The golden rule of conduct, therefore, is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall see Truth in fragment and from different angles of vision. Conscience is not the same thing for all. Whilst, therefore, it is a good guide for individual conduct, imposition of that conduct upon all will be an insufferable interference with everybody’s freedom of conscience.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
Young India (23 Sep 1926)Full text.
All that is worth remembering in life, is the poetry of it.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
Lectures on English Poets, #1 “On Poetry in General” (1818)Full text.
I am now more proud of the title of American than I have ever been. […] We have shed our blood in the glorious cause in which we are engaged; and we are ready to shed the last drop in its defense. Nothing is above our courage, except only (with shame I speak it) except the courage to TAX ourselves.
James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
Letter, Philadelphia (9 Jun 1782)
There’s a generous current in the American spirit. And if we can simply give voice to that once in a while, I think it’s a good message.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
AP Interview
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Constitution of the United States, preamble (17 Sep 1787)
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“The Times Newspaper” Political Essays (1819)
We talk a great deal about patriotism. What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility which will enable America to remain master of her power — to walk with it in serenity and wisdom, with self-respect and the respect of all mankind; a patriotism that puts country ahead of self; a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. The dedication of a lifetime — these are words that are easy to utter, but this is a mighty assignment. For it is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech, American Legion convention, New York City (27 Aug 1952)
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Being Idle” (1886)
(Source)
So long as you are a slave to the opinions of the many you have not yet approached freedom or tasted its nectar … But I do not mean by this that we ought to be shameless before all men and to do what we ought not; but all that we refrain from and all that we do, let us not do or refrain from merely because it seems to the multitude somehow honorable or base, but because it is forbidden by reason and the god within us.
Julian II (AD 331-363), Emperor of Rome (355-363) [Flavius Claudius Julianus; Julian the Apostate; Julian the Philosopher]
Oration VI, “To the Uneducated Cynics” (AD 362)
(Source)Sometimes attributed to Marcus Aurelius.
SALLY: It’s a scientific fact that if you say “naked” three or more times, to any man, he has to cross his legs.
Steven Moffat (b. 1961) Scottish television writer, producer
Coupling, Ep. 2.8 “Naked” (22 Oct 2001)
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American writer
“…like captured fireflies” (1955)
Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
Quoted USA Today (5 Mar 1988)
The idea is like the seed corn; it grows imperceptibly in secret. When I have invented or discovered the beginning of a song …, I shut up the book and go for a walk or take up something else; I think no more of it for perhaps half a year. Nothing is lost, though. When I come back to it again, it has unconsciously taken a new shape, and is ready for me to begin working at it.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) German composer and pianist
Conversation with George Henschel
(Source)
Quoted in a letter to Herr and Frau von Herzogenberg in Max Kalbeck, ed., the Brahms-Gesellschaft collection of correspondence, Vol. 2 [tr. Bryant (1909)], as cited in John Alexander Fuller-Maitland, Brahms, ch. 3 (1911).
If you can keep your head when about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.
Jean Kerr (1922-2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Introduction (1957)
We often stand in need of hearing what we know full well.
Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English writer and poet
Imaginary Conversations, “Lord Bacon and Richard Hooker” (1824-53)
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
Carry On, Jeeves (1925)
Laws are never as effective as habits.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech, New York City (28 Aug 1952)
If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity-seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war.
William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) American military leader and author
Letter to Gen. Henry W. Halleck (4 Sep 1864)
True consistency, that of the prudent and the wise, is to act in conformity with circumstance.
John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) American Vice President, politician, statesman
Speech, Senate (16 Mar 1848)
Spare me through Your mercy, do not punish me through Your justice.
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) British monk, theologian, archbishop, saint.
Proslogion
I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. It’s better to be rich.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
(Attributed)
They are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; a studied madness.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“On Actors and Acting,” “The Round Table” column, The Examiner (5 Jan 1817)
The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
“Holding on to Romanticism,” The Illustrated London News (2 May 1931)
Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion.
Joseph R. Alsop, Jr. (1910-1989) American journalist
In The Observer (30 Nov 1952)
He that can have patience can have what he will.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (1736)
Full text.
Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
The Adventures of Sally (1922)
The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a natural characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. Knowing his rule rests upon compulsion rather than consent, the dictator must always assume the disloyalty, not for a few but of many, and guard against it by continual inquisition and liquidation of the unreliable. The history of Soviet Russia is a modern example of this ancient practic. The democratic state, on the other hand, is based on the consent of its members. The vast majority of our people are intensely loyal, as they have amply demonstrated. To question, even by implication, the loyalty and devotion of a large group of citizens is to create an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust which is neither justified, healthy, nor consistent with our traditions. […] I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our ancient rights of free men. Moreover, we will win the contest of ideas that afflicts the world not by suppressing those rights, but by their triumph. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Veto Message, Illinois State Senate Bill 102 (1951-06-26)
(Source)
The Broyles Bill would have required all public workers, teachers, and officials, as well as candidates for office to sign loyalty oaths. Its veto by Stevenson, as Illinois Governor, was widely used by his political enemies during the Red Scare of the era.
This quote is widely misidentified as a more generic comment condemning the federal McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950. I've been unable to find any primary source connecting this quotation to that event.
It is often elided and paraphrased down, e.g.:The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.
There is no top. There are always further heights to reach.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) Lithuanian-American violinist
(Attributed)
[I change my mind] in accordance with the circumstances and not, like you people, because of a weak character.
Leotychidas (c. 545–469 BC) Spartan king [Leotychides, Latychidas]
In Plutarch, “Sayings of the Spartans: Leotychidas,” Plutarch on Sparta [tr. R. Talbert (1988)]
I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) German physicist
(Attributed)
Quoted in The New York Times Book Review (8 Mar 1992)
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) British sexologist, physician, social reformer [Henry Havelock Ellis]
“The Individual and the Race,” Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922)
(Source)
In a passage describing the cost of population growth under the Biblical commandment of "Be ye fruitful and multiply." The above is only a fraction of the sentence, which reads in full:It has meant that all civilisation has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution, and the human race has gone on lightly dancing there, striving to forget that ancient warning from a soul of things even deeper than the voice of Jehovah: "At the hand of man will I require the life of man."
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Robert Graves (1895-1985) English poet, novelist, critic
In The Observer (6 Dec 1964)
People seldom speak ill of themselves, but when they have a good chance of being contradicted.
Fulke Greville (1554-1628) 1st Baron Brooke; Elizabethan poet, dramatist, and statesman
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections (1756)
While opinions were arguable, convictions needed shooting to be cured.
T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935) British officer, diplomat, linguist, memoirist, writer [Thomas Edward Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia"]
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, ch. 33 (1926)
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
(Attributed)
It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
Commencement Address, Middlebury College (May 2001)
(Source)
Love is like quicksilver in the hand, Sylvie. Leave the fingers open and it stays in the palm; clutch it, and it darts away.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) American writer
“Advice to the Little Peyton Girl,” Modern Story (Oct 1935)
Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Letters from Earth (1939)
There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) British sexologist, physician, social reformer [Henry Havelock Ellis]
The Task of Social Hygiene, ch. 10 (1913)
Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one’s nose.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German poet and critic
(Attributed)
Quoted in Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, bk. 3 (1958, tr. 1959).
Truth disdains the aid of law for its defense — it will stand upon its own merits.
John Leland (1754-1841) American Baptist minister, civil libertarian
Right of Conscience Inalienable
When you can laugh at yourself, there is enlightenment.
Shunryū Suzuki (1905-1971) Japanese Zen Buddhist master
“Sitting Like a Frog,” Not Always So [ed. E. Brown] (2002)
The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.
Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American writer [b. Nelson Ahlgren Abraham]
(Attributed)
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-British poet, critic, playwright [Thomas Stearns Eliot]
“The Rock” (1934)
Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, there is one religion —- human religion -— but any number of faiths.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
Young India (Bulletin) (2 Oct 1930)
Some versions omit "-- human religion --". Full text.
