Some are very busy, and yet do nothing.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #4211 (1732)
(Source)
We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
New York Times (1960)
There is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
“Life without Principle,” Atlantic (Oct 1863)
Look at a man in the midst of doubt and danger, and you will lean in his hour of adversity what he really is. It is then that true utterances are wrung from the recesses of his breast. The mask is torn off; the reality remains.
Lucretius (c. 100-c. 55 BC) Roman poet [Titus Luretius Carus]
De Rerum Natura [On the Nature of Things], I. 55 [tr. Latham (1951)]
Where there’s Marriage without Love, there will be Love without Marriage.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1734 ed.)
(Source)
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, painter, writer, social thinker
The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture IV “The Future of England,” sec. 151 (1866)
Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in this world must first come to pass in the heart of America.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Inaugural Address (20 Jan 1953)
One who believes as I do, that free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism as much as to the Church of Rome. The hopes which inspire communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically and are as likely to do as much harm.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
“The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism” (1920)
Many a long dispute among Divines may be thus abridg’d, It is so; It is not so. It is so; It is not so.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (1743)
(Source)
To be gripped by fear is, I believe, the most degrading of all emotions for a human being. In fear personality disintegrates, the human will is paralyzed, and man acts as an automaton.
Anwar el-Sadat (1918-1981) Egyptian soldier and statesman
In Search of Identity (1978)
Some of her answers might excite popular prejudice, but if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. I think we should adhere to that principle with regard to admission into, as well as life within, this country.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644, 654-55 (1929)
You’ve got to be optimist to be a Democrat, and you’ve got to be a humorist to stay one.
Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Good Gulf radio show (24 June 1934)
Alcohol is like love: the first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you just take the girl’s clothes off.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) American novelist
The Long Good-bye, ch. 12 (1954)
Clever tyrants are never punished.
[Les habiles tyrans ne sont jamais punis.]Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Mérope, act V, sc. 5 (1743)
Speech is a kind of action.
Socrates (c.470-399 BC) Greek philosopher
In Plato, Cratylus (c. 360 BC)
tr. B. Jowett (1894)
At all times, day by day, we have to continue fighting for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom from want — for these are things that must be gained in peace as well as in war.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
My Day (15 Apr 1943)
The world is full of vulgar Purists, who bring discredit on all selection by the silliness of their choice; and this the more, because the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the ends of things.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, painter, writer, social thinker
The Stones of Venice, vol. II, ch. 6, sec. 62 (1853)
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
“Meditation on the Divine Will,” Speech Fragment (Sep 1862)
It is easier to behave your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of behaving.
(Other Authors and Sources)
“Kegley’s Principle of Change”
In J. Peers (ed.) 1,001 Logical Laws (1979)
No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Justice in War-Time (1916)
ELRIC: As I look at you, Ambassador Mollari, I see a great hand reaching out of the stars. The hand is your hand. And I hear sounds — the sounds of billions of people calling your name.
LONDO: My followers?
ELRIC: Your victims.J. Michael (Joe) Straczynski (b. 1954) American screenwriter, producer, author [a/k/a "JMS"]
Babylon 5, 2×03 “The Geometry of Shadows” (16 Nov 1994)
It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as indicating that that moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters, “Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,” or “Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.” They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
The Ball and the Cross, ch. 4 “A Discussion at Dawn” (1909)
Full text.
FANNY: It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.
All philosophical sects have run aground on the reef of moral and physical ill. It only remains for us to confess that God, having acted for the best, had not been able to do better.
[Toutes les sectes des philosophes ont échoué contre l’écueil du mal physique et moral. Il ne reste que d’avouer que Dieu ayant agi pour le mieux n’a pu agir mieux.]
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Dictionnaire philosophique, “Power, Omnipotence” (1785-1789)
We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) Polish-American writer, Nobel laureate (b. Icek-Hersz Zynger)
Interview with Richard Burgin, New York Times Magazine (26 Nov 1978)
My friends should drink a dozen of Claret on my Tomb.
John Keats (1795-1821) English poet
Letter to Benjamin Baily (14 Aug 1819)
The Devil doesn’t make us do anything. The Devil, for example, doesn’t make us mean. Rather, when we’re mean, we make the Devil. Literally. Our actions create him. Conversely, when we behave with compassion, generosity, and grace, we create God in the world.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)
Little by little it dawned upon me that this law was not making people drink any less, but it was making hypocrites and law breakers of a great number of people. It seemed to me best to go back to the old situation in which, if a man or woman drank to excess, they were injuring themselves and their immediate family and friends and the act was a violation against their own sense of morality and no violation against the law of the land.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
My Day (14 Jul 1939)
On Prohibition.
Pray to God and say the lines.
