In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life. […] Each of these modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other; but it is in a great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
On Liberty, ch. 2 “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion” (1859)
(Source)
There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
The New Industrial State, ch. 18, sec. 5 (1967)
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden (11 Dec 1964)
Force can command obedience, but prestige removes even the idea of disobedience.
Gustave LeBon (1841-1931) German psychologist
Aphorisms of Present Times, 1.8 (1913) [tr. Widener (1979)]
The press in our free country is reliable and useful not because of its good character but because of its great diversity. As long as there are many owners, each pursuing his own brand of truth, we the people have an opportunity to arrive at the truth and to dwell in the light. The multiplicity of ownership is crucial. It’s only when there are a few owners, or, as in a government-controlled press, one owner, that truth becomes illusive and the light fails.
E. B. White (1899-1985) American author, critic, humorist [Elwyn Brooks White]
Letter to W. B. Jones (30 Jan 1976)
The second office of the government is honorable & easy, the first is but a splendid misery.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter (1797-05-13) to Elbridge Gerry
(Source)
On the vice-presidency and presidency of the United States. Written after he had lost to John Adams, who became President and him Vice-President.
There is no such thing as an achieved liberty; like electricity, there can be no substantial storage and it must be generated as it is enjoyed, or the lights go out.
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) US Supreme Court Justice (1941-54), lawyer, jurist, politician
“The Task of Maintaining Our Liberties: The Role of the Judiciary,” speech, Boston (24 Aug 1953)
(Source)
Dinner address at the American Bar Association Diamond Jubilee dinner. Reprinted in the American Bar Association Journal (Nov 1953) [citation 39 A.B.A. J. 961 (1953)].
It is easier to be generous than to be just.
Elizabeth Bibesco (1897-1945) Romanian-English writer
Haven (1951)
The press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) American novelist
“On the Press,” The American Democrat (1838)
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
Baltimore Evening Sun (15 Jun 1936)
Full text.
The red light is always longer than the green light.
Lawrence J. Peter (1919-1990) American educator, management theorist
Peter’s People, ch. 8, “Peter’s Theory of Relativity” (1979)
REARDON: That’s one thing I’ve learned about clients. Dead ones don’t pay their bills.
Steve Martin (b. 1945) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, musician
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982) [with Carl Reiner, George Gipe]
The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“The Dilemma of Determinism” (1884)
No pain, no palm;
No thorns, no throne;
No gall, no glory;
No cross, no crown.William Penn (1644-1718) English writer, philosopher, politician, statesman
“No Cross, No Crown” (1682)
Originally written while a prisoner in the Tower of London (1668-69). See Quarles (1821).
Every Man has a rainy corner of his life out of which foul weather proceeds and follows after him.
[Jeder Mensch hat eine Regen-Ecke seines Lebens aus der ihm das schlimme Wetter nachzieht.]Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) German writer, art historian, philosopher, littérateur [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter; pseud. Jean Paul]
Titan, Jubilee 31, cycle 123 [Gaspard] (1803) [tr. Brooks (1863)]
(Source)
(Source (German)). Alternate translation:Every man has a rainy corner in his life, from which bad weather besets him.
[E.g.]
Ideas come in pairs and they contradict one another; their opposition is the principal engine of reflection.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) French philosopher and writer
“Ideology and Revolution,” Studies on the Left, Vol. 1, #3 (1960)
Great riches come to many men by chance.
Bias of Priene (fl. c. 650) Greek philosopher
In Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 230) [tr. Yonge]
You can’t argue with a river, it is going to flow. You can dam it up, you can put it to useful purposes, you can deflect it, but you can’t argue with it.
Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few because the few are more vigilant and consistent.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
The Adventurer, # 45 (10 Apr 1753)
I don’t believe in kickin’,
It ain’t apt to bring one peace;
But the wheel what squeaks the loudest
is the one what gets the grease.Cal Stewart (1856-1919) American vaudevillean, monologuist [stage character "Uncle Josh" Weathersby]
Uncle Josh Weathersby’s “Punkin’ Centre” Stories (1903)
Origin of the phrase, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." Often misattributed to Josh Billings (see here).
