A special ability means a heavy expenditure of energy in a particular direction, with a consequent drain from some other side of life.
Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychologist
Modern Man in Search of a Soul, ch. 8 (1933) (trans. Dell & Baynes)
It has frequently been remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government by reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change — in a perpetual peaceful revolution — a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions — without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Annual Message to Congress (6 Jan 1941)Full text.
Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often confuses one for the other, or assumes the greater the love, the greater the jealousy. In fact they are almost incompatible; both at once produce unbearable turmoil.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Stranger in a Strange Land, first ed. [Jubal] (1961)
By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Aes Triplex” (1878)
The storyteller and poet of our time, as in any other time, must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word, not just a preacher of social or political ideals. There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift him, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) Polish-American writer, Nobel laureate (b. Icek-Hersz Zynger)
Nobel Lecture (8 Dec 1978)Full text.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearing to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) American poet
“The New Colossus” (1883)Used as an inscription on the Statue of Liberty, New York.
Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) French editor, philosopher
L’Encyclopédie, Vol. 1, Article on “Political Authority” (1751)
Nearly every people have created a god and the god has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and he was invariably found on the side of those in power. Each god was intensely patriotic, and detested all nations but his own.
Strenuous intellectual work and the study of God’s Nature are the angels that will lead me through all the troubles of this life with consolation, strength, and uncompromising rigor.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Letter to Pauline Winteler (c. May 1897); CPAE, vol. 1, doc. 34
Parents are never forgiven for not giving just the right response at the appropriate moment. Or, rather, there are particular times in the adolescent’s or young adult’s life, when a certain response is needed, and this need is not met, and the failure to meet this need is forever remembered, and is never forgiven.
Terri Apter (b. 1967) British psychologist, author
Altered Loves, ch. 3 (1990)
“One God and fifteen religions,” was his reflection. “That’s a right smart of religions for just one God.”
Owen Wister (1860-1938) American novelist
The Virginian, ch. 18 (1902)Sometimes quoted as: "Fifteen religions at least. That's a lot of religions for one God." Full text.
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 8, “Epigrams” (1911)
(Source)
“But one has to make some sort of choice,” said Harriet. “And between one desire and another, how is one to know which things are really of overmastering importance?”
“We only know that,” said Miss de Vine, “when they have overmastered us.”
Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) English author, translator
Gaudy Night, ch. 2 (1936)
All those who try to go it sole alone,
Too proud to be beholden for relief,
Are absolutely sure to come to grief.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
“Haec Fabula Docet” (1947)
He who helps the guilty, shares the crime.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 139
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized a man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.”
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
Minority Report : H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks, #418 (1956)
(Source)
There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) Russian-American writer, philosopher
The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Power: A New Social Analysis, ch. 1 “The Impulse to Power” (1938)
Prejudice is a sin which every one denounces and almost no one seriously confesses. It is difficult to dislodge from the human mind because the possessor either does not think he has it or does not think it a dangerous sin if he has. Most of us admit that we have some prejudices and smile about them as if they were harmless foibles. Narrow-minded persons do not come crying to be saved from their prejudices. It is this self-deception and self-satisfaction which serve to make prejudice so baffling.
Ralph W. Sockman (1889-1970) American Methodist clergyman
Preface to Peace, Part I, “Barriers to be Removed,” Rockwell Lecture on Religious Subjects, Rice Institute (25 Apr 1944)Full text.
Do not grieve yourself too much for those you hate, nor yet forget them utterly.
Sophocles (496-406 BC) Greek tragic playwright
Electra, l. 177
The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) American-English essayist, editor, anthologist
Afterthoughts, “Arts and Letters” (1931)
It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques — techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American Way of Life.
Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1965) American politician (US Senator, Maine)
“Declaration of Conscience,” Congressional Record, vol. 96, 81st Congress, 2d. sess. (1 Jun 1950)
(Source)
Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia (27 Jun 1936)
A slight is less easily forgiven than an injury, because it implies something of contempt, indifference, an overlooking of our importance; whereas an injury presupposes some degree of consideration. “The black-guards!” said a traveler whom Sicilian brigands had released without ransom; “did they think me a person of no consequence?”
