WIST

How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Dutch philosopher
Ethics, Part 5 “Of the Power of the Understanding, or of Human Freedom”, Prop. 42, note (1677)
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Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.

Quentin Crisp (1908-1999) English writer and gay activist
(Attributed)

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody else is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) US President (1901-1909)
(Attributed)
Often attributed, but rarely sourced. It appears to be first quoted as a personal anecdote by Alfred George Gardiner, The Pillars of Society (1927)

The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
The Age of Uncertainty, ch. 2 (1977)

Communism reduces men to a cog in the wheel of the state. The communist may object, saying that in Marxian theory the state is an “interim reality” that will “wither away” when the classless society emerges. True — in theory; but it is also true that, while the state lasts, it is an end in itself. Man is a means to that end. He has no inalienable rights. His only rights are derived from, and conferred by, the state. Under such a system the fountain of freedom runs dry.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
“Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” ch. 3 (1967)
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