Feeling does not succeed in converting consolation into truth, nor does reason succeed in converting truth into consolation.
Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) Spanish philosopher and writer [Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo]
The Tragic Sense of Life [Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida], ch. 5 “The Rationalist Dissolution” (1913) [tr. Flitch (1921)]
Full text.
The real offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his — attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park.
Henry James (1843-1916) American writer
The Portrait of a Lady, ch. 42 (1881)
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
Common Sense (14 Feb 1776)
It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember I am the Pope.
St. John XXIII (1881-1963) Italian Catholic Pontiff (1958-63) [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli]
(Attributed)
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends … That if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech, Fresno, California (19 Sep 1952)
A favorite quip of Stevenson's.
That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
The New Industrial State, ch. 12, sec. 1, (1967)
From every mountainside, let freedom ring. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“I Have a Dream,” speech, Washington, DC (28 Aug 1963)
In battle nothing is ever as good or bad as the first reports of excited men would have it.
William Joseph "Bill" Slim, Viscount Slim (1891-1970) British military commander and politician
Unofficial History, ch. 6 (1959)
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the House, Members of the Senate, my fellow Americans:
All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Speech (1963-11-27), “Let Us Continue,” Joint Session of Congress, Washington, D. C.
(Source)
Five days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) US Supreme Court Justice (1941-54), lawyer, jurist, politician
“The Federal Prosecutor,” speech, Conference of United States Attorneys, Washington, DC (1940-04-01)
(Source)
Concluding words. Delivered while Jackson was the US Attorney General. Reprinted in the Journal of the American Judicature Society (1940-06).
What we buy belongs to us only when the price is forgotten.
Elizabeth Bibesco (1897-1945) Romanian-English writer
Haven (1951)
We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims (1876)
I think the most important thing I learned from Stephen King I learned as a teenager, reading King’s book of essays on horror and on writing, Danse Macabre. In there he points out that if you just write a page a day, just 300 words, at the end of a year you’d have a novel. It was immensely reassuring — suddenly something huge and impossible became strangely easy. As an adult, it’s how I’ve written books I haven’t had the time to write, like my children’s novel Coraline.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Blog entry (2012-04-28), “Popular Writers: A Stephen King Interview”
(Source)
Contributor's note to an interview with Stephen King, "The King and I," Sunday Times Magazine (2012-04-08).
The person who snores the loudest will fall asleep first.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Pickett’s Postulate
In John Peers, 1,001 Logical Laws (1979)
HARRIS: I’ve been thinking about myself and I think I can become the kind of person that’s worth you staying for. First of all, I’m a man who can cry. Now it’s true, it’s usually when I’ve hurt myself, but it’s a start.
Steve Martin (b. 1945) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, musician
L. A. Story (1991)
(Source)
Every Jack sees in his own particular Jill charms and perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers are stone-cold. And which has the superior view of the absolute truth, he or we? Which has the more vital insight into the nature of Jill’s existence, as a fact? Is he in excess, being in this matter a maniac? or are we in defect, being victims of a pathological anesthesia as regards Jill’s magical importance? Surely the latter; surely to Jack are the profounder truths revealed; surely poor Jill’s palpitating little life-throbs are among the wonders of creation, are worthy of this sympathetic interest; and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel like Jack. For Jack realizes Jill concretely, and we do not. He struggles toward a union with her inner life, divining her feelings, anticipating her desires, understanding her limits as manfully as he can, and yet inadequately, too; for he also is afflicted with some blindness, even here. Whilst we, dead clods that we are, do not even seek after these things, but are contented that that portion of eternal fact named Jill should be for us as if it were not. Jill, who knows her inner life, knows that Jack’s way of taking it — so importantly — is the true and serious way; and she responds to the truth in him by taking him truly and seriously, too. May the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds about either of them again! Where would any of us be, were there no one willing to know us as we really are or ready to repay us for our insight by making recognizant return? We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“What Makes a Life Significant?” Lecture, Harvard (1900)
[P]eople marvel when I tell them that I am happy. They imagine that my limitations weigh heavily upon my spirit, and chain me to the rock of despair. Yet, it seems to me, happiness has very little to do with the senses. If we make up our minds that this is a drab and purposeless universe, it will be that, and nothing else. On the other hand, if we believe that the earth is ours, and that the sun and moon hang in the sky for our delight, there will be joy upon the hills and gladness in the fields because the Artist in our souls glorifies creation. Surely, it gives dignity to life to believe that we are born into this world for noble ends, and that we have a higher destiny than can be accomplished within the narrow limits of this physical life.
