The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
James Thurber (1894-1961) American cartoonist and writer
“The Duchess and the Bugs”, Lanterns & Lances (1961)
A "response" to an award Thurber received from the Ohioana Library Association in 1953.
A still small voice spake unto me,
“Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?”
Then to the still small voice I said;
‘Let me not cast in endless shade
What is so wonderfully made.’Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) English poet
“The Two Voices,” st. 1-2 (1842)
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
(Attributed)
There is no such thing as a value-free concept of deviance; to say homosexuals are deviant because they are a statistical minority is, in practice, to stigmatize them. Nuns are rarely classed as deviants for the same reason, although if they obey their vows they clearly differ very significantly from the great majority of people.
Dennis Altman (b. 1943) Australian sociologist, activist
The Homosexualization of America, ch. 1 (1982)
It is as much the duty of government to render prompt justice against itself, in favor of citizens, as it is to administer the same between private individuals.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
First Annual Message to Congress (3 Dec 1861)
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) American novelist
“Red Wind” (1938)
Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.
But to live, — to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered, — this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour, — this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) American author
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, ch. 38 “The Victory” (1852)
(Source)
I happen to feel that the degree of a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.
Lisa Alther (b. 1944) American novelist
Kinflicks, ch. 7 [Ginny Babcock] (1976)
You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
Mario Cuomo (1932-2015) American politician
In Fred Barnes, “Meet Mario the Moderate,” New Republic (8 Apr 1985)
This looks to be the first printed source for this maxim of Cuomo's, though he had been using it for a while. An earlier version: "We campaign in poetry, but when we're elected we're forced to govern in prose." Sometimes attributed to Nixon. See here for more discussion.
I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Comment (14 Sep 1773)
In James Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786)
It is not enough to be a good player; you must also play well.
Savielly Tartakower (1887-1956) Russian chess grandmaster
(Attributed)
A society that refuses to strive for superfluities is likely to end up lacking in necessities. The readiness to work springs from trivial, questionable motives.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Working and Thinking on the Waterfront (1969)
The ideals men die for often become the prejudices their descendants kill for.
Paul Eldridge (1888-1982) American educator, novelist, poet
Maxims for a Modern Man, #1439 (1965)
But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state.
[εἰ γὰρ μὴ αὐτάρκης ἕκαστος χωρισθείς, ὁμοίως τοῖς ἄλλοις μέρεσιν ἕξει πρὸς τὸ ὅλον, ὁ δὲ μὴ δυνάμενος κοινωνεῖν ἢ μηθὲν δεόμενος δι᾿ αὐτάρκειαν οὐθὲν μέρος πόλεως, ὥστε ἢ θηρίον ἢ θεός.]
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Politics [Πολιτικά], Book 1, ch. 2, sec. 14 / 1253a.27 [tr. Jowett (1885)]
(Source)
Original Greek. Alternate translations:
- "But the man who has not the capability of association, or requires nothing from outside through his own complete resources, is no part of a state; so that he must be either a brute (below the level of man), or a God (above it)." [tr. Bolland (1877)]
- "He that is incapable of society, or so complete in himself as not to want it, makes no part of a city, as a beast or a god." [tr. Ellis (1912)]
- "A man who is incapable of entering into partnership, or who is so self-sufficing that he has no need to do so, is no part of a state, so that he must be either a lower animal or a god." [tr. Rackham (1932)]
- "One who is incapable of participating or who is in need of nothing through being self-sufficient is no part of a city, and so is either a beast or a god." [tr. Lord (1984)]
- "Anyone who cannot live in a community with others, or who does not need to because of his self-sufficiency, is no part of a city, so that he is either a wild beast or a god." [tr. Reeve (2007)]
- "If each person when separated is not sufficient on his own, just as other parts are to the whole while a person who is incapable of joining commonwealth or does not need any part of a state because of self-sufficiency is either a beast or a god." [tr. @sentantiq (2018)]
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
Barbara W. Tuchman (1912-1989) American historian and author
The Guns of August (1962)
On the defense of coastline prior to an outbreak of war.
The tusks which clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls.
The sword of Charlemagne the Just
Is Ferric Oxide, known as rust.
The grizzly bear, whose potent hug,
Was feared by all, is now a rug.