Bette Davis (1908-1989) American actor
(Attibuted)
Acting advice to actress Celeste Holm
To act is to affirm the worth of an end.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
“The Class of ’61,” speech on 50th anniversary of graduating from Harvard (28 Jun 1911)
I believe that that community is already in process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we are not enter our convictions into the open list, to win or lose. Such fears as these are a solvent which can eat out the cement that binds the stones together; they may in the end subject us to a despotism as evil as any that we dread; and they can be allayed only in so far as we refuse to proceed on suspicion, and trust one another until we have tangible ground for misgiving,
Learned Hand (1872-1961) American jurist
“A Plea for the Open Mind and Free Discussion,” speech, University of the State of New York, Albany (1952-10-24)
(Source)
Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) French philosopher and writer
The Social Contract, pt. III, ch. 15 (1762)
trans. G.D.H. Cole (1913)
Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, painter, writer, social thinker
Time and Tide, Letter VIII (1867)
To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
James Baldwin (1924-1987) American novelist, playwright, activist
“My Dungeon Shook,” The Fire Next Time (1963)
(Source)
Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Letter to Cecil Spring-Rice (12 Mar 1900)
To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.
Edmond Rostand (1868-1918) French playwright
Speech to the Académie française (1903)
Quoted in John Lahr, "Fighting and Writing," The New Yorker (12 Nov 2007).
The effect of the religious freedom Amendment to our Constitution was to take every form of propagation of religion out of the realm of things which could directly or indirectly be made public business, and thereby be supported in whole or in part at taxpayers’ expense. That is a difference which the Constitution sets up between religion and almost every other subject matter of legislation, a difference which goes to the very root of religious freedom and which the Court is overlooking today. This freedom was first in the Bill of Rights because it was first in the forefathers’ minds; it was set forth in absolute terms, and its strength is its rigidity. It was intended not only to keep the states’ hands out of religion, but to keep religion’s hands off the state, and, above all, to keep bitter religious controversy out of public life by denying to every denomination any advantage from getting control of public policy or the public purse.
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) US Supreme Court Justice (1941-54), lawyer, jurist, politician
Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 26-27 (1947) [dissent]
(Source)
The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, painter, writer, social thinker
Sesame and Lilies, lecture I: “Of Kings’ Treasures,” sec. 3 (1864-1865)
Tranquility is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) French philosopher and writer
The Social Contract, ch. 4 “Slavery” (1761)
Trans. G.D.H. Cole (1913). Full text.
Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
You Learn by Living (1960)
When anyone goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Charles Dickens, ch. 1 (1906)
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly — that is the first law of nature.
[Qu’est-ce que la tolérance? c’est l’apanage de l’humanité. Nous sommes tous pétris de faiblesses et d’erreurs; pardonnons-nous réciproquement nos sottises, c’est la première loi de la nature.]
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Dictionnaire philosophique portatif, “Tolerance” (1764)
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
Leo C. Rosten (1908-1997) Polish-American author and political scientist
Captain Newman, M.D. (1962)
Sometimes attributed to Leo Buscaglia, who often quoted it.
Our passions are like convulsion-fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet
“Thoughts on Various Subjects” (1727)
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
You Learn by Living (1960)
To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament for the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Anglo-Irish statesman, orator, philosopher
“Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents” (23 Apr 1770)
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in the belief, and perhaps in some respects both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me; for, unless I am more deceived in myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire to know the will of Providence in this matter. And if I can learn what it is I will do it! These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right. The subject is difficult, and good men do not agree.
Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience (in this case the judge or jury) that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
William O. Douglas (1898-1980) US Supreme Court justice (1939-75)
Dissent, Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown, 354 U.S. 436, 447 (1957)
The court ruled 5-4 to allow banning the sale of obscene books.
To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
State of the Union Address (3 Dec 1907)
Full text.
What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1963) German poet
Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (1960)
I used to say that, as Solicitor General, I made three arguments in every case. First came the one I had planned — as I thought, logical, coherent, complete. Second was the one actually presented — interrupted, incoherent, disjointed, disappointing. The third was the utterly devastating argument that I thought of after going to bed that night.
Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) US Supreme Court Justice (1941-54), lawyer, jurist, politician
“Advocacy Before the Supreme Court,” Morrison Lecture, California State Bar (23 Aug 1951)
(Source)
Reprinted in the Cornell Law Quarterly (Fall 1951). Legal citation "Advocacy Before the Supreme Court," 37 A.B.A.J. 801, 803 (1951).
Administrivia: Searching with Yahoo!
Google has been very slow to rebuild its indexing of WIST, for reasons I can’t quite figure out. Granted, I originally caused the problems by unintentionally blocking the Googlebots IPs, but I’ve had that fixed for a couple of months. Still, when I look at “visitors” I’m seeing only a handful of Googlebot hits.
Yahoo’s Yslurp bot, though, has been hitting WIST like crazy, so I’ve added a Yahoo search box in the sidebar as yet another way to search WIST.
As an example of the disparity, a search for “liberty” comes up with 137 results in Yahoo, 71 in Google. On the other hand, I like the Google results better — the Yahoo outputs include lots of bits here and there that aren’t WIST-oriented, and it picks up the page description in the results text every time, which is a bit annoying.
But, for the moment, Yahoo’s results counts are coming out better, so I’ll be leaving the box there for the time being.
When we’re incomplete, we’re always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we’re still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on — series polygamy — until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimension to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)