Helen Keller (1880-1968) American author and lecturer
“The Dreams That Come True,” Personality (Dec 1927)Sometimes abridged as: "Many people marvel when I tell them I am happy. They imagine that my limitations weigh heavily upon my spirit. Yet, it seemst o me that happiness has very little to do with the senses. If we make up our minds that this is a drab and purposeless universe, it will be that. On the other hand, if we believe that the world is ouirs, that the sun and moon hang in the sky for our delight, there will be joy."
Full text.
Tioto was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls tha we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil that gradually determines character.
George Eliot (1819-1880) English novelist [pseud. of Mary Ann Evans]
Romola, 2.3 (1863)
To enable it to do its work naturally, every new idea must be in some way embedded in what is old.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) Alsatian philosopher, physician, philanthropist, polymath
“The Conception of the Kingdom of God in the Transformation of Eschatology” (1951)
Great strength of body is the gift of nature;
But to be able to advise whate’er
Is most expedient for one’s country’s good,
Is the peculiar work of sense and wisdom.
Most men are wicked.Bias of Priene (fl. c. 650) Greek philosopher
In Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 230) [tr. Yonge]
The corner-stone of the Republic lies in our treating each man on his worth as a man, paying no heed to his creed, his birthplace, or his occupation, asking not whether he is rich or poor, whether he labors with head or hand; asking only whether he acts decently and honorably in the various relations of his life, whether he behaves well to his family, to his neighbors, to the State. We base our regard for each man on the essentials and not the accidents. We judge him not by his professions, but by his deeds; by his conduct, not by what he has acquired of this world’s goods. Other republics have fallen, because the citizens gradually grew to consider the interests of a class before the interests of the whole; for when such was the case it mattered little whether it was the poor who plundered the rich or the rich who exploited the poor; in either event the end of the republic was at hand.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, Jamestown Exposition (26 Apr 1907)
Toiling, — rejoicing — sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“The Village Blacksmith”
But, you may say, who will complain of a decree which is passed against traitors to their country? Time, I answer, the lapse of years, and Fortune, whose caprice rules the nations. Whatever befalls these prisoners will be well deserved; but you, Fathers of the Senate, are called upon to consider how your action will affect other criminals. All bad precedents have originated in cases which were good; but when the control of the government falls into the hands of men who are incompetent or bad, your new precedent is transferred from those who well deserve and merit such punishment to the undeserving and blameless.
Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) Roman general and statesman [Gaius Julius Caesar]
In Sallust, The War with Cataline [tr. Loeb Classical Library (1921, rev. 1931)]
Full http://penelope.uchicago.edu/thayer/e/roman/texts/sallust/bellum_catilinae*.html.
Our two great political parties have really nothing more to propose than the keeping or the taking of the offices from the other party.