We are all of us more or less the slaves of opinion.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“On Court-Influence” (3-10 Jan 1818) Political Essays (1819)
I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the Big One comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
American Gods, Part 2, ch. 13 [Sam] (2001)
(Source)
Books have the same enemies as poeple: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
[Les livres ont les mêmes ennemis comme les gens : le feu, l’humidité, les animaux, le temps, et leur propre contenu.]
Paul Valéry (1871-1945) French poet, critic, author, polymath
Œuvres II, “Moralités” (1941)
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) German physicist
Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971)
Whenever I meet Ukridge’s Aunt Julia I have the same curious illusion of having just committed some particularly unsavoury crime and — what is more — of having done it with swollen hands, enlarged feet, and trousers bagging at the knee on a morning when I had omitted to shave.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
Ukridge (1924)
Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
New Year’s Address to the Nation, Prague (1 Jan 1990)
Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
(Source)
Capitalism survived its crisis and went on to great successes. But the capitalism that survived and succeeded was not the capitalism of 1929.
Herb Stein (1916-1999) American economist
The Triumph of the Adaptive Society (1989)
We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) British sexologist, physician, social reformer [Henry Havelock Ellis]
The Dance of Life, Preface (1923)
If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) Lithuanian-American violinist
San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle (18 Apr 1971)
Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Time Enough for Love (1973)
But, by all thy nature’s weakness,
Hidden faults and follies known,
Be thou, in rebuking evil,
Conscious of thine own.John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American poet and abolitionist
“What the Voice Said,” st. 15, ll. 57-60 (1847)
(Source)
I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
“Work in Progress,” Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989; first published Jun 1973).
I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what’s best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we’re doing what God does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we’re participating in something truly sacred.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
Commencement Address, Marquette College (May 2001)
(Source)
Rogers used the same comment at the Middlebury College commencement.
Some days are for living. Others are for getting through.
Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990) American billionaire
The Sayings of Chairman Malcolm, “You Don’t Say?” (1978)
When man appears before the Throne of Judgment, the first question he is asked is not: “Have you believed in God?” or “Have you prayed and observed the ritual?” He is asked: “Have you dealt honorably and faithfully in all your dealings with your fellow man?”
The Talmud (AD 200-500) Collection of Jewish rabbinical writings
(Unreferenced)
The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. … Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.
John Leland (1754-1841) American Baptist minister, civil libertarian
A Chronicle of His Time in Virginia (1845)
It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
Woody Allen (b. 1935) American comedian, writer, director [b. Allan Steward Konigsberg]
“Death (A Play)”, Without Feathers (1975)
But see how many now cry out “Christ! Christ?”
Who shall be farther from him at the Judgment
Than many who, on earth, did not know Christ.Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Italian poet
The Divine Comedy, “Paradise,” 19.106 (1321) [tr. J. Ciardi (1954)]
Heaven,
I’m in Heaven
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak,
And I seem to find the happiness I seek
When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.Irving Berlin (1888-1989) American songwriter [b. Isidore Beilin]
“Cheek to Cheek,” in Top Hat (1935)
I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
Last Phase, Vol. II (written 1948, published 1958)
There is, however, no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“On the Tendency of Sects,” “The Round Table” column, The Examiner
CECIL GRAHAM: What is a cynic?
LORD DARLINGTON: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Administrivia: Tweaking WIST
I made a couple of changes to the site setup today worth noting:
First, Author collections (category archives) will now be sorted by the citation, not by the date the quote was entered in here. That should be helpful both in looking things up and in spotting potential duplicates (or inconsistent citations).
Second, I’ve added (see the top of any WIST page) an “Authors” page, which lists all the authors currently cited in WIST (along with how many quotations they have recorded here). Clicking any of the names will bring you to their quotation page. And if you hover over the names, you’ll get the more detailed biographical info about them that shows up in each quote’s citation.
This Authors page needs some further work — I wanted to have the full description as the text here, not the shorter name (which can also be seen in the Authors list in every sidebar). But it’s a step forward.
If there are other features you’d like to see in WIST, please let me know. Future plans for the site are always listed in the “To Do” page, linked at the top.
