When hope is taken away from the people, moral degeneration follows swiftly after. Young colored men and women today are giving up hope of justice or security In their own country.
Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) American writer
Letter to the Editor, The New York Times (1941-11-22)
(Source)
Responding to a Times editorial (1941-11-12) regarding rising crime in Harlem, which she blamed on systemic racism in the US.
An honest Man’s the noblest work of God.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet
“An Essay on Man,” 4.248 (1734)
Some people did not like this ceremonious style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
The Second World War, Volume 3: The Grand Alliance, ch. 32 “Pearl Harbor” (1950)
On his closing his 8 Dec 1941 letter to the Japanese ambassador, informing him of the state of war between the UK and Japan, with "I have the honour to be, with high consideration, Sir, Your obedient servant."
CHORUS: It is restful, tragedy, because one knows that there is no more lousy hope left. You know you’re caught, caught at last like a rat with all the world on its back. And the only thing left to do is shout — not moan, or complain, but yell out at the top of your voice whatever it was you had to say. What you’ve never said before. What perhaps you don’t even know till now.
Jean Anouilh (1910-1987) French dramatist
Antigone (1942)
Human beings have a strong tendency toward rationality and decency. (If they had not, they would not desire to legitimize their prejudices and their passions.)
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“Writers and Readers,” The Olive Tree and Other Essays (1936)
Honour and profit lie not in one sacke.
George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 232 (1640 ed.)
(Source)
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” I am rarely satisfied with my lines, but I own that I have a father’s tenderness for that one.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Letter to M. Saurin (10 Nov 1770)
We for a certainty are not the first
Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.A. E. Housman (1859-1936) English scholar and poet [Alfred Edward Housman]
Last Poems, No. 9, st. 3 (1922)
Full text.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) American journalist, writer
“Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl,” Rolling Stone, #155 (28 Feb 1974)
He stamped with his name a tendency, a whole cluster of tendencies in American life. The name survives. To many Americans, whatever is illiberal, anti-intellectual, repressive, reactionary, totalitarian or merely swinish will hereafter be McCarthyism. The word is imprecise, but it conveys a meaning and a powerful image.
Richard H. Rovere (1915-1979) American journalist
“The Frivolous Demagogue,” Esquire (Jun 1958)
On Senator Joseph R McCarthy.
Greed for ownership has taken such a hold of us that we seem to be possessed by wealth rather than to possess it.
Pliny the Younger (c. 61-c. 113) Roman politician, writer [Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus]
Letters, 9.30 [tr. Radice (1963)]
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
James Thurber (1894-1961) American cartoonist and writer
“The Bear Who Let It Alone”, The New Yorker (29 April 1939)
For friend and foe were shadows in the mist,
And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;
And some had visions out of golden youth,
And some beheld the faces of old ghosts
Look in upon the battle; and in the mist
Was many a noble deed, many a base,
And chance and craft and strength in single fights,
And ever and anon with host to host
Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn,
Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash
Of battleaxes on shattered helms, and shrieks
After the Christ, of those who falling down
Looked up for heaven, and only saw the mist;
And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights,
Oaths, insults, filth, and monstrous blasphemies,
Sweat, writhings, anguish, labouring of the lungs
In that close mist, and cryings for the light,
Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead.Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) English poet
Idylls of the King, “The Passing of Arthur” (1859-1885)
Full text.
In crises boldness is the safest course. Hesitation encourages the adversary to persevere, maybe even to raise the ante.
Henry Kissinger (b. 1923) German-American diplomat
White House Years, ch. 9 (1979)
No condition so low but may have Hopes; none so high but may have Fears.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #3555 (1732)
(Source)
Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues; hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) Christian church father, philosopher, saint [b. Aurelius Augustinus]
(Attributed)
I’ve seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the Fair Deal, and says he really doesn’t believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don’t want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.
Harry S Truman (1884-1972) US President (1945-1953)
Address, Americans for Democratic Action Convention (17 May 1952)
Full text.
It is a supreme test of a system of government whether its machinery is adequate for repressing the selfish undertakings of cliques formed on special interests and saving the public from raids of plunderers.
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) American minister, sociologist, anthropologist.
Folkways, 167 (1907)
The hand of the people has given the mortal blow to a conspiracy, which, in other countries would have called for an appeal to armies; and has proved that government to be the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to H. D. Tiffin (2 Feb 1807)
(Source)
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it is politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it is popular?” But Conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Speech, Santa Rita, Calif., (14 Jan 1968)
Recording (at 10:22). King reused speech elements frequently. The same passage can be found in "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution", sermon at the National Cathedral, Washington, DC (31 Mar 1968).
