There may be honest differences of opinion as to many governmental policies; but surely there can be no such differences as to the need of unflinching perseverance in the war against successful dishonesty.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
State of the Union address (3 Dec 1907)
(Source)
We make promises to the extent that we hope, and keep them to the extent that we fear.
[Nous promettons selon nos espérances, et nous tenons selon nos craintes.]
François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶38 (1665-1678) [tr. Kronenberger (1959)]
(Source)
Present from the 1st edition in 1665.
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:Our Promises are always made with a reflection on our Hopes, and perform'd according to our fears.
[tr. Davies (1669), ¶16]We promise in proportion to our Hopes,
and we keep in proportion to our Fears
[tr. Stanhope (1694), ¶39]We promise in proportion to our Hopes, and we keep our Word in proportion to our Fears.
[tr. Stanhope (1706), ¶39]We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.
[pub. Donaldson (1783), ¶357; [ed. Lepoittevin-Lacroix (1797); ed. Gowens (1851), ¶39]We promise according to our hopes; we perform according to our fears.
[ed. Carville (1835), ¶463; tr. Bund/Friswell (1871)]Promises are measured by hope; performances by fear.
[tr. Heard (1917)]Our promises are measured by our hopes; our performances by our fears.
[tr. Stevens (1939)]Our promises are made in hope, and kept in fear.
[tr. FitzGibbon (1957)]Our promises are made in proportion to our hopes, but kept in proportion to our fears.
[tr. Tancock (1959)]We make promises according to our hopes, and keep them according to our fears.
[tr. Whichello (2016)]
Without freedom there can be no morality.
Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychologist
“The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,” 1.2 (1928)
I dont never hav enny trouble in regulating mi own kondukt, but tew keep other pholks straight iz what bothers me.
[I don’t never have any trouble in regulating my own conduct, but to keep other folks straight is what bothers me.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)
Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public RECORDS to be True.
William Blake (1757-1827) English poet, mystic, artist
Annotations to “An Apology for the Bible” by R. Watson (1797)
(Source)
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) British writer and physician
The Hound of the Baskervilles, ch. 3 [Holmes] (1901-02)
(Source)
In the discharge of the duties of the office there is one rule of action more important than all others. It consists of never doing anything that someone else can do for you.
Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) American lawyer, politician, US President (1925-29)
The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge (1929)
There is no morality in politics; there is only expediency.
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924) Russian politician, revolutionary, political theorist [b. Vladimir Ilich Ulyamov]
Speech (Sep 1915)
For the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
William Blackstone (1723-1780) British jurist, judge, politician
Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, ch. 27 (1765-1769)
Now, in saying this I am not forbidding you to make such gifts; I am only demanding that along with such gifts and before them you give alms. He accepts the former, but he is much more pleased with the latter. In the former, only the giver profits; in the latter, the recipient does too. A gift to the church may be taken as a form of ostentation, but an alms is pure kindness. Of what use is it to weigh down Christ’s table with golden cups, when he himself is dying of hunger? First, fill him when he is hungry; then use the means you have left to adorn his table. Will you have a golden cup made but not give a cup of water? What is the use of providing the table with cloths woven of gold thread, and not providing Christ himself with the clothes he needs? What profit is there in that? Tell me: If you were to see him lacking the necessary food but were to leave him in that state and merely surround his table with gold would he be grateful to you or rather would he not be angry? What if you were to see him clad in worn-out rags and stiff from the cold, and were to forget about clothing him and instead were to set up golden columns for him, saying that you were doing it in his honour? Would he not think he was being mocked and greatly insulted?
St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) Syrian prelate, preacher, Church Father
Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Homily 50
(Source)
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There’s a crack in everything
It’s how the light gets in.Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet, novelist
“Anthem” (1992)
The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.
Dennis Gabor (1900-1979) Hungarian-British electrical engineer and physicist
Inventing the Future (1963)Variants:
- "We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it." [paraphrase of Gabor's origional by Nigel Calder in reviewing the book in New Scientist (Mar 1963).
- "The way to cope with the future is to create it."