Great Caesar’s bust is on the shelf,
And I don’t feel so well myself.Arthur Guiterman (1871-1943) American poet, humorist
“On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness”
Full text.
God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.
[Dieu se manifeste à nous au premier degré à travers la vie de l’univers, et au deuxième degré à travers la pensée de l’homme. La deuxième manifestation n’est pas moins sacrée que la première. La première s’appelle la Nature, la deuxième s’appelle l’Art.]
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
William Shakespeare, Part 1, Book 2, ch. 1 (1864)
If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition. And then admit that we just don’t want to do it.
Stephen Colbert (b. 1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian
“Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat,” The Colbert Report (16 Dec 2010)
Full video.
The love of money is the mother of all evil.
It is reputed that Mr. Disraeli when he was once asked by a new member whether he advised him to take part often in debate replied: — No, I do not think you ought to do so, because it is much better that the House should wonder why you do not speak than why you do. My advice in this matter is very much the same as that given by Mr. Disraeli; it is much better when a member resumes his seat after he has made a speech for the House to have the feeling that they wish he had gone on longer instead of wondering why he did not stop sooner.
Edward Algernon Fitzroy (1869–1943) British politician
Remarks, House of Commons (25 May 1939)
I have some obsession with how God exists. Is He an essential god or an existential god; is He all-powerful or is He, too, an embattled existential creature who may succeed or fail in His vision?
Norman Mailer (1923-2007) American novelist, journalist, playwright, activist
Interview by Steven Marcus (1963)
In G. Plimpton, ed., Writers at Work: Third Series (1967)
Art has to be a kind of confession. I don’t mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. The effort it seems to me, is: if you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too — the terms with which they are connected to other people.
James Baldwin (1924-1987) American novelist, playwright, activist
In Studs Terkel, “An interview with James Baldwin” (1961)
Published in Conversations with James Baldwin (1989)
It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Hubert Horatio Humphrey (1911-1978) American politician
Remarks, Dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building (1 Nov 1977)
Cited in the Congressional Register, vol. 123, p. 37287 (4 Nov 1977)
A man who keeps a diary pays,
Due toll to many tedious days;
But life becomes eventful — then,
His busy hand forgets the pen.
Most books, indeed, are records less
Of fulness than of emptiness.William Allingham (1824–1889) Irish poet, diarist
Diary (1864-03-24/28) [eds. Allingham and Radford (1907)]
Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
The Bible (The New Testament) (AD 1st - 2nd C) Christian sacred scripture
Luke 14:11
Now I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance — a sharp, vindictive glance.
James Thurber (1894-1961) American cartoonist and writer
“My Senegalese Birds and Siamese Cats,” Holiday Magazine
Reprinted in Lanterns & Lances (1961).
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last — far off — at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) English poet
“In Memoriam A. H. H.” [Arthur Henry Hallam], part 54, st. 5 (1849)
When religion becomes organzied, man ceases to be free. It is not God that is worshiped but the group or the authority that claims to speak in his name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority and not violation of integrity.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) Indian philosopher, statesman
East and West: Some Reflections, Preface (1955)
(Source)
Variants:
- "It is not God that is worshiped but the authority that claims to speak in His name."
- An expanded version in Religion, Science and Culture, ch. 3 "The World Communities of Ideals" (1965) includes an inserted second sentence: "If we think that it is a question of life or death -- what concept of God we accept -- then our hearts are filled with fury."
My experience in government is that when things are noncontroverial, beautifully coordinated, and all the rest, it must be that not much is going on.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) US President (1961-63)
In A. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 25.3 (1965)
There is no bad whiskey, there are only some whiskies that aren’t as good as others.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) American novelist
(Attributed)
Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action to ensure our strength tomorrow.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
State of the Union message (9 Jan 1958)
Religions are kept alive by heresies, which are really sudden explosions of faith. Dead religions do not produce them.
Gerald Brenan (1894-1987) British writer and Hispanist [Edward FitzGerald Brenan]
Thoughts in a Dry Season (1978)
How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Taxation No Tyranny (1775)
On American demands for independence.
The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made.