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 8, “Epigrams” (1911)Full text.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet
“An Essay on Man,” Epistle 1, l. 267 (1733-1734)
Of all actions of a man’s life, his marriage does least concern other people, yet of all actions of our life ‘tis most meddled with by other people.
John Selden (1584-1654) English jurist, legal scholar, antiquarian, polymath
Table Talk, “Marriage” (1686).
As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is on the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination, we place ourselves in his situation.
Adam Smith (1723-1790) Scottish economist
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Assignment in Eternity (1953)
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) American clergyman and author
“I Am Only One”
Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
“Reflections and Remarks on Human Life,” sec. IV (1878)
There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) French editor, philosopher
(Attributed)
Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands, says an old writer. Gifts and alms are the expressions, not the essence of this virtue. A man may bestow great sums on the poor and indigent without being charitable, and may be charitable when he is not able to bestow anything. Charity is therefore a habit of good will, or benevolence in the soul, which disposes us to the love, assistance, and relief of mankind, especially of those who stand in need of it.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Guardian #166 (21 Sep 1713)
(Source)
MACHEATH: You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy
But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait![Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.]
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) German poet, playwright, director, dramaturgist
Die Dreigroschenoper [The Three-Penny Opera], Act 2, sc. 3 (1928)
Alt. trans.:
- However much you twist, whatever lies you tell / Food is the first thing, morals follow on." [used by the Pet Shop Boys, "What Keeps Mankind Alive?", Can You Forgive Her (1993)
- Food first, then morality.
- Food comes first, then morals.
- First comes a full stomach, then comes ethics.
One of the greatest disservices you can do a man is to lend him money that he can’t pay back.
Jesse Holman Jones (1874–1956) American politician, entrepreneur
The New York Times Magazine (2 Jul 1939)
They say that God says to me, “Forgive your enemies.” I say, “I do”; but he says, “I will damn mine.” God should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my enemies he should forgive his.
I wouldn’t dream of following a fashion … how could one be a different person every three months?
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) English poet
(Attributed)Quoted in E. Salter, The Last Years of a Rebel : A Memoir of Edith Sitwell (1967)
Human conflicts are so terrible precisely because human beings are always engaged in the pretension of being like God, that is, fighting for some absolute and final good.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) American theologian and clergyman
Doom and Dawn [with George S. Eddy] (1936)
I shall assume that your silence gives consent.
Plato (c.428-347 BC) Greek philosopher
Cratylus, xli
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Letter to Carl Seelig (11 Mar 1952), Einstein Archive 39-013
Similar wording was used in a letter to Hans Muehsam (4 Mar 1953) Einstein Archive 38-424.
Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.
Scott Adams (b. 1957) American cartoonist
The Dilbert Principle (1995)
How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton’s head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)
Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! Yes, it’s Superman! Strange visitor from another planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman! Who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, and who — disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper — fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way!
(Other Authors and Sources)
Preamble to Superman, US radio show (1940ff)
How unhappy is he who cannot forgive himself.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings]
The first and great commandment is: Don’t let them scare you.
Elmer Davis (1890-1958) American journalist and radio commentator
But We Were Born Free, ch. 1 (1954)
Here’s tae us; wha’s like us?
Gey few, and they’re a’ deid.(Other Authors and Sources)
Scottish Toast (19th C)The first line appears in Crosland, "The Unspeakable Scot" (1902). Various versions of the second line can be found.
It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) American physicist
Comment (1959)Quoted in J. Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992)
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
“Philosophy for Laymen,” Unpopular Essays (1950)
I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Speech (1964-03-04), Eleanor Roosevelt Award to Anna Kross
(Source)
Preceding announcing his appointment of ten women to top administration posts. He further commented, after listing them:This should, with the announcements that have preceded this one, and the ones that will follow this one, serve notice that this administration is not running a stag party.