- "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." [sometime attributed to Alan Kay]
- "The best way to predict the future is to create it." [sometimes attributed to Forrest Shaklee and Peter Drucker]
- "You cannot predict the future, but you can create it." [sometimes attributed to Peter Drucker]
See more here.
Every new idea will … be troublesome to [the individual’s] entire being. He will defend himself against it because it threatens to destroy his certainties. He thus actually comes to hate everything opposed to what propaganda has made him acquire. Propaganda has created in him a system of opinions and tendencies which may not be subjected to criticism. … Incidentally, this refusal to listen to new ideas usually takes on an ironic aspect: the man who has been successfully subjected to a vigorous propaganda will declare that all new ideas are propaganda.
Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) French philosopher, law professor, sociologist, theologian
Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, 4 (1962) [tr. Kellen and Learner (1965)]
From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
“Notes on Religion” (1776-10?)
(Source)
Labeled by Jefferson "Scraps Early in the Revolution." Modern rendering. Original:From the dissensions among sects themselves arises necessarily a right of chusing & necessity of deliberating to which we will conform, but if we chuse for ourselves, we must allow others to chuse also, & to reciprocally. This establishes religious liberty.
It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Vanity and Vanities” (1886)
(Source)
Perhaps the reader may ask, of what consequence is it whether the author’s exact language is preserved or not, provided we have his thought? The answer is, that inaccurate quotation is a sin against truth. It may appear in any particular instance to be a trifle, but perfection consists in small things, and perfection is no trifle.
Robert W. Shaunon (fl. late 19th C.)
“Misquotation,” The Canadian Magazine (Oct 1898)
History is philosophy teaching by examples.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 60 BC–after 7 BC) Greek historian and rhetoritician
The Antiquities of Rome
It is an embarrassment to the possessor to have more than he needs.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], #1063 [tr. Lyman (1862)]
Our Founders were no more willing to let the content of their prayers and their privilege of praying whenever they pleased be influenced by the ballot box than they were to let these vital matters of personal conscience depend upon the succession of monarchs. The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to stand as a guarantee that neither the power nor the prestige of the Federal Government would be used to control, support or influence the kinds of prayer the American people can say — that the people’s religions must not be subjected to the pressures of government for change each time a new political administration is elected to office. Under that Amendment’s prohibition against governmental establishment of religion, as reinforced by the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, government in this country, be it state or federal, is without power to prescribe by law any particular form of prayer which is to be used as an official prayer in carrying on any program of governmentally sponsored religious activity.
Hugo Black (1886-1971) American politician and jurist, US Supreme Court Justice (1937-71)
Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 429-30 (1962) [majority opinion]
(Source)
The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 14 and 15 “The Value of Saintliness” (1902)
(Source)
Let your voice be heard, whether or not it is to the taste of every jack-in-office who may be obstructing the traffic. By all means, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s — but this does not necessarily include everything that he says is his.
Denis Johnston (1901-1984) Irish writer, playwright, critic [William Denis Johnston]
The Brazen Horn
The main work of the historian is not to record, but to evaluate; for, if he does not evaluate, how can he know what is worth recording?
E. H. Carr (1892-1982) British historian, journalist, international relations theorist [Edward Hallett "Ted" Carr]
What is History?, ch. 1 (1961)
(Source)
Recounting the historiographical writings of Benedetto Croce in the 1920s.
As usual, what we call “Progress” is the exchange of one Nuisance for another Nuisance.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) British sexologist, physician, social reformer [Henry Havelock Ellis]
Fountain of Life: Being the Impressions and Comments of Havelock Ellis, 31 July 1912 (1930)
First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me.
Gore Vidal (1925-2012) American novelist, dramatist, critic
“Gore Vidal,” interview by Gerald Clarke (1974)
In The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, 5th series (1981)
I ask in our civic life that we in the same way pay heed only to the man’s quality of citizenship, to repudiate as the worst enemy that we can have whoever tries to get us to discriminate for or against any man because of his creed or birthplace.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, Milwaukee (14 Oct 1912)
(Source)
The science of government becomes simply a science of how to keep the people working and how to keep them quiet.
Carl G. Gustavson (1915-1999) Swedish author, historian
A Preface to History, ch. 15 (1955)
Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.
