We are happy in this world just in proporshun as we make others happy.
[We are happy in this world just in proportion as we make others happy.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, “Parboils” (1874)
My dear fellow citizens,
For forty years you heard from my predecessors on this day different variations on the same theme: how our country was flourishing, how many million tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us.
I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you.Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
New Year’s Address to the Nation, Prague (1 Jan 1990)
If it be of the highest importance to man, as an individual, that his religion should be true, the case of society is not the same. Society has no future life to hope for or to fear; and provided the citizens profess a religion, the peculiar tenets of that religion are of very little importance to its interests.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) French writer, diplomat, politician
Democracy in America, Vol. 1, ch. 17 (1835)
Alt. trans.: "Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life; what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion."
Be very careful never to show your own bias to anyone who is giving you information, or passing it on to you. Once he sees that you have a particular inclination he will instinctively tend to tell you what he thinks will suit you, and enhance your opinion of him.
B. H. Liddell Hart (1895-1970) English soldier, military historian (Basil Henry Liddell Hart)
This Expanding War, “Intelligence Problems” (1942)
When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, Preface (1943)
The government must be the trustee for the little man because no one else will be. The powerful can usually help themselves — and frequently do.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech, Duluth, Minnesota (29 Oct 1955)
The day may dawn when fair play, love for one’s fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
Speech, House of Commons (1 Mar 1955)
From the ending of his last major speech in the House.
Would yee both eat your cake, and have your cake?
John Heywood (1497?-1580?) English playwright and epigrammist
Proverbes, Part 2, ch. 9 (1546)
(Source)
What is any established institution but a Society for the Prevention of Change?
Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) American writer, philosopher, historian, architect
The Conduct of Life, 4.3 (1951)
Intolerance betrays a want of faith in one’s own cause.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
In Young India (2 Feb 1921)
The risk is not in what he does not know, but in what he thinks he knows.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) French philosopher and writer
Emile, ch. 3 (1762) [tr. Foxley (1911)]
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 1: The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, ch. 3 “Three Is Company” [Gildor, to Frodo] (1954)
(Source)
We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
John Updike (1932-2009) American writer
Christian Science Monitor (5 Mar 1979)
The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flashes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and ends are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.
Alfred Koestler (1905-1983) Hungarian-English novelist, essayist
The Act of Creation, 1.2.8 (1964)
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Gustave LeBon (1841-1931) German psychologist
The Crowd, 2.2.2 (1895)
The covetous man is ever in want.
[Semper avarus eget.]
Horace (65-8 BC) Roman poet and satirist [Quintus Horacius Flaccus]
Epistles, Book 1, Epistle 2, l. 56 (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)
I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Richard Price (8 Jan 1789)
(Source)
Price had written to Jefferson on 26 Oct 1788 about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?"
To love and to be loved — this
On earth is the highest bliss.Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German poet and critic
Italy, “Journey from Munich to Genoa” (16) (1828)
Fear the judge, not the law.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Russian saying
What experience and history teach is this — that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on the principles deduced from it.
Georg Hegel (1770-1831) German philosopher
Philosophy of History, Introduction (2.2) (1832) [tr. Sibree (1900)]
Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims.
Alan Barth (1906-1979) American journalist
The Rights of Free Men (1984)
LEADER OF THE CHORUS: Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream.
Aristophanes (c. 450-c. 388 BC) Athenian comedic playwright
The Birds, ll. 685-687 (414 BC) [tr. O’Neill (1938)]
Full text.
Alt. trans.: Frere (1839) (text): "CHORUS (LEADER): Ye Children of Man! whose life is a span, / Protracted with sorrow from day to day, / Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous, / Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay!"
Alt. trans.: Hickie (1853) (text): "CHORUS (LEADER): Come now, ye men, in nature darkling, like to the race of leaves, of little might, figures of clay, shadowy feeble tribes, wingless creatures of a day, miserable mortals, dream-like men."
I’ve lived a life that’s full,
I’ve traveled each and ev’ry highway,
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.Paul Anka (b. 1941) Canadian-American singer, songwriter, actor
“My Way” (1969)
When the natural Weakness and Imperfection of Human Understanding is considered, with the unavoidable Influences of Education, Custom, Books and Company, upon our Ways of thinking, I imagine a Man must have a good deal of Vanity who believes, and a good deal of Boldness who affirms, that all the Doctrines he holds, are true; and all he rejects, are false. And perhaps the same may be justly said of every Sect, Church and Society of men when they assume to themselves that Infallibility which they deny to the Popes and Councils.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Letter to Abiah Franklin (father) (13 Apr 1738)
Full text.
Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear of the government, a man would swallow up his neighbor alive.
The Talmud (AD 200-500) Collection of Jewish rabbinical writings
(Unreferenced)
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
(Attributed)
Churchill reportedly used used this phrase frequently prior to WWII, but it has not been found per se by Churchill scholars in his writings, speeches, press conferences, radio addresses, or parliamentary debates.
However, on a radio broadcast (20 Jan 1940), speaking of the neutral states standing by while Germany (and Russia) swallowed them up (referencing Finland fighting against Russia in particular), "Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear -- I fear greatly -- the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar, even more loudly, even more widely."
Also attributed to Franklin Roosevelt.
More discussion of this quotation: An Appeaser Is One Who Feeds a Crocodile, Hoping It Will Eat Him Last – Quote Investigator.
I have an old-fashioned belief that Americans like to make up their own minds on the basis of all available information. The conclusions you draw are your own affair. I have no desire to influence them, and shall leave such efforts to those who have more confidence in their own judgment than I have in mine.
Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) American journalist
Radio broadcast to United States, London (1 Sep 1939)
Those who matter don’t mind, and those who mind don’t matter.
Bernard Baruch (1870-1965) American businessman and statesman
(Attributed)
When asked by Igor Cassini, society columnist for the New York Journal American, how he handled the seating arrangements at all his dinner parties, Baruch responded, "I never bother about that. Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter."Quoted in Bennett Cerf, Shake Well Before Using: A New Collection of Impressions and Anecdotes Mostly Humorous (1948).
The more ignorant men are, the more convinced are they that their little parish and their little chapel is an apex to which civilization and philosophy has painfully struggled up the pyramid of time from a desert of savagery.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Caesar and Cleopatra, Notes, “Apparent Anachronisms” (1889)
Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and developing.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Entry (1967) in “Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook” by Tom Bethell, Harper’s Magazine (July 2005)
It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.
Lena Horne (1917-2010) American singer, actress, dancer, activist
(Attributed)
Television newsmen are breathless on how the game is being played, largely silent on what the game is all about.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
A Life in Our Times, ch. 3 (1981)
Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-1881) Swiss philosopher, poet, critic
Journal (10 Feb 1853) [tr. Ward (1887)]
The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal.
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.
I call “journalism” everything that will be less interesting tomorrow than today.
André Gide (1869-1951) French author, Nobel laureate
Journal (1921), detached page [tr. O’Brien (1948)]
We are all victims as well as agents of the historical process.
Sir Herbert Butterfield (1900-1979) British historian, historiographer
History and Human Relations, “Marxist History” (1) (1952)
Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
Alan Barth (1906-1979) American journalist
The Loyalty of Free Men (1951)
DICAEPOLIS: Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right. I shall not please, but I shall say what is true.
Aristophanes (c. 450-c. 388 BC) Athenian comedic playwright
Acharnians, li. 500-501 (425 BC) [tr. Athen. (1912)]
Full text.
The least pain in our little finger gives more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“American Literature — Dr. Channing,” Edinburgh Review (Oct 1829)
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.
Willa Cather (1873-1947) American author [Wilella Silbert Cather]
My Antonia, 1.2 (1918)
The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
Disturbing the Peace, ch. 2 “Writing for the Stage” (1986) [tr. P. Wilson (1990)]
The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) French writer, diplomat, politician
Democracy in America, Vol. 1, ch. 13 (1835)
All very serious revolutionary propositions begin as huge jokes. Otherwise they would be stamped out by the lynching of their first exponents.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
“Where is the New Element in the Norwegian School?”, The Quintessence of Ibsenimsm (1891)
The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable; of a bad one, to make it less valuable.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
“Slavery in Massachussetts,” speech, Farmingham (4 Jul 1854)
For myself, I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
Speech, Lord Mayor’s Banquet, London (9 Nov 1954)
The neer to the church, the further from God.
John Heywood (1497?-1580?) English playwright and epigrammist
Proverbes, Part 1, ch. 9 (1546)
(Source)
The Jealous are Troublesome to others, but a Torment to themselves.
William Penn (1644-1718) English writer, philosopher, politician, statesman
More Fruits of Solitude, #190 (1693)
To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) Alsatian philosopher, physician, philanthropist, polymath
Out of My Life and Thought, An Autobiography, Epilogue (1933) [tr. Campion]
See also Gramsci.
When [ignorance] does not know something, it says that what it does not know is stupid.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian novelist and moral philosopher
A Confession, ch. 7 (1882) [tr. Maude (1921)]
Full text.
‘What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!’
‘Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.’
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 1: The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, ch. 2 “The Shadow of the Past” [Bilbo and Gandalf] (1954)
(Source)
Good writing, like gold, combines lustrous lucidity with high density. What this means is good writing is packed with hints.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Entry (1957) in “Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook” by Tom Bethell, Harper’s Magazine (July 2005)
The important thing in life is not the victory but the contest; the essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well.
[L’important dans la vie ce n’est point le triomphe, mais le combat, l’essentiel ce n’est pas d’avoir vaincu mais de s’être bien battu.]
Pierre Frédy, Baron de Coubertin (1863-1937) French pedagogue, historian, founder of the International Olympic Committee
Olympic Creed, Speech, Olympic Games, London (24 Jul 1908)
Alt. trans: "The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
Original phrasing by de Coubertin: "The importance of these Olympiads is not so much to win as to take part."
De Coubertin was drawing from a sermon by Bp. Ethelbert Talbot at St Paul's Cathedral, London (19 Jul 1908): "We have just been contemplating the great Olympic Games. What does it mean? It means that young men of robust physical life have come from all parts of the world. It does mean, I think, as someone has said, that this era of internationalism as seen in the Stadium has an element of danger. Of course, it is very true, as he says, that each athlete strives not only for the sake of sport, but for the sake of his country. Thus a new rivalry is invented. If England be beaten on the river, or America outdistanced on the racing path, or that American has lost the strength which she once possessed. Well, what of it? The only safety after all lies in the lesson of the real Olympia -- that the Games themselves are better than the race and the prize. St. Paul tells us how insignificant is the prize, Our prize is not corruptible, but incorruptible, and though only one may wear the laurel wreath, all may share the equal joy of the contest. All encouragement, therefore, be given to the exhilarating -- I might also say soul-saving -- interest that comes in active and fair and clean athletic sports."
The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in peoples’ lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
“Religion and Science,” New York Times Magazine (9 Nov 1930)
(Source)
To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.
[Virtus est vitium fugere et sapientia prima stultitia caruisse.]
Horace (65-8 BC) Roman poet and satirist [Quintus Horacius Flaccus]
Epistles, Book 1, Epistle 1, l. 41 (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)