Administrivia: WIST Interruptus
Apologies for the spotty posting last week. I was on business in India and between a very full schedule and being 11½ hours off-kilter, I didn’t get update WIST nearly as often as I’d planned.
I’ll try to make it up this week by posting an extra quotation or two each day.
Piously through pulpit and press we confess that the war is a judgment on the sins in which we are all involved; but nevertheless each nation pharisaically thanks God that it is not as the other nations are. We admit that we are bad, but exonerate ourselves because others are worse.
Ralph W. Sockman (1889-1970) American Methodist clergyman
Preface to Peace, Part I, “Barriers to be Removed,” Rockwell Lecture on Religious Subjects, Rice Institute (25 Apr 1944)Full text.
I know many have been taught to think that moderation, in a case like this, is a sort of treason.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Anglo-Irish statesman, orator, philosopher
“Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol on the Affairs of America” (1777)
One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.Sophocles (496-406 BC) Greek tragic playwright
Oedipus at Colonus, l. 1616
A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
William Shenstone (1714-1763) English poet
Essays on Men and Manners, “Of Men and Manners” (1868)Full text.
Strictly speaking, one cannot legislate love, but what one can do is legislate fairness and justice. If legislation does not prohibit our living side by side, sooner or later your child will fall on the pavement and I’ll be the one to pick her up. Or one of my children will not be able to get into the house and you’ll have to say, “Stop here until your mom comes here.” Legislation affords us the chance to see if we might love each other.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
(Attributed)Quoted in B. Lanker, I Dream a World (1989)
I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew.
– Writing a poem is discovering.Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
New York Times (7 Nov 1955)
“There’s no free will,” says the philosopher;
“To hang is most unjust.”
“There is no free will,” assents the officer;
“We hang because we must.”Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 8, “Epigrams” (1911)Full text.
Don’t write anything you can phone. Don’t phone anything you can talk. Don’t talk anything you can whisper. Don’t whisper anything you can smile. Don’t smile anything you can nod. Don’t nod anything you can wink.
Earl Kemp Long (1895-1960) American politician, orator.
(Attributed)
Advice on political discretion. Widely attributed, but with no primary sourcing or particular context I can find. Quoted in his biography, Michael L. Kurtz, Earl K. Long: The Saga of Uncle Earl and Louisiana Politics, ch. 7 (1990).
Prayer should be short, without giving God Almighty reasons why he should grant this, or that; he knows best what is good for us.
John Selden (1584-1654) English jurist, legal scholar, antiquarian, polymath
Table Talk, “Prayer” (1686)
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
“Life-Line” (1939)
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general.
And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.
Adam Smith (1723-1790) Scottish economist
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
To have a friend who knows you by name gives you a sense that you are not alone in the world.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
(Attributed)Quoted in J. Lash, <i>Eleanor: The Years Alone</i> (1972)
We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 559
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as we do when the baby gets hold of a hammer. It’s just a question of how much damage he can do with it before you can take it away from him.
Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Column (1930-07-04), “Daily Telegram: Congress Session, Rogers Says, Is Like Baby Getting a Hammer”
(Source)
Written from Minneapolis. Also collected, in a slightly shorter form, in The Autobiography of Will Rogers, ch. 15 (1949) [ed. Donald Day].
Not every man is so great a coward as he thinks he is — nor yet so good a Christian.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
The Master of Ballantrae, “Mr. Mackellar’s Journey” (1889)
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: — Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) French editor, philosopher
Pensées Philosophiques [Philosophical Thoughts] (1746)
Alt. trans.: "One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man's suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures."