Dianne Feinstein (b. 1933) American politician
(Attributed)
Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing. Human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion. … When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a king, an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I say there is the germ of tyranny, and I seek to live elsewhere, under other laws.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) French writer, diplomat, politician
Democracy in America, 1.15 (1835) [tr. Reeve & Bowen (1862)]
Giv every one you meet, my boy, the time ov day and halff the road, and if that dont make him civil dont waste enny more fragrance on the cuss.
[Give everyone you meet, my boy, the time of day and half the road, and if that don’t make him civil don’t waste any more fragrance on the cuss.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)
But often faltering feet
Come surest to the goal;
And they who walk in darkness meet
The sunrise of the soul.Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) American clergyman and writer
“Reliance”, st. 2
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.
George R. R. Martin (b. 1948) American author and screenwriter [George Raymond Richard Martin]
A Dance with Dragons [Jojen Reed] (2011)
(Source)
I prefer complexity to certainty, cheerful mysteries to sullen facts.
Claude T. Bissell (1916-2000) Canadian author and educator
(Attributed)
I recognize no moral law in politics. Politics is a game, in which every sort of trick is permissible, and in which the rules are constantly being changed by the players to suit themselves.
Adolph Hitler (1889-1945) German leader
Remark to the author (1932-34), in Hermann Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, ch. 19 (1940)
The founders of the English laws have with excellent forecast contrived, that no man should be called to answer to the king for any capital crime, unless upon the preparatory accusation of twelve or more of his fellow subjects, the grand jury: and that the truth of every accusation, whether preferred in the shape of indictment, information, or appeal, should afterwards be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and neighbours, indifferently chosen, and superior to all suspicion. So that the liberties of England cannot but subsist, so long as this palladium remains sacred and inviolate, not only from all open attacks, (which none will be so hardy as to make) but also from all secret machinations, which may sap and undermine it; by introducing new and arbitrary methods of trial, by justices of the peace, commissioners of the revenue, and courts of conscience. And however convenient these may appear at first, (as doubtless all arbitrary powers, well executed, are the most convenient) yet let it be again remembered, that delays, and little inconveniences in the forms of justice, are the price that all free nations must pay for their liberty in more substantial matters; that these inroads upon this sacred bulwark of the nation are fundamentally opposite to the spirit of our constitution; and that, though begun in trifles, the precedent may gradually increase and spread, to the utter disuse of juries in questions of the most momentous concern.
William Blackstone (1723-1780) British jurist, judge, politician
Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, ch. 27 “Of Trial, And Conviction”(1765-1769)
(Source)
Is it not excessively ridiculous to seek the good opinion of those whom you would never wish to be like?
St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) Syrian prelate, preacher, Church Father
Homilies on the Gospel of Saint John, Homily 3
(Source)
Others say it is not politic to rouse religious opposition. This much-lauded policy is but another word for cowardice. How can woman’s position be changed from that of a subordinate to an equal, without opposition, without the broadest discussion of all the questions involved in her present degradation? For so far-reaching and momentous a reform as her complete independence, an entire revolution in all existing institutions is inevitable. Let us remember that all reforms are interdependent, and that whatever is done to establish one principle on a solid basis, strengthens all. Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) American social activist, abolitionist, woman's suffragist
The Woman’s Bible, Introduction (1895)
(Source)
Still, I do not mean to find fault with the accumulation of property, provided it hurts nobody, but unjust acquisition of it is always to be avoided.
[Nec vero rei familiaris amplificatio nemini nocens vituperanda est, sed fugienda semper iniuria est.]
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
De Officiis [On Duties; On Moral Duty; The Offices], Book 1, ch. 8 (1.8) / sec. 25 (44 BC) [tr. Miller (1913)]
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:Not but that a moderate desire of riches, and bettering a man's estate, so long as it abstains from oppressing of others, is allowable enough; but a very great care ought always to be taken that we be not drawn to any injustice by it.
[tr. Cockman (1699)]The enlargement of fortune is blameless, while no man suffers by its increase; but injury is forever to be avoided.
[tr. McCartney (1798)]Nor indeed is the mere desire to improve one's private fortune, without injury to another, deserving of blame; but injustice must ever be avoided.