Henry George (1839-1897) American economist
Social Problems, ch. 2 (1883)
Private enterprise did not get us atomic energy.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
The Affluent Society, ch. 25, sec. 3 (1958)
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Stride Toward Freedom, ch. 2 “Montgomery Before the Protest” (1958)
(Source)
HAMLET: If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 5, sc. 2, l. 234ff (5.2.234) (c. 1600)
(Source)
The mind is still haunted with its old unconscious ways; it broods on lost authorities; and the yearning, the deep and hollowing yearning for divine volition and service is with us still.
Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) American psychologist
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
The creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Man and Superman, ch. 3 (1903)
Choose the course which you adopt with deliberation; but when you have adopted it, then persevere in it with firmness.
Bias of Priene (fl. c. 650) Greek philosopher
In Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, “Bias” (c. 230) [tr. Yonge]
Alt. trans.: "Be slow in considering, but resolute in action."
This great Republic of ours shall never become the government of a plutocracy, and it shall never become the government of a mob. God willing, it shall remain what our fathers who founded it meant it to be — a government in which each man stands on his worth as a man, where each is given the largest personal liberty consistent with securing the well-being of the whole, and where, so far as in us lies, we strive continually to secure for each man such equality of opportunity that in the strife of life he may have a fair chance to show the stuff that is in him.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, Jamestown Exposition (26 Apr 1907)
Timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it.
George Washington (1732-1799) American military leader, Founding Father, US President (1789-1797)
“Farewell Address” (17 Sep 1796)
I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground, and you just pick them up. Someone once told me that that was me low-balling my own creativity. That might or might not be the case. But still, on the story I am working on now, I do have some unresolved problem. It doesn’t keep me awake at nights. I feel like when it comes down, it will be there ….
Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Interview with Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman’s Journal (blog) (28 Apr 2012)
Unabridged version of a Sunday Times Magazine interview. Full text.
What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? ch. 2 “Black Power” (1967)
(Source)
True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant.
[La verdadera ciencia enseña, por encima de todo, a dudar y a ser ignorante.]
Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) Spanish philosopher and writer [Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo]
The Tragic Sense of Life [Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida], ch. 5 “The Rationalist Dissolution” (1913) [tr. Flitch (1921)]
Full text.
It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them.
Consciousness is a much smaller part of mental life than we are conscious of, since we cannot be conscious of what we aren’t conscious of.
Julian Jaynes (1920-1997) American psychologist
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Ignorance maketh most Men go into a Party, and Shame keepeth them from getting out of it.
George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695) English politician and essayist
“Of Parties,” Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections (1750)
(Source)
Money is a good servant but a bad master.
(Other Authors and Sources)
French saying
“Poverty,” Pitt exclaimed, “is no disgrace but it is damned annoying.” In the contemporary United States it is not annoying but it is a disgrace.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
The Affluent Society, ch. 23, sec. 6 (1958)
(Source)
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
The Trumpet of Conscience (1967)
Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist, essayist, critic, librettist [Edward Morgan Forster]
Howard’s End, ch. 7 (1910)
They pay me absurd amounts of money for something that I would do for free.
Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Interview with Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman’s Journal (blog) (28 Apr 2012)
Unabridged version of a Sunday Times Magazine interview. Full text.
Oh, that lovely title, ex-President.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
New York Post (26 Oct 1959)
When we went to school we were told that we were governed by laws, not men. As a result of that, many people think there is no need to pay any attention to judicial candidates because judges merely apply the law by some mathematical formula and a good judge and a bad judge all apply the same kind of law. The fact is that the most important part of a judge’s work is the exercise of judgment and that the law in a court is never better than the common sense judgment of the judge that is presiding.
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) US Supreme Court Justice (1941-54), lawyer, jurist, politician
Speech, Greater Buffalo Advertising Club, New York (1933)
(Source)
Quoted in Eugene Gerhart, America's Advocate: Robert H. Jackson, ch. 4 (1958).
To be on a pedestal is to be in a corner.