All over London the lights flickered in and out, calling on the public to save its body and purse: SOPO SAVES SCRUBBING — NUTRAX FOR NERVES — CRUNCHLETS ARE CRISPER — EAT PIPER PARRITCH — DRINK POMPAYNE — ONE WHOOSH AND IT’S CLEAN — OH, BOY! IT’S TOMBOY TOFFEE — NOURISH NERVES WITH NUTRAX — FARLEY’S FOOTWEAR TAKES YOU FURTHER — IT ISN’T DEAR, IT’S DARLING — DARLING’S FOR HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES — MAKE ALL SAFE WITH SANFECT — WIHIFFLETS FASCINATE. The presses, thundering and growling., ground out the same appeals by the million: ASK YOUR GROCER — ASK YOUR DOCTOR — ASK THE MAN WHO’S TRIED IT — MOTHERS! GIVE IT TO YOUR CHILDREN — HOUSEWIVES! SAVE MONEY — HUSBANDS! INSURE YOUR LIVES — WOMEN! DO YOU REALIZE? — DON’T SAY SOAP, SAY SOPO! Whatever you’re doing, stop it and do something else! Whatever you’re buying, pause and buy something different! Be hectored into health and prosperity! Never let up! Never go to sleep! Never be satisfied. If once you are satisfied, all our wheels will run down. Keep going — and if you can’t, Try Nutrax for Nerves!
Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) English author, translator
Murder Must Advertise, ch. 5 (1933)
The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back.
Seneca the Elder (c. 54 BC - c. AD 39) Roman orator and writer [Lucius or Marcus Annaeus Seneca, Seneca the Rhetorician]
(Attributed)Frequently attributed instead to William Gilmore Simms or to John F. Kennedy
Our intentions tend to be much more real to us than our actions, and this can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding with other people, to whom our actions tend to be much more real than our intentions.
E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977) German-English economist, statistician [Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher]
A Guide for the Perplexed, ch. 8 (1977)
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
“What I Believe,” Forum and Century (Oct 1930)
(Source)
Einstein crafted and recrafted his credo multiple times in this period, and specifics are often muddled by differing translations and by his reuse of certain phrases in later writing. The Forum and Century entry appears to be the earliest. Some important variants:I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither ca I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with they mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
— "The World As I See It [Mein Weltbild] [tr. Bargmann (1954)]I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
— "The World As I See It [Mein Weltbild] [tr. Harris (1934)]To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is.
[Es ist mir genug, diese Geheimnisse staunend zu ahnen und zu versuchen, von der erhabenen Struktur des Seienden in Demut ein mattes Abbild geistig zu erfassen.]
— Reduced variant in "My Credo Mein Glaubensbekenntnis]" (Aug 1932)
You haven’t achieved equality until you’re a legitimate target for humor.
Scott Adams (b. 1957) American cartoonist
The Dilbert Blog, “Welcome to the Club” (20 Nov 2006)
A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
A History of Western Philosophy, Bk. I, Part II, ch. 11 “Socrates” (1945)
There are two types of realist. There is the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one, and the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I’m inclined to be the second kind. To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet
(Attributed)Quoted in Holt, Robert Frost: The Man and His Work (1923)
When I had youth I had no money; now I have the money I have no time; and when I get the time, if I ever do, I shall have no health to enjoy life. I suppose it’s the discipline I need; but it’s rather hard to love the things I do, and see them go by because duty chains me to my galley. If I ever come into port with all sails set, that will be my reward perhaps.
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) American writer
(Attributed) (1873)
Quoted in M. Saxton, Louisa May, ch. 17 (1977).
KATHERINE: Out with it boldly. Truth loves open dealing.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Henry VIII, Act 3, sc. 1, l. 44 (3.1.44) (1613)
(Source)
Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.
Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1965) American politician (US Senator, Maine)
Speech, Westbrook Junior College (7 Jun 1953)
A soul that is kind and intends justice discovers more than any sophist.
Sophocles (496-406 BC) Greek tragic playwright
Fragments, l. 88 (Aletes)
Mental humility, it may be said, is the greatest quality lacking in the sporadic Protestant sects and cults ever springing up in our midst. Their self-confident assumption that they possess the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth gives their witness a pioneering zeal at the start but makes them ridiculous in the end.