[tr. Edmonds (1865)]Nor, indeed, is the increase of property, without harm to any one, to be blamed; but wrong-doing for the sake of gain is never to be tolerated.
[tr. Peabody (1883)]Not that we have any fault to find with the innocent accumulation of property; it is the unjust acquisition of it of which we must beware.
[tr. Gardiner (1899)]Of course, no one should criticize an increase in a family's estate that harms no one else, but it should never involve breaking the law.
[tr. Edinger (1974)]
Most people want to feel that issues are simple rather than complex, want to have their prejudices confirmed, want to feel that they “belong” with the implication that others do not, and need to pinpoint an enemy to blame for their frustrations.
James A. C. Brown (1911-1964) Scottish psychiatrist, author [James Alexander Campbell Brown]
Techniques of Persuasion, ch. 1 (1963)
All is vanity and everybody’s vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men — more so, if possible.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Vanity and Vanities” (1886)
(Source)
Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. Hamlet could be told from Polonius’s point of view and called The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark. He didn’t think he was a minor character in anything, I daresay.
John Barth (b. 1930) American writer
The End of the Road, ch. 1 (1958)
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
The Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 260 (1955)
(Source)
Possessions possess.
Paul Eldridge (1888-1982) American educator, novelist, poet
Maxims for a Modern Man, #2781 (1965)
(Source)
Bad men, like good men, are entitled to be tried and sentenced in accordance with law, and when it is shown to us that a person is serving an illegal sentence our obligation is to direct that proper steps be taken to correct the wrong done, without regard to the character of a particular defendant or to the possible effect on others who might also want to challenge the legality of their sentences as they have the right to do “at any time” under Rule 35. If it has any relevance at all, the fact that there may be other prisoners in this country’s jails serving illegal sentences would seem to me to make it all the more imperative that we grant appropriate relief in this case rather than search for some obviously dubious excuse to deny this petitioner’s claim.
Hugo Black (1886-1971) American politician and jurist, US Supreme Court Justice (1937-71)
Green v. United States, 365 U.S. 301, 309-310 (1961) [dissent]
(Source)
Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 6-7 “The Sick Soul” (1902)
(Source)
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines — so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) American architect, interior designer, writer, educator [b. Frank Lincoln Wright]
“Frank Lloyd Wright Talks of His Art,” New York Times Magazine (1953-10-04)
(Source)
All progress is gained through mistakes and their rectification. No good comes fully fashoned, out of God’s hand, but has to be carved out through repeated experiments and repeated failures by ourselves. This is the law of individual growth. The same law controls social and political evolution also. The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
M. K. Gandhi: Speeches and Writings (1918)
Envy is the central fact of American life.
Gore Vidal (1925-2012) American novelist, dramatist, critic
“Gore Vidal,” interview by Gerald Clarke (1974), The Paris Review Interviews: Writers at Work, 5th series (1981)
An author that’s in now might be out in ten years. And vice-versa. Who knows when the final sifting is done, in the year 2050, say, who will be read of my generation? You’d like to think you will be one. But there has to be a constant weeding that goes on. The Victorians read all kinds of writers who we don’t have time for now. Who reads Thackeray? An educated person reads Dickens, or reads some Dickens. But Thackeray?
John Updike (1932-2009) American writer
“As close as you can get to the stars,” Interview with Dwight Garner Salon (2000)
Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party; and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the Republicans, the Democrat, and Socialist parties, that they cannot, month in month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, Milwaukee (14 Oct 1912)
(Source)
On the newspaper attacks which he said had just led to the attempt on his life.
No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?
Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) Russian poet
“Pushkin and Pugachev [Пушкин и Пугачев]” (1937)
See Heraclitus.
Whenever there is an organized movement to persuade people to believe or do something, whenever an effort is made to “propagate” a creed or set of opinions or convictions or to make people act as we want them to act, the means employed are called propaganda.
Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980) American naturalist, photographer, writer
A Primer For Readers (1942)
Power-worship blurs political judgment because it leads almost unavoidably to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem invincible.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
“James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution” (May 1946)
Poor human natur iz too full ov its own grievances tew have enny pitty to spare, — if yu show a man a big bile on yure arm, he will tell yu he had one twice az big az that, on the same spot, last year.
