amaze or inform me. You’ll discern no pattern; I type these in as I come across them and as the mood strikes.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.              John Kenneth Galbraith

The Second Amendment says we have the right to bear arms, not to bear artillery.      Robin Williams

If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.                                                            Mark Twain

When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it’s only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.                                      Albert Einstein

Real journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.                       George Orwell

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.       Mark Twain (thanks to blog friend Jim Wheeler at Still Skeptical for that one)

Substitute damn every time you’re inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.                             Mark Twain

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. . . . [W]ith the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.  Thomas Jefferson

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations.                  – Michael J. Fox

“Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.” –  Roger Ebert

“The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.”
— Will_Rogers

An individual who is able to raise enough money to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent oil, or aerospace or banking, or whatever moneyed interests are paying for him. Certainly he will never represent the people of the country, and they know it. Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fails and there is no redress. –                                                                                  Gore Vidal

“The slant we perceive in news coverage has as much to do with our own personal views as it does the stories themselves”                 Diane McFarlin

Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause.      – David Frum,  former George W. Bush speechwriter, August 2011

Making a better tomorrow, tomorrow.   – Stephen Colbert

The American dream is still alive. It’s just more likely to come true in Denmark than in the USA. In fact, the American dream is less likely to come true in the USA than in any other major economy except the United Kingdom’s. – Rick Santorum, 2012 Republican Presidential candidate

We are intuitively familiar with issues of injustice, fairness, inequality and morality – we have just forgotten how to talk about them. – Tony Judt, “Ill Fares the Land”

A disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.                Hannah Arendt

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. – Mark Twain

It is the growing inequality between societies that generate so many social pathologies. And grotesquely unequal societies are also unstable societies. – Tony Judt, “Ill Fares the Land”

One does not stand still looking for a path. One walks; and as one walks, a path comes into being. – Mas Kodani

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”   – Mark Twain

When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag and carrying a cross.”   – Sinclair Lewis

In 1776, Liberals fought for Liberty and Independence……and conservatives wore red coats.   – The Conservative Lie

Anti-intellectualism is nurtured by the false notion that democracy means ‘my ignorance is as good as your knowledge’. – Isaac Asimov

“A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain

“We can’t let companies write the rules that we the people are supposed to follow. Because if that happens those rules will be written only to protect corporations.” – Senator Al Franken

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

“History is written by the winners” – attributed in modern times to George Orwell, but an ancient maxim first expressed perhaps by Pliny.

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out.

‘Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything – Mark Twain

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes. Peter Drucker

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and assign them tasks, but rather teach them to long for the sea. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.  – Matsuo Basho

Unfortunately, when hope diminishes, the hate is often turned most bitterly toward those who originally built up the hope.”  – Martin Luther King Jr.

“I plan to leave. You want me to stay. Well, an element of conflict in any discussion’s a very good thing. It means everybody is taking part and nobody is left out.”
– Elwood P. Dowd, fictional character in ‘Harvey’

“You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.”    – Wendell Berry

“You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.” –                                                                         Louis Brandeis

Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”                                           Chinese Proverb

“The best customer of American industry… is the well paid worker.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it.                ~            Alexander Woollcott

The United States government has no proper quarrel with any nation no matter how obnoxious its domestic policies, so long as it does not seek to export them . . .  Americans are friends of liberty everywhere, but custodians only of their own.                                            –  John Quincy Adams

“If I had to choose between government and a free press, I would choose a free press.”     – Thomas Jefferson

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”                   Frederick Douglas

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.                                            Conservative icon, Edmund Burke

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.     John Adams

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. Will Rogers

Talk is cheap…except when Congress does it.                            Anonymous

There is no distinctly Native American criminal class…save Congress.                  Mark Twain

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.              Aesop

“The slant we perceive in news coverage has as much to do with our own personal views as it does the stories themselves”    Diane McFarlin, publisher, Sarasota Herald -Tribune

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”           Charles Dickens

A good first step toward the liberation of humanity from the oppressive forms of tribalism would be to repudiate, respectfully, the claims of those in power who say they speak for God, are a special representative of God, or have exclusive knowledge of God’s divine will.  Included among these purveyors of theological narcissism are would-be prophets, the founders of religious cults, impassioned evangelical ministers, ayatollahs, imams of the grand mosques, chief rabbis, Rosh yeshivas, the Dalai Lama, and the pope.  The same is true for dogmatic political ideologies based on unchallengeable precepts, left or right, and especially where justified with the dogmas of organized religions.  They may contain intuitive wisdom worth hearing.  Their leaders may mean well.  But humanity has suffered enough from grossly inaccurate history told by mistaken prophets.               Edward O. Wilson

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” – Epicurus circa 300 BCE

An economy is  not like a household . . . in an economy, spending and earning go together. My spending is your income; your spending is my income.                                                  Paul Krugman

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldeast exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.                       John Kenneth Galbraith