I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I’m very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911) English playwright [William Schwenck Gilbert]
The Pirates of Penzance (1879) [music by Arthur Sullivan]
Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than minority of them — never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Grief Observed, ch. 4 (1960)
The opium of custom, whereof all drink and many go mad.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Education,” Lectures and Biographical Sketches (1883)
It was a cold, disapproving gaze, such as a fastidious luncher who was not fond of caterpillars might have directed at one which he had discovered in his portion of salad …
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
The Adventures of Sally (1922)
There’s always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
Disturbing the Peace, ch. 5 “The Politics of Hope” (1986) [tr. P. Wilson (1990)]
The discussion, for the most part, was able and organized, although, like all meetings of this kind, certain statements were made as accepted truisms, which I, at least, thought were of questionable validity. One member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, argued that we could use nuclear weapons, on basis that our adversaries would use theirs against us in an attack. I thought, as I listened, of the many times I had heard the military take positions which, if wrong, had the advantage that no one would be around at the end to know.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, ch. 5 (1969)
(Source)
Originally printed in "Thirteen Days: The Story about How the World Almost Ended," McCall's (Nov 1968)
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Letter from Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
(Source)
I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) Lithuanian-American violinist
Life (28 Jul 1961)
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American writer
The House of the Seven Gables, ch. 20 “The Flower of Eden” (1851)
All love that has not friendship for its base
Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
Though brave its walls as any in the land,
And its tall turrets lift their heads in grace;
Though skilful and accomplished artists trace
Most beautiful designs on every hand,
And gleaming statues in dim niches stand,
And fountains play in some flow’r-hidden place:Yet, when from the frowning east a sudden gust
Of adverse fate is blown, or sad rains fall,
Day in, day out, against its yielding wall,
Lo! the fair structure crumbles to the dust.
Love, to endure life’s sorrow and earth’s woe,
Needs friendship’s solid mason-work below.Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) American author and poet.
“Upon the Sand,” Poems of Passion (1883)
(Source)
I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
“Kicking Ass” (interview), Girl About Town (13 Oct 1986)
Reprinted in Jeffrey M. Elliot (ed.), Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989)
As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has — or ever will have — something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: Thoughts For All Ages
Full text.
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Journal (23 Aug 1853)
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“The Will to Believe” (1896)
A man of Cruelty is God’s enemy.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, # 303 (1732)
(Source)
He is a man of his most recent word.
William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008) American writer, editor
“The Week,” National Review (24 Aug 1965)
Of Lyndon Johnson.
Of course God will forgive me; that’s his job.
[Bien sûr, il me pardonnera; c’est son métier.]
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German poet and critic
Last Words (1856)
Quoted in German in Alfred Meißner, "Heinrich Heine. Erinnerungen," Letzte Worte auf dem Totenbett (1856). Quoted in Bros. Goncourt (ed.) Journal (23 Feb 1863). Quoted in French in Sigmund Freud, The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious (1905) [tr. J Crick (2003)].
Alt trans.: "Why, of course, he will forgive me; that's his business. [Gott wird mir verzeihen, das ist sein Beruf.]
See Catherine the Great.
Every man must give account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best reconcile to his conscience. If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise, let men be free.
John Leland (1754-1841) American Baptist minister, civil libertarian
Right of Conscience Inalienable
To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
“Ideals and Doubts,” Illinois Law Review, Vol. X (1915)
Full text.
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
Letter to W. Lutoslawski (6 May 1906)
Perfection of planning is a symptom of decay. During a period of exciting discovery or progress, there is no time to plan the perfect headquarters. The time for that comes later, when all the important work has been done. Perfection, we know, is finality; and finality is death.
Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909-1993) British historian and writer
Parkinson’s Law, “Plans and Plants” (1958)
It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realize the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
Wars I Have Seen(1945)
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“The Sick Chamber,” The New Monthly Magazine (August 1830)
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
A crisis does not always apear to a policy-maker as a series of dramatic events. Usually it imposes itself as an exhausting agenda of petty choices demanding both concentration and endurance. One is forced to react to scraps of information in very limited spans of time; longing for full knowledge, one must chart a route through the murk of unknowing.
Henry Kissinger (1923-2024) German-American diplomat
Years of Upheaval, ch. 11 (1982)
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
The Federalist #47 (30 Jan 1788)
There are some things a chappie’s mind absolutely refuses to picture, and Aunt Julia singing ‘Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay’ is one of them.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
The Man with Two Left Feet (1917)
A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A manipulated population can be misused in serving any military adventure whatever. Unreliability in some areas arouses justifiable fear of unreliability in everything. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
“An Anatomy of Reticence [Anatomie jedné zdrženlivosti],” sec. 9, no. 5 (1985-04) [tr. Kohák (1986)]
(Source)
First reprinted in Cross Currents: A Yearbook of Central European Culture #5 (1986). Reprinted here in Living in Truth: twenty-two essays published on the occasion of the award of the Erasmus Prize to Václav Havel, Part 1, ch. 6 (1986).
The best among you are those who are best to their wives.
Muhammad (570-632) Arabian merchant, prophet, founder of Islam [Mohammed]
Narrated in Ibn Majah, #1978, and Al-Tirmizi, #3895
Times of trouble best discover the true worth of a man; they do not weaken him, but show his true nature.
[Quantas autem virtutes quisque fecerit, melius patet occasione adversitatis. Occasiones namque hominem fragilem non faciunt, sed qualis sit, ostendunt.]
Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471) German-Dutch priest, author
The Imitation of Christ [De Imitatione Christi], Book 1, ch. 16, v. 4 (1.16.4) (c. 1418-27) [tr. Sherley-Price (1952)]
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:Who is of most virtue appeareth best in time of adversity. Occasions make not a man frail, but they shew openly what he is.
[tr. Whitford/Raynal (1530/1871)]The time of adversity shows who is of most virtue. Occasions do not make a man frail, but they do show openly what he is.
[tr. Whitford/Gardiner (1530/1955)]By occasion of adversity every man knoweth what great vertue is in himselfe, for such occasions make thee not frail, but shew thee what thou art.
[tr. Page (1639), 1.16.14]Besides we shall do well to reflect, that Afflictions and uneasy Accidents are the clearest Indication of a Man's Goodness, and the Degrees of his Improvement. For we mistake extremely in imagining that any thing which happens to us from without, is the real Cause of our doing well or ill; Adversity does not make Virtue or Vice, but exert and draw them into Practice; it does not change the Man from what he was, but only discover what he really is.
[tr. Stanhope (1696; 1706 ed.)]Besides, by outward occasions of suffering from the conduct of others, the nature and degree of every man's inward strength is more plainly discovered; for outward occasions do not make him frail, but only shew him what he is in himself.
[tr. Payne (1803)]Occasions of adversity best discover how great virtue or strength each one hath. For occasions do not make a man frail, but they shew what he is.
[ed. Parker (1841)]Besides, adversity better displays the fortitude and virtues that we possess: for these attacks to not contribute to make us frail, but rather shew us to be what we are.
[tr. Dibdin (1851)]The amount of a man's virtue is best seen in presence of adversity, for its occurrence does not make a man weak, but shows what he is.
[ed. Bagster (1860)]How much strength each man hath is best proved by occasions of adversity: for such occasions do not make a man frail, but show of what temper he is.
[tr. Benham (1874)]Occasions of adversity soonest discover how great virtue or strength each one hath. For occasions do not make a man frail, but they shew what he is.
[tr. Anon. (1901)]For the measure of every man's virtue is best revealed in time of adversity -- adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.
[tr. Croft/Bolton (1940)]For the strength that each has will best be seen in the hour of adversity. Because such hours do not make a man weak, but show what kind of man he is.
[tr. Daplyn (1952)]Meanwhile, there is no better test of a man's quality than when he cannot have things his own way. The occasions of sin do not overpower us, they only prove our worth.
[tr. Knox-Oakley (1959)]A man’s true quality is revealed when things are difficult. Events do not make a man weak -- they only show what stuff he is made of.
[tr. Knott (1962)]The strength of one’s virtue is seen more easily when opposition comes. For such opposition does not weaken a man, but shows his mettle.
[tr. Rooney (1979)]For the strength that each person has will best be seen in times of trouble. Such times do not make us weak; they show what we are.
[tr. Creasy (1989)]
In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your griefs may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American writer
“The Haunted Mind,” Twice-Told Tales (1851)