When the issue is one of Truth and Justice, there can be no differentiating between small problems and great ones. For the general viewpoints on human behaviour are indivisible. People who fail to regard the truth seriously in small matters, cannot be trusted in matters that are great.
[Wenn es sich um Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit handelt, gibt es nicht die Unterscheidung zwischen kleinen und grossen Problemen. Denn die allgemeinen Gesichtspunkte, die das Handeln der Menschen betreffen, sind unteilbar. Wer es in kleinen Dingen mit der Wahrheit nicht ernst nimmt, dem kann man auch in grossen Dingen nicht vertrauen …]
Because the Bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world: the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.
James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
“A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” letter to the Virginia Assembly (20 Jun 1785)
On a proposed law to have the state financially support "Teachers of the Christian Religion."
Full text.
Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.
George Washington (1732-1799) American military leader, Founding Father, US President (1789-1797)
(Attributed)
As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical “American heritage” — economic oversight, price-fixing, “government in business”, etc. recur often in American colonial history) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) American fabulist [Howard Phillips Lovecraft]
Letter to C. L. Moore (Aug 1936)
The great principle of morality, “To do as one would be done to,” is more commended than practiced.
John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.2.7 (1690) [ed. Fraser (1894)]
See the Bible, Matthew 7:12.
By noon it was clear that the Socialists would have a majority. At luncheon my wife said to me, ‘It may well be a blessing in disguise.’ I replied, ‘At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.’
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
The Second World War, Volume 6: Triumph and Tragedy, ch. 40 “The End of My Account” (1954)
On the landslide electoral defeat that turned him out of office (26 Jul 1945).
ARCHBISHOP: With God, what is terrible is that one never knows whether it’s not just a trick of the devil.
Jean Anouilh (1910-1987) French dramatist
The Lark [L’Alouette] (1952)
It’s all right to hesitate if you then go ahead!
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) German poet, playwright, director, dramaturgist
The Good Person of Szechwan [Der gute Mensch von Sezuan], Prologue (1941) [tr. Bentley (1947)]
Because the establishment proposed by the Bill is not requisite for the support of the Christian Religion. To say that it is, is a contradiction to the Christian Religion itself, for every page of it disavows a dependence on the powers of this world: it is a contradiction to fact; for it is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them, and not only during the period of miraculous aid, but long after it had been left to its own evidence and the ordinary care of Providence. Nay, it is a contradiction in terms; for a Religion not invented by human policy, must have pre-existed and been supported, before it was established by human policy.
James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
“A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” letter to the Virginia Assembly (20 Jun 1785)
On a proposed law to have the state financially support "Teachers of the Christian Religion." Full text.
We are here to help God, to do His work, to remedy His old errors, to strive towards Godhead ourselves.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Letter to Leo Tolstoy (1909)
Nature, not content with denying to Mr — the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing.
A. E. Housman (1859-1936) English scholar and poet [Alfred Edward Housman]
In L. Houseman, A. E. H. (1937)
From a list of insults drafted by A. E. Housman, posthumously published. The name was left blank in the original, with the intent to fill it in when used later on a target.
The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) American journalist, writer
“Kingdom of Fear” (12 Sep 2001)
The ocean has only one taste, the taste of salt.
Truth has only one taste, the taste of liberation.Buddha (c.563-483 BC) Indian mystic, philosopher [b. Siddharta Gautama]
The Dhammapada [tr. P. Lal (1967)]
Happy it is when the interest which the government has in the preservation of its own power, coincides with a proper distribution of the public burdens, and tends to guard the least wealthy part of the community from oppression!
Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) American statesman, author
The Federalist #36 (8 Jan 1788)
As a writer I have never been able to take myself with that enormous earnestness which is one of the trying characteristics of the craft.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) American novelist
Trouble Is My Business, Introduction (1950)
I believe that Providence would never have allowed us to see the victory of the Movement if it had the intention after all to destroy us at the end.
Adolph Hitler (1889-1945) German leader
Speech, Munich (8 Nov 1933)
McCarthy invented the Multiple Lie — the lie with so many tiny gears and fragile connecting rods that reason exhausted itself in the effort to combat it.
Richard H. Rovere (1915-1979) American journalist
“The Frivolous Demagogue,” Esquire (Jun 1958)
On Senator Joseph McCarthy.