[Poor human nature is too full of its own grievances to have any pity to spare, — if you show a man a big boil on your arm, he will tell you he had one twice as big as that, on the same spot, last year.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)
He that planteth a tree is the servant of God,
He provideth a kindness for many generations,
And faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) American clergyman and writer
“The Friendly Trees”
The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.
William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) American politician, military officer, US President (1841)
Inaugural Address (4 Mar 1841)
(Source)
Death slue not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies.
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552-1599) English poet
“An Epitaph upon Philip Sydney”, line 20
Politics, very often, is simply economics pursued by other means.
Edward J. Nell (b. 1935) American economist and a professor
“Value and Capital in Marxian Economics,” in The Crisis in Economic Theory [ed. David Bell, Irving Kristol] (1981)
Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation.
William Blackstone (1723-1780) British jurist, judge, politician
Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, ch. 14 “Of Homicide” (1765-1769)
(Source)
Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold. He who said, “This is my body,” and made it so by his word, is the same that said, “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.” Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.
St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) Syrian prelate, preacher, Church Father
Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Homily 50
(Source)
Variant: "Do you want to honour Christ’s body? Then do not scorn him in his nakedness, nor honour him here in the church with silken garments while neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked. For he who said: This is my body, and made it so by his words, also said: You saw me hungry and did not feed me, and inasmuch as you did not do it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did not do it for me. What we do here in the church requires a pure heart, not special garments; what we do outside requires great dedication."
Do but consider what an excellent thing sleep is: it is so inestimable a jewel that, if a tyrant would give his crown for an hour’s slumber, it cannot be bought: of so beautiful a shape is it, that though a man lie with an Empress, his heart cannot beat quiet till he leaves her embracements to be at rest with the other ….
Thomas Dekker (c. 1572-1632) English dramatist and pamphleteer
The Gull’s Hornbook, ch. 2 (1609)
If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) American fabulist [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
Letter to Maurice W. Moe (3 Aug 1931)
(Source)
In Selected Letters, Vol. 3, 1929-1931, pp.390-391 [ed. Derleth and Wandrei (1971)]
All State propaganda exalts comradeship, for it is this gregarious herd-sense and herd-smell which keeps people from thinking and so reconsiles them to the destruction of their private lives.
Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) English intellectual, literary critic and writer.
“Ecce Gubernator,” The Unquiet Grave (1945)
(Source)
Another and more special provision has been made by one of the amendments to the Constitution, which expressly declares, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” thereby guarding, in the same sentence, and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press, insomuch that whatever violated either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others, — and that libels, falsehood, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
“Kentucky Resolutions,” Resolution 3 (1798)
(Source)
In protest of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were men wouldn’t be ashamed of it. It is a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Being Hard Up” (1886)
The chimpanzee and the human share about 99.5 percent of their evolutionary history, yet most human thinkers regard the chimp as a malformed, irrelevant oddity, while seeing themselves as stepping stones to the Almighty.
Robert L. Trivers (b. 1943) American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist
Foreword to Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976)
I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.
Harper Lee (1926-2016) American writer [Nellie Harper Lee]
To Kill a Mockingbird [Scout] (1960)
The difference between men and boys
Is the price of their toys.Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990) American billionaire
The Sayings of Chairman Malcolm, “Simple Truths” (1978)
Also attributed to Liberace, J. T. Russell, Joyce Brothers, Mark Twain, Doris Rowland, and Dorothy Parker. The phrase can be found in this form in Millard Dale Baughman, Educator's Handbook of Stories, Quotes and Humor (1963), and in 1964 Senate testimony.
For a likely predecessor, see Franklin.
It is my belief that there are “absolutes” in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what the words meant and meant their prohibitions to be “absolutes.”
Hugo Black (1886-1971) American politician and jurist, US Supreme Court Justice (1937-71)
James Madison Lecture, NYU School of Law (1960-02-17)
(Source)
The inaugural Madison lecture. Reprinted as "The Bill of Rights," NYU Law Review, Vol. 35 (1960-04).