Savielly Tartakower (1887-1956) Russian chess grandmaster
(Attributed)
The significant point is that people unfit for freedom — who cannot do much with it — are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a “have” type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a “have-not” type of self. If Hitler had had the talents and the temperament of a genuine artist, if Stalin had had the capacity to become a first-rate theoretician, if Napoleon had had the makings of a great poet or philosopher they would hardly have developed the all-consuming lust for absolute power.
Freedom gives us a chance to realize our human and individual uniqueness. Absolute power can also bestow uniqueness: to have absolute power is to have the power to reduce all the people around us to puppets, robots, toys, or animals, and be the only man in sight. Absolute power achieves uniqueness by dehumanizing others.To sum up: Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, Journal entry (28 March 1959)(1969)
A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.
Arthur W. Radford (1896-1973) American naval commander
Time (25 Feb 1957)
The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man, to idols of flesh and blood.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man, to idols of flesh and blood. — Shaw, Man and Superman, “Maxims for Revolutionists: Idolatry” (1903)
Our nature abhors a moral and intellectual vacuum. Passion and self-interest may be our chief motives, but we hate to admit the fact even to ourselves. We are not happy unless our acts of passion can be made to look as though they were dictated by reason, unless our self-interest can be explained and embellished so as to seem idealistic.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“Writers and Readers,” The Olive Tree and Other Essays (1936)
From these things therefore it is clear that the city-state is a natural growth, and that man is by nature a political animal, and a man that is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either low in the scale of humanity or above it, like the “clanless, lawless, hearthless” man reviled by Homer, for one by nature unsocial is also ‘a lover of war’ inasmuch as he is solitary, like an isolated piece at draughts.
[ἐκ τούτων οὖν φανερὸν ὅτι τῶν φύσει ἡ πόλις ἐστί, καὶ ὅτι ὁ ἄνθρωπος φύσει πολιτικὸν ζῷον, καὶ ὁ ἄπολις διὰ φύσιν καὶ οὐ διὰ τύχην ἤτοι φαῦλός ἐστιν, ἢ κρείττων ἢ ἄνθρωπος: ὥσπερ καὶ ὁ ὑφ᾽ Ὁμήρου λοιδορηθεὶς “ἀφρήτωρ ἀθέμιστος ἀνέστιος:” ἅμα γὰρ φύσει τοιοῦτος καὶ πολέμου ἐπιθυμητής, ἅτε περ ἄζυξ ὢν ὥσπερ ἐν πεττοῖς.]
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Politics [Πολιτικά], Book 1, ch. 2 / 1253a.2 [tr. Rackham (1932)]
(Source)
See Homer. Original Greek. Alternate translations:
From these considerations, therefore, it is clear that the State is one of Nature's productions, and that man is by nature a social animal, and that a man who is without a country through natural taste and not misfortune is certainly degraded (or else a being superior to man), like that man reviled by Homer as clanless, lawless, homeless. For he is naturally of this character and desirous of war, since he has no ties, like an exposed piece in the game of backgammon.
[tr. Bolland (1877)]
Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the "tribeless, lawless, hearthless one," whom Homer denounces -- the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war; he may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts.
[tr. Jowett (1885)]
Hence it is evident that a city is a natural production, and that man is naturally a political animal, and that whosoever is naturally and not accidentally unfit for society, must be either inferior or superior to man: thus the man in Homer, who is reviled for being "without society, without law, without family." Such a one must naturally be of a quarrelsome disposition, and as solitary as the birds.
[tr. Ellis (1912)]
From these things it is evident, then, that the city belongs among the things that exist by nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. He who is without a city through nature rather than chance is either a mean sort or superior to man; he is "without clan, without law, without hearth," like the person reproved by Homer; for the one who is such by nature has by this fact a desire for war, as if he were an isolated piece in a game of backgammon.
[tr. Lord (1984)]
You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Misérables is written for all nations. I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: “Open to me, I come for you.”