Elizabeth Bibesco (1897-1945) Romanian-English writer
Haven (1951)
The separation of church and state is necessary partly because if religion is good then the state shouldn’t interfere with the religious vision or with the religious prophet. There must be a realm of truth beyond political competence, that’s why there must be a separation of churches. But if religion is bad, and a bad religion is one that gives an ultimate sanctity to some particular cause, then religion mustn’t interfere with the state. So one of the basic democratic principles as we know it in America is the separation of church and state.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) American theologian and clergyman
Interview with Mike Wallace (27 Apr 1958)
Full text.
The longer you wait in line, the greater the likelihood that you are standing in the wrong line.
(Other Authors and Sources)
The Queue Principle
In Arthur Bloch, Murphy's Law: Book Two, Situational Murphology" (1980)
HARRIS: When I really analyze it, Trudi wasn’t for me anyway. The only good times we had were having sex and laying in bed watching TV.
ARIEL: I hate to tell you this, Harris, but if you can find somebody you can have sex with and lie in bed and watch TV, you’ve really got something.
Steve Martin (b. 1945) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, musician
L. A. Story (1991)
(Source)
I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully — and losing it — just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won’t be worth as much as a little coyote.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Letter to his son from the Yosemite Valley (28 Aug 1889)
Full text.
It is useless to try to adjudicate a long-standing animosity by asking who started it or who is the most wrong. The only sufficient answer is to give up the animosity and try forgiveness, to try to love our enemies and to talk to them and (if we pray) to pray for them. If we can’t do any of that, then we must begin again by trying to imagine our enemies’ children who, like our children, are in mortal danger because of enmity that they did not cause.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
“The Failure of War,” Citizenship Papers (2003)
None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929) French soldier and military theorist
(Attributed)
A man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Following the Equator, ch. 32, epigraph (1897)
Now, you may or may not agree that preserving the civil religion in this way is good for the culture. Vote your conscience. But can we really believe that tweaking civil religion in these ways actually brings people closer to the kingdom of God, that it helps them become more like Jesus? For example, does anyone really think that allowing for a prayer before social functions is going to help students become kingdom people? Might not such prayer — and the political efforts to defend such prayer — actually be harmful to the kingdom inasmuch as it reinforces the shallow civil religious mindset that sees prayer primarily as a perfunctory religious activity? Might it not be better to teach our kids that true kingdom prayer has nothing to do with perfunctory social functions, that true kingdom prayer cannot be demanded or retracted by social laws, and that their job as kingdom warriors is to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17) whether the law allows for it to be publicly expressed or not?
Gregory A. "Greg" Boyd (b. 1957) American evangelical pastor, Christian theologian, author.
The Myth of a Christian Nation (2007)
Of all species of silliness the silliest is the assertion sometimes made that the woman whose primary lifework is taking care of her home and children is somehow a “parasite woman.” It is such a ridiculous in version of the truth that it ought not to be necessary even to allude to it.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
“The Parasite Woman,” Metropolitan (May 1916)
(Source)
Shoulders are from God and burdens, too.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) Polish-American writer, Nobel laureate (b. Icek-Hersz Zynger)
“Gimpel the Fool” (1953) [tr. Bellow (1953)]
Full text.
“I know, up on the top
You are seeing great sights,
But down here at the bottom
We, too, should have rights.”Dr. Seuss (1904-1991) American author, illustrator [pseud. of Theodor Geisel]
“Yertle the Turtle” (1958)
The vaster the power gained, the vaster the appetite for more.
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) American writer
The Lathe of Heaven, ch. 9 (1971)
To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and, furthermore, it is to act as if He did exist.
Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) Spanish philosopher and writer [Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo]
The Tragic Sense of Life [Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida], ch. 5 “The Rationalist Dissolution” (1913) [tr. Flitch (1921)]
Full text.
In the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons.
Henry James (1843-1916) American writer
“Essays in Criticism by Matthew Arnold,” North American Review (Jul 1865)
It is a good wise verse, Gutta cavat lapidem non vi se saepe cadendo; “The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.”