We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture 3 “The Reality of the Unseen” (1902)
(Source)
Christ’s religion needs no prop of any kind from any worldly source, and to the degree that it is thus supported is a millstone hanged about its neck.
George W. Truett (1867-1944) American minister, writer, and religious leader
Speech, steps of the US Capitol (1920)
The way to be comfortable is to make others comfortable. The way to make others comfortable is to appear to love them. The way to appear to love them — is to love them in reality.
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) English jurist and philosopher
Letter to Lady Hannah Elice (24 Oct 1831)
(Source)
The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in the end pernicious and destructive.
William Shenstone (1714-1763) English poet
“On Politics,” Men & Manners, ed. Havelock Ellis (1927)
In the old movies, yes, there always was the happy ending and order was restored. As it is in Shakespeare’s plays. It’s no disgrace to, in the end, restore order. And punish the wicked and, in some way, reward the righteous.
John Updike (1932-2009) American writer
“As close as you can get to the stars,” Interview with Dwight Garner, Salon (2000)
No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, Chicago (22 Jun 1912)
Now that I have grown old, I realize that for most of us it is not enough to have achieved personal success. One’s best friend must also have failed.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
Comment (1959)
A comment recorded by a journalist on his 85th birthday, quoted in Richard Cordell, Somerset Maugham: A Biographical and Critical Study (1961). Cordell mentions the influence of La Rochefoucauld on the phrase, and it is therefore often attributed to La Rochefoucauld, though it is not in his Maxims.
Also attributed to Gore Vidal, Iris Murdoch, Genghis Khan.
Pithier (and more common) paraphrases:More discussion of this quotation here: It Is Not Enough to Succeed; One’s Best Friend Must Fail – Quote Investigator®.
- "It is not enough to succeed; one’s best friend must fail."
- "It is not enough to succeed; one’s friends must fail."
- "It is not enough to succeed; others must fail."
- "It’s not enough that I should succeed, others should fail."
- "It is not sufficient that I succeed –- all others must fail."
In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion, and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter (1824-04-20) to David Harding
It is not merely that “power corrupts”; so also do the ways of attaining power.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
“Arnold Koestler” (1944-09)
(Source)
Too mutch religion iz wuss than none at all. Yu kant sho me a kuntry that haz existed yet, whare the people, all ov them, professed one religion and persekuted all other kinds, but what the religion ruined the country.
[Too much religion is worse than none at all. You can’t show me a country that has existed yet, where the people, all of them, professed one religion and persecuted all other kinds, but what the religion ruined the country.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)
Peace without Justice is a low estate,–
A coward cringing to an iron Fate!
But Peace through Justice is the great ideal,–
We’ll pay the price of war to make it real.Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) American clergyman and writer
“The Price of Peace” (28 Dec 1916)
The scars and foibles and contradictions of the Great do not diminish but enhance the worth and meaning of their upward struggle.
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) American writer, historian, social reformer [William Edward Burghardt Du Bois]
Letter (1922)
Writing of Abraham Lincoln.
There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of Science and Literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of publick happiness.
George Washington (1732-1799) American military leader, Founding Father, US President (1789-1797)
State of the Union (8 Jan 1790)
The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: Economic Efficiency, Social Justice, and Individual Liberty.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
Liberalism and Labour (1926)
All the several pleas and excuses, which protect the committer of a forbidden act from the punishment which is otherwise annexed thereto, may be reduced to this single consideration, the want or defect of will. An involuntary act, as it has no claim to merit, so neither can it induce any guilt: the concurrence of the will, when it has its choice either to do or to avoid the fact in question, being the only thing that renders human actions either praiseworthy or culpable. Indeed, to make a complete crime, cognizable by human laws, there must be both a will and an act.
William Blackstone (1723-1780) British jurist, judge, politician
Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, ch. 2 “Of the Persons Capable of Committing Crimes” (1765-1769)
(Source)
A servant, indeed, one will be able perhaps to bind down by fear; nay, not even for him, for he will soon leave you. But the partner of one’s life, the mother of one’s children, the foundation of one’s every joy, one ought never to chain down by fear and threats, but with love and good temper. For what sort of union is that, where the wife trembles at her husband? And what sort of pleasure will the husband have if he dwells with his wife as with a slave? Yea, even though you suffer everything on her account, do not scold her; for neither did Christ do this to the Church.