[Vous avez raison, monsieur, quand vous me dites que le livre les Misérables est écrit pour tous les peuples. Je ne sais s’il sera lu par tous, mais je l’ai écrit pour tous. Il s’adresse à l’Angleterre autant qu’à l’Espagne, à l’Italie autant qu’à la France, à l’Allemagne autant qu’à l’Irlande, aux républiques qui ont des esclaves aussi bien qu’aux empires qui ont des serfs. Les problèmes sociaux dépassent les frontières. Les plaies du genre humain, ces larges plaies qui couvrent le globe, ne s’arrêtent point aux lignes bleues ou rouges tracées sur la mappemonde. Partout où l’homme ignore et désespère, partout où la femme se vend pour du pain, partout où l’enfant souffre faute d’un livre qui l’enseigne et d’un foyer qui le réchauffe, le livre les Misérables frappe à la porte et dit: Ouvrez-moi, je viens pour vous.]
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Letter To M. Daelli on Les Misérables (18 Oct 1862)
Any departure from absolute regimentation may cause trouble. Any variation from the majority’s opinion may inspire fear. Any word spoken, in class, in the lunchroom, or on the campus, that deviates from the view of another person may start an argument or cause a disturbance. But our Constitution says we must take this risk, and our history says that it is this sort of hazardous freedom — this kind of openness — that isthe basis of our national strength and of the independence and vigor of Americans who grow up and live in this relatively permissive, often disputatious, society.
Abraham Fortas (1910-1982) American Supreme Court Justice, professor, lawyer
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 508 (1969) [Majority opinion]
Full text.
Words can become idols, and machines can become idols; leaders, the state, power, and political groups may also serve. Science and the opinion of one’s neighbors can become idols, and God has become an idol for many.
Erich Fromm (1900-1980) American psychoanalyst and social philosopher
Psychoanalysis and Religion, ch. 5 (1950)
I believe we shall in some manner to be cherished by our Maker — that the One who gave us this remarkable earth has the power still farther to surprise that which He has caused. Beyond that all is silence.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American poet
Letter to her cousins (Nov 1882)
All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.
James Baldwin (1924-1987) American novelist, playwright, activist
“The Precarious Vogue of Ingmar Bergman,” Esquire (Apr 1960)
Republished as "The Northern Protestant" in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961).
We can’t use a double standard — there’s no room for double standards in American politics — for measuring our own and other people’s policies. Our demands for democratic practices in other lands will be no more effective than the guarantee of those practices in our own country.
Hubert Horatio Humphrey (1911-1978) American politician
Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia (14 Jul 1948)
No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there — well or poorly.
Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) Russian-American poet, essayist, Nobel laureate, US Poet Laureate [Iosif Aleksandrovič Brodskij]
New York Times (1 Oct 1972)
On being expelled from the USSR that year.
We are now again in an epoch of wars of religion, but a religion is now called an “ideology.”
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
“Philosophy and Politics” (1946)
Nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little.
Epicurus (341-270 BC) Greek philosopher
Fragments, 68
“To hell with the handkerchief,” said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.
James Thurber (1894-1961) American cartoonist and writer
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (1942)
O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shriveled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) English poet
“In Memoriam A. H. H.” [Arthur Henry Hallam],” Part 54, st. 1-3 (1849)
The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong. If the Government or majorities think an individual is right, no one will interfere with him; but when agitators talk against the things considered holy, or when radicals criticise, or satirize the political gods, or question the justice of our laws and institutions, or pacifists talk against war, how the old inquisition awakens, and ostracism, the excommunication of the church, the prison, the wheel, the torture-chamber, the mob, are called to suppress the free expression of thought.
Harry Weinberger (1888–1944) American lawyer, civil libertarian
“The First Casualties in War,” Letter to the Editor, The Evening Post, New York City (10 Apr 1917)
By ideology I mean a body of systematic and rigid dogma by which people seek to understand the world — and to preserve or transform it.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007) American historian, author, social critic
“The One Against the Many,” Paths to American Thought, ed. Schlesinger and Morton White (1963)
If all men were just, there would still be some, though not so much, need of government.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
“Fragments on Government” (1854?)
In Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1832-1858, Library of America ed. (1989)
Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production, and in the end not even that, since showmanship on the most frankly commercial level contains an element of incessant striving for perfection, if it be only a perfection of detail.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) American novelist
The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler [ed. Frank MacShayne] (1976)
The number of those men who know how to use wholly irresponsible power humanely and generously is small.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) American author
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, ch. 29 “The Unprotected” (1852)
(Source)