Hugh Latimer (1487-1555) English cleric, academic, martyr
Seventh Sermon Preached before King Edward VI
Usually just the translation is given and credited to Latimer, though in context he is quoting an older source. Full text.
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. A grievance can almost serve as a substitute for hope; it not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
The Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 166 (1955)
(Source)
A full purse is not as good as an empty one is bad.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Yiddish saying
The rule of ideas is only powerful in a world that does not change. Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
The Affluent Society, ch. 2, sec. 6 (1958)
(Source)
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
“In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire,” Memorial Day speech, Keene, New Hampshire (30 May 1884)
Full text.
Our hearts, unrisen, yield a heavy bread.
Anne Wilkinson (1910-1961) Canadian poet
“Topsoil to the Wind,” The Hangman Ties the Holly (1955)
I do not want the peace which passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
On your first appearance before the Court, do not waste your time and ours telling us so. We are likely to discover for ourselves that you are a novice but will think none the less of you for it. Every famous lawyer had his first day at our bar, and perhaps a sad one [….] Be respectful, of course, but also be self-respectful, and neither disparage yourself nor flatter the Justices. We think well enough of ourselves already.
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) US Supreme Court Justice (1941-54), lawyer, jurist, politician
“Advocacy Before the Supreme Court,” Morrison Lecture, California State Bar (23 Aug 1951)
(Source)
Reprinted in the Cornell Law Quarterly (Fall 1951). Legal citation "Advocacy Before the Supreme Court," 37 A.B.A.J. 801, 803 (1951).
Life more often teaches us how to perfect our weaknesses than how to develop our strengths.
Elizabeth Bibesco (1897-1945) Romanian-English writer
Haven (1951)
If we live inside a bad joke, it is up to us to learn, at best and worst, to tell it well.
Jonathan Raban (b. 1942) British travel writer and novelist
Coasting: A Private Voyage (1987)
On Philip Larkin. Full text.
If it works, it’s obsolete.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Anonymous
Quoted in Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, ch. 1 (1964)
HARRIS: You know, you’re really nobody in L.A. unless you live in a house with a really big door.
Steve Martin (b. 1945) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, musician
L. A. Story (1991)
(Source)
What could be more absurd, to begin with, than our attitude of high moral outrage against other nations for manufacturing the selfsame weapons that we manufacture? The difference, as our leaders say, is that we will use these weapons virtuously, whereas our enemies will use them maliciously — a proposition that too readily conforms to a proposition of much less dignity: we will use them in our interest, whereas our enemies will use them in theirs.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Citizenship Papers, “The Failure of War” (2003)
Make voyages! — Attempt them! — there’s nothing else.
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) American playwright
Camino Royale [Byron] (1953)
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) English comic actor, film director, composer
(Attributed)
An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it.
Don Marquis (1878-1937) American journalist and humorist
“The Sun Dial” column, New York Sun (1918)
When we fail to distinguish between the quasi-Christian civil religion of America and the kingdom of God … we end up wasting precious time and resources defending and tweaking the civil religion — as though doing so had some kingdom value. We strive to keep prayer in schools, fight for the right to have public prayer before football games, lobby to preserve the phrases “under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance and “in God we trust” on our coins, battle to hold the traditional civil meaning of marriage, and things of that sort — as though winning these fights somehow brings America closer to the kingdom of God.
Gregory A. "Greg" Boyd (b. 1957) American evangelical pastor, Christian theologian, author.
The Myth of a Christian Nation (2007)
It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech (1910-04-23), “Citizenship in a Republic [The Man in the Arena],” Sorbonne, Paris
(Source)
Many things — such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly — are done worst when we try hardest to do them.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, “Edmund Spenser” (1966)
Full text. This chapter of the book was originally printed in Major British Writers, ed. G. B. Harrison (1959).
I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudice, and I think I have no color prejudices, nor caste prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All I care to know is that a man is a human being — that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
“Concerning the Jews,” Harper’s (Sep 1899)