The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
(Attributed)
 
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The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
(Attributed)
 
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Godzilla’s approach
My mouth agape in horror
I just bought that car

(Other Authors and Sources)
Donald A. Macpherson
 
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I have never found, in a long experience of politics, that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.

Harold Macmillan
Harold Macmillan (1894-1986) British politician, UK Prime Minister (1957-63)
Wall Street Journal (13 Aug 1963)
 
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It is right to be contented with what we have, but never with what we are.

Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) Scottish administrator, jurist, philosopher
(Attributed)
 
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TV is passive; computers are active. TV is just a really, really good screensaver.

William "Bill" Machrone (1946-2016) American technology columnist, editor
PC Week
 
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I find that doing the will of God leaves me with no time for disputing about His plans — I do not say for thinking about them.

George MacDonald (1824-1905) Scottish novelist, poet
The Marquis of Lossie, ch. 72 (1877)
    (Source)
 
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Men are very apt to deceive themselves in generals, less so than in particulars.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
(Attributed)
 
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People are fickle by nature; and it is simple to convince them of something, but difficult to hold them in that conviction.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
(Attributed)
 
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Men are so simple and so ready to obey present necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
The Prince, “In What Way Princes Must Keep Faith”
 
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God is merciful. He will not do everything and thus take away our free will and that share of glory that belongs to us.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
(Attributed)
 
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The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
(Attributed)
 
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The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
History of England, vol. 1, ch. 3 (1849)
 
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Many politicians are in the habit of laying down as self-evident the proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. This maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim! If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
“John Milton,” Edinburgh Review (Aug 1825)
    (Source)
 
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Hampden, on the other hand, was for vigorous and decisive measures. When he drew the sword, as Clarendon has well aid, he threw away the scabbard. He had shown that he knew better than any public man of his time how to value and how to practice moderation. He knew that the essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is imbecility.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
“John Hampden,” Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review, Vol. 1 (1843)
    (Source)

Review of Lord Nugent, Some Memorials of John Hampden, His Party, and His Times (1831).
 
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There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) American general
(Attributed)
 
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The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can’t ignore it, top it; if you can’t top it, laugh at it; if you can’t laugh at it, it’s probably deserved.

Russell Lynes
J. Russell Lynes (1910-1991) American educator, critic, writer
(Attributed)
 
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I am a confirmed believer in blessings in disguise. I prefer them undisguised when I myself happen to be the person blessed; in fact I can hardly recognize a blessing in disguise except when it is bestowed upon someone else.

Robert Lynd (1892-1970) American sociologist [Robert Slaughton Lynd]
Middletown
 
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I would rather be ruled by a wise Turk than a Christian donkey.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) German religious reformer
(Attributed)
 
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If you are not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) German religious reformer
(Attributed)
 
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Such are the evils made acceptable by Religion!

[Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.]

Lucretius (c. 100-c. 55 BC) Roman poet [Titus Luretius Carus]
De Rerum Natura [On the Nature of Things], I.101
 
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In the final analysis there is no solution to man’s progress but the day’s honest work, the day’s honest decisions, the day’s generous utterances and the day’s good deed.

Clare Booth Luce
Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987) American dramatist, diplomat, politician
(Attributed)
 
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There is a major disaster when a person allows some success to become a stopping place rather than a way station on to a larger goal. It often happens that an early success is a
greater moral hazard than an early failure.

Halford E. Luccock (1885-1960) American theologian
(Attributed)
 
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Ingenious fools too clever to be wise, though brilliant at inventing the most ingenious reasons for their fatuous beliefs. But, tiresome as intellectuals can be, even they are probably much less menacing and pernicious to the world than anti-intellectuals.

F L Lucas
F. L. Lucas (1894-1967) British literary writer, editor, poet [Frank Laurence Lucas]
The Search for Good Sense, “Johnson” (1958)
 
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[C]ommunication [can be] more difficult than we may think. We are all serving life sentences of solitary confinement within our bodies; like prisoners, we have, as it were, to tap in awkward code to our fellow men in their neighboring cells.

F L Lucas
F. L. Lucas (1894-1967) British literary writer, editor, poet [Frank Laurence Lucas]
(Attributed)
 
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Many worthy people, and many good books, with no doubt the best intentions, … have represented a life of sin as a life of pleasure; they have pictured virtue as self-sacrifice, austerity as religion. Even in everyday life we meet with worthy people who seem to think that whatever is pleasant must be wrong, that the true spirit of religion is crabbed, sour, and gloomy; that the bright, sunny, radiant nature which surrounds us is an evil and not a blessing,

John Lubbock, Lord Avebury (1834-1913) British banker, politician, polymath
The Use of Life (1894)
 
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The bestialities unleashed in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya provide evidence, if such be needed, that barbarism is just below the integument in all human societies, whatever their purported moral values or avowed religious persuasions.