St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) Syrian prelate, preacher, Church Father
Homilies on Ephesians, Homily 20
(Source)
From the saints I must take the substance, not the accidents of their virtues. I am not St. Aloysius, nor must I seek holiness in his particular way, but according to the requirements of my own nature, my own character and the different conditions of my life. I must not be the dry, bloodless reproduction of a model, however perfect. God desires us to follow the examples of the saints by absorbing the vital sap of their virtues and turning it into our own life-blood, adapting it to our own individual capacities and particular circumstances. If St. Aloysius had been as I am, he would have become holy in a different way.
St. John XXIII (1881-1963) Italian Catholic Pontiff (1958-63) [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli]
Journal of a Soul (1903)
He’ll sit right here and he’ll say, “Do this! Do that!” And nothing will happen. Poor Ike — it won’t be a bit like the army. He’ll find it very frustrating.
Harry S Truman (1884-1972) US President (1945-1953)
Comment (Summer 1952)
On presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower.
Among the most inestimable of our blessings also is that you so justly particularise, of liberty to worship our creator in the way we think most agreeable to his will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government, & yet proved by our experience to be it’s best support.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to John Thomas (18 Nov 1807)
(Source)
There have been a good many funny things said and written about hardupishness, but the reality is not funny, for all that. It is not funny to have to haggle over pennies. It isn’t funny to be thought mean and stingy. It isn’t funny to be shabby and to be ashamed of your address. No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty — to the poor.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Being Hard Up” (1886)
(Source)
Bion used to say that the way to the shades below was easy; he could go there with his eyes shut.
Bion of Borysthenes (c. 325-c. 250 BC) Greek philosopher, cynic, wit
In Diogenes Laërtius, Bion, iii
Alt. trans.: "The road to Hades is easy to travel; at any rate men pass away with their eyes shut." (cited as iv. 49).
COSMETICS: There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849) Irish novelist [Lady Blessington, b. Margaret Power]
Desultory Thoughts and Reflections (1839)
(Source)
Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct — Never to show the least symptom of resentment which you cannot to a certain degree gratify, but always to smile, where you cannot strike.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #312 (26 Mar 1754)
Forgive us for pretending to care for the poor, when we do not like poor people and do not want them in our homes.
(Other Authors and Sources)
United Presbyterian Church, Litany for Holy Communion (1968)
Certainly the First Amendment’s language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” I read “no law … abridging” to mean no law abridging.
Hugo Black (1886-1971) American politician and jurist, US Supreme Court Justice (1937-71)
Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147, 157 (1959) [concurring]
(Source)
There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience … that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings ….
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture 1 “Religion and Neurology” (1902)
(Source)
ANTONIO: Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Tempest, Act 2, sc. 1, l. 289ff (2.1.289-290) (1611)
(Source)
This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It is’’t created to take you to heaven.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (1902-1985) American politician and diplomat
Comment, News Summaries (28 Jan 1954)
(Source)
On the United Nations.
Everybody’s private motto: It’s better to be popular than right.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1902 [ed. Paine (1935)]
Comment on an unlined sheet his papers.
Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-Thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.
John Updike (1932-2009) American writer
Self-Consciousness: Memoirs, ch. 6 (1989)
[E]xactly as true patriots should be especially jealous of any appeal to what is base under the guise of patriotism, so men who strive for honesty, and for the cleansing of what is corrupt in the dark places of our politics, should emphatically disassociate themselves from the men whose antics throw discredit upon the reforms they profess to advocate.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
“Latitude and Longitude Among Reformers,” The Century (Jun 1900)
(Source)
Truth dont require the aid ov elegant and high stepping words, tew express its force, or buty, it iz like water, tastes better out ov a wooden bucket, than it duz out ov a golden goblet.
[Truth don’t require the aid of elegant and high-stepping words, to express its force, or beauty; it is like water, tastes better out of a wooden bucket, than it does out of a golden goblet.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)