We are all tattoed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je ne crois pas, mais je les crains, — “I don’t believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless.”
The secret of grand fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.
[Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait.]
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) French novelist, playwright
Le Père Goriot, Part 2 (1835) [tr. Marriage]
Often paraphrased as "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime."
In all candor, the Court fails to perceive any reason for suspending the power of courts to get evidence and rule on questions of privilege in criminal matters simply because it is the president of the United States who holds the evidence.
John J. Sirica (1904-1992) American jurist
Statement (15 Sep 1974)
On obtaining the Watergate tapes from President Richard M Nixon.
Discouraged not by difficulties without, or the anguish of ages within, the heart listens to a secret voice that whispers, “Be not dismayed; in the future lies the Promised Land.”
Helen Keller (1880-1968) American author and lecturer
(Attributed)
In Upton Sinclair, ed., The Cry for Justice, ch. 4 (1915)
Necessity may force you to do unto the prince that which you see the prince about to do to you.
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
The Discourses on Livy, Book 3, ch. 6 (1517) [tr. Detmold (1882)]
See Matthew 7:12.
LE CHEVALIER: One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose.
Jean Anouilh (1910-1987) French dramatist
Cécile (1954)
Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrine of the weak.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“Heretics and Heresies” (1874)
(Source)
We do not need to uplift our hands towards heaven, or to beg the keeper of a temple to let us approach his idol’s ear, as if in this way our prayers were more likely to be heard. God is near you, he is with you, he is within you.
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC-AD 65) Roman statesman, philosopher, playwright [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
Moral Letters to Lucilius [Epistulae morales ad Lucilium], letter 41, sec. 1 “On the God Within Us” [tr. Gummere (1918)]
And, what is worse, the reader often shares the writer’s prejudices, and is far too well pleased with his conclusions to examine either his premises or his reasoning. Stand on a barrel in the streets of Bagdad, and say in a loud voice, ‘Twice two is four, and ginger is hot in the mouth, therefore Mohammed is the prophet of God’, and your logic will probably escape criticism; or, if anyone should by chance criticise it, you could easily silence him by calling him a Christian dog.
A. E. Housman (1859-1936) English scholar and poet [Alfred Edward Housman]
“The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism”
You talk a great deal about building a better world for your children, but when you are young you can no more envision a world inherited by your children than you can conceive of dying. The society you mold, you mold for yourself. It was this way with my generation. We were unhappy with what we inherited and we tried to reshape it in ways that would make it more tolerable to us. You were not uppermost in our thoughts. Now, in middle age, some of us are trying to rewrite history. Some of us tell you, “We labored and dared and sacrificed — all for you — yet we hear no thanks.” You will not be unduly moved, I hope, by these laments. They are sentimental cries from persons so attached to the society they have rebuilt that they cannot bear the thought of seeing it overhauled by new proprietors.
Russell Baker (1925-2019) American journalist, author, humorist
“The Becoming Looseness of Doom,” There’s a Country in My Cellar (1990)
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929) American writer and poet
“America,” The Congregationalist (4 Jul 1895)
Bates wrote the lyrics as a poem, published as cited above (her original title was "Pikes Peak"). It was combined in 1910 with the 1882 tune "Materna" by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward (originally for the 17th Century hymn "O Mother dear, Jerusalem"), under the title "America the Beautiful."
There are some remedies worse than the disease.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 301 [tr. Lyman (1862)]
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
If This Goes On (1940)
When a man says he is Jesus or makes some other claim that seems to us outrageous, we call him psychotic and lock him up in the madhouse. Freedom of speech is only for normal people.
Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) Hungarian-American psychiatrist, educator
The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary “Schizophrenia” (1990)
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
James Thurber (1894-1961) American cartoonist and writer
“The Shrike and the Chipmunks”, The New Yorker (18 Feb 1939)
Often misquoted as "Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead."
Thou hast not true humility,
The highest virtue, mother of them all.Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) English poet
Idylls of the King, “The Holy Grail” (1859-1885)
Full text.
The more haste, the worse speed.
James Howell (c. 1594 - 1666) British historian and writer
Paroimiographia, “Italian” (1659)
The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent. Each of them tacitly claims that “the truth” has already been revealed, and that the heretic, if he is not simply a fool, is secretly aware of “the truth” and merely resists it out of selfish motives.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
“The Prevention of Literature” (Jan 1946)
