The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. It would be easy, however, to destroy that good conscience by shouting to them: if you want the happiness of the people, let them speak out and tell what kind of happiness they want and what kind they don’t want! But, in truth, the very ones who make use of such alibis know they are lies; they leave to their intellectuals on duty the chore of believing in them and of proving that religion, patriotism, and justice need for their survival the sacrifice of freedom.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
“Homage to an Exile” (1955)
Published as an essay in Actuelles III, originally a speech (7 Dec 1955) at a banquet in honor of President Eduardo Santos, editor of El Tiempo, driven out of Columbia by a dictatorship". Reprinted in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960).
Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure.
Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919-1988) American educator, diplomat
Inaugural address as President of Yale University (11 Apr 1964)
The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.
William Gibson (b. 1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and essayist
Comment (1990s)
Original use is unconfirmed, earliest reference is in 1992. See here.
It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Cats and Dogs” (1889)
(Source)
Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Italian artist, engineer, scientist, polymath
Note-books, 1 [tr. McCurdy (1908)]
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN’ SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn.
Joss Whedon (b. 1964) American screenwriter, author, producer [Joseph Hill Whedon]
Bronze Beta board (14 Feb 2004)
(Source)
Posted after learning the WB had canceled "Angel".
The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, “Daddy, I need to ask you something,” he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.
Garrison Keillor (b. 1942) American entertainer, author
The Book of Guys, Introduction (1993)
What a day-to-day affair life is.
Jules Laforgue (1860-1887) Franco-Uruguayan Symbolist poet
“Complainte sur certains ennuis,” Les Complaintes (1885)
I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) US President (1961-63)
Speech, Amherst College (26 Oct 1963)
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
“She Walks in Beauty,” st. 1 (1814), Hebrew Melodies (1815)
(Source)
You have no lease of your lives, and death is not bound to give you warning before it gives you that deadly blow that will send you to everlasting misery or everlasting felicity.
Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) English Puritan divine, writer
The Hypocrite Detected, Anatomized (1650)
So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Ends and Means (1937)
Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which is was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.
Jules Verne (1828-1905) French novelist, poet, playwright
Journey to the Center of the Earth [Voyage au centre de la Terre], ch. 30 [Liedenbrock] (1864)
(Source)
Alt. trans.: "Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth."
Perhaps the worst thing about suffering is that it finally hardens the hearts of those around it.
Gloria Steinem (b. 1934) American feminist, journalist, activist
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, “Ruth’s Song” (1983)
Success for the most part attends those who act boldly, not those who weigh everything, and are slow to venture.
Xerxes I (519-465 BC) King the Achaemenid Empire of Persia [Xerxes the Great]
In Herodotus, The Persian Wars, 7.50 [tr. Rawlinson (1942)]
“Oh, what would you like on your vegetarian pizza?”
“Dead pigs and cows,” I said.
She glanced up at me and wrinkled her nose.
“They’re vegetarians,” I said defensively.Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
Blood Rites (2004)
Great as our differences are, all of us — professors, politicians, preachers — would no doubt find that we had much in common after all if it were possible to meet in the flesh some distinguished representatives from a former age.
Carl L. Becker (1873-1945) American historian
The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-century Philosophers (1932)
I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a man by the way he handles these three things: a rainy holiday, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.
H. Jackson "Jack" Brown, Jr. (b. 1940) American writer
Live and Learn and Pass It On (1991)
Attributed by Brown to a 52-year old person. Often misattributed (with the phrase "rainy day") to Maya Angelou. For more see here.
I’m not procrastinating, I’m just waiting on my initiative.
Sig Lines
In love, in war, in conversation, in business, confidence and resolution are the principal things.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
Table Talk, “On the Qualifications Necessary to Success in Life” (1822)
Don’t take tomorrow to bed with you.
Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) American preacher, writer
Inspiring Messages for Daily Living (1981 ed.)
Science admits no exceptions; otherwise there would be no determinism in science, or rather, there would be no science.
Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
Leçons de Pathologie Expérimentale (1872)
‘Tis the hardest thing in the world to be a good Thinker, without being a strong Self-Examiner.
Anthony Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) English politician and philosopher
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Vol. 1, “Soliloquy: or Advice to an Author” (1711)
People who live long, who will drink of the cup of life to the very bottom, must expect to meet with some of the usual dregs.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Letter to M. Le Veillard (15 Apr 1787)
(Source)
This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) US President (1961-63)
Report to the American People on Civil Rights (11 Jun 1963)
Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.
The Bible (The New Testament) (AD 1st - 2nd C) Christian sacred scripture
1 Peter 3:3-4 [NIV (2011 ed.)]
(Source)
Alternate translations:Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;
But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
[KJV (1611)]Do not dress up for show: doing up your hair, wearing gold bracelets and fine clothes; all this should be inside, in a person’s heart, imperishable: the ornament of a sweet and gentle disposition -- this is what is precious in the sight of God.
[JB (1966)]You should not use outward aids to make yourselves beautiful, such as the way you fix your hair, or the jewelry you put on, or the dresses you wear. Instead, your beauty should consist of your true inner self, the ageless beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of the greatest value in God's sight.
[GNT (1976)]Your adornment should be not an exterior one, consisting of braided hair or gold jewelry or fine clothing, but the interior disposition of the heart, consisting in the imperishable quality of a gentle and peaceful spirit, so precious in the sight of God.
[NJB (1985)]Don’t try to make yourselves beautiful on the outside, with stylish hair or by wearing gold jewelry or fine clothes. Instead, make yourselves