Bernard Lown (1921-2021) Lithuanian-American cardiologist, inventor, Nobel Prize Laureate
Technology Review (18 Aug 1995)
 
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This imputation of inconsistency is one to which every sound politician and every honest thinker must sooner or later subject himself. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American diplomat, essayist, poet
“Abraham Lincoln” (1864), My Study Windows (1871)
    (Source)
 
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Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American diplomat, essayist, poet
(Attributed)
 
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In creating, the only hard thing’s to begin; a grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American diplomat, essayist, poet
A Fable for Critics (1848)
 
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I don’t like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves.

Joe Louis
Joe Louis (1914-1981) American boxer [Joseph Louis Barrow]
(Attributed)
 
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It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven’t lost the things money can’t buy.

George Horace Lorimer (1867-1937) American journalist, author, magazine editor
Old Gorgon Graham: More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son, ch. 12 (1903)
    (Source)
 
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The average person thinks he isn’t.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Fr. Larry Lorenzoni
 
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Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

Sophia Loren (b. 1934) Italian actress [Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone]
(Attributed)
 
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I’m furious about the Women’s Liberationists. They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That’s true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.

Anita Loos (1893-1981) American screenwriter, dramatist, author
London Observer (30 Dec. 1973)
 
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Men of genius are often dull and inert in society, as a blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Kavanaugh: A Tale, ch. 13 (1849)
    (Source)
 
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We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Kavanagh: A Tale, ch. 1 (1849)
    (Source)
 
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We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad, funeral tapers
May be heaven’s distant lamps.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
(Attributed)
 
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Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
“Life is but an empty dream!”
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
A Psalm of Life
 
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The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature — were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk,” Driftwood (1857)
    (Source)
 
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Nature is a revelation of God; Art a revelation of man.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
(Attributed)
 
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Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrow which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Hyperion: A Romance, 3.4 (1839)
 
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Trust no future, however pleasant!
Let the dead past bury its dead!
Act, — act in the living Present!
Heart within and God overhead.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
(Attributed)
 
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The grave is but a covered bridge leading from light to light, through a brief darkness.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
A Covered Bridge at Lucerne
 
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Since everything in life is but an experience perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.

Long Chen Pa (fl. 14th C.) Tibetan Dzogchen master
(Attributed)
 
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Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.

Jack London (1876-1916) American novelist
“Getting into Print,” The Editor Magazine (1903)

Often misquoted as "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." Reprinted in J. Reeve, Practical Authorship (1905).
 
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If you don’t play to win, why bother to keep score?

Adolph Rupp
Adolph Rupp (1901-1977) American college basketball coach
Comment (11 Jun 1958)

Rupp frequently returned to this phrase, usually in response to someone quoting to him from Grantland Rice's "Alumnus Football" (paraphrased, "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, but how you play the game").

Variations:

  • "If it doesn't matter who wins or loses, then what in the hell is that scoreboard doing up there?"
  • "If it doesn't matter, then why does every school have a scoreboard? If it doesn't matter who wins why do 25,000 football fans follow a team 400 miles and sit in eight inches of snow to watch the game?" [Source]
  • "If winning isn't so important, why do they keep score?" [Source]
Rupp wasn't necessarily the originator of this thought. Clair Bee, another US college basketball coach, said during the CCNY Point Shaving Scandal that ended his career, "If the kids aren't playing for keeps, why keep score?" (20 Feb 1951).

Sometimes attributed to Vince Lombardi.

More discussion of this quotation: The Big Apple: “If winning isn’t important, why keep score?”
 
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If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

Vince Lombardi (1913-1970) American football coach
(Attributed)
 
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It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.

Vince Lombardi (1913-1970) American football coach
(Attributed)
 
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The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it.

Vince Lombardi (1913-1970) American football coach
(Attributed)
 
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Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.

Vince Lombardi (1913-1970) American football coach
(Attributed)
 
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I never lost a football game. Once in a while time ran out.

Vince Lombardi (1913-1970) American football coach
(Attributed)
 
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Possibly if a true estimate were made of the morality and religions of the world, we should find that the far greater part of mankind received even those opinions and ceremonies they would die for, rather from the fashions of their countries and the constant practice of those about them than from any conviction of their reasons.

John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher
“On Education”
 
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The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher
(1693)
 
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