Ralph W. Sockman (1889-1970) American Methodist clergyman
“The Open Mind,” Protestantism: A Symposium, ed. W.K. Anderson (1944)Full text.
Grief and discomfiture are coals that cool:
Why keep them glowing with thy sighs, poor fool?Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 8, “Epigrams” (1911)Full text.
It is a good thing to follow the First Law of Holes; if you are in one, stop digging.
Denis Healey (1917-2015) British politician
Speech (May 1988)
We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven? – Is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel?Emma, Baroness Orczy (1865-1947) Hungarian-British author, artist [Emma ("Emmuska") Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi]
The Scarlet Pimpernel, ch. 12 “The Scrap of Paper” (1903)
Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon — laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution — these can lift at a colossal humbug, — push it a little — crowd it a little — weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand. You are always fussing and fighting with your other weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it at all? No; you lack sense and the courage.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
“The Chronicle of Young Satan” (c.1897–1900, unfinished)
(Source)
Often paraphrased: "The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter." This is an excised passage from what was eventually posthumously published as No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (1916).
These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia (27 Jun 1936)Full text.
Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.
Aesop (620?-560? BC) Legendary Greek storyteller
Fables [Aesopica], “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse” (6th C BC) [tr. Jacobs (1894)]
(Source)
Alternate translations:Compare to Proverbs 17:1 "Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife."
- "The Difference betwixt a Court and a Country Life. The Delights, Innocence, and Security of the One, Compar'd with the Anxiety, the Lewdness, and the Hazards of the Other." [tr. L'Estrange (1692)]
- "Give me my barley-bread in peace and security before the daintiest feast where Fear and Care are in waiting." [tr. James (1848)]
- "A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety."
According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to … first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, so far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice, and thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain …
Adam Smith (1723-1790) Scottish economist
The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, ch. ix (1776)
Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo. Oh, a sense of sin comes from violating the customs of your tribe. But breaking custom is not sin even when it feels so; sin is wronging another person.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Glory Road (1963)
I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.
Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) English author, translator
Gaudy Night, ch. 2 [De Vine to Harriet] (1936)
I consider myself 40 percent Catholic and 60 percent Baptist … but I’m in favor of every religion, with the possible exception of snake-chunking. Anybody that so presumes on how he stands with Providence that he will let a snake bite him, I say he deserves what he’s got coming to him.
Earl Kemp Long (1895-1960) American politician, orator.
(Attributed)Quoted in The New Yorker (4 Jun 1960)
Every man has his dignity. I’m willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) French editor, philosopher
Le Neveu de Rameau [Rameau’s Nephew] (1762)
It is not necessary to be great to be happy; it is not necessary to be rich to be just and generous and to have a heart filled with divine affection. No matter whether you are rich or poor, treat your wife as though she were a splendid flower, and she will fill your life with perfume and with joy.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child” (1877)
(Source)
The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Virginibus Puerisque, “Virginibus Puerisque,” sec. 4 (1881)
(Source)
Nuts didn’t need religion to make them nuts, Allison had long since decided, but it did seem to give them a certain added sense of commitment to whatever goals their nutdom decided to embrace.
David Weber (b. 1952) American writer
Ashes of Victory, ch. 14 (2000)
There is far too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot.
Derek Bok (b. 1930) American lawyer, educator
Report to Harvard Board of Overseers (21 Apr 1983)
Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.
[Stultum facit fortuna, quem vult perdere.]
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 911From an ancient Greek proverb (5th century BC or earlier)
It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few individuals for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular assessment of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
Interview, Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (1921)
There’s a gigantic gray area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities. I call that the Weasel Zone and it’s where most of life happens.
Scott Adams (b. 1957) American cartoonist
Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel (2002)
317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way.
G. H. Hardy (1877-1947) British mathematician [Godfrey Harold Hardy]
A Mathematician’s Apology (1941)
Indeed, justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
Alexander Solzhenitsen (1918-2008) Russian novelist, emigre [Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn]
Letter to three students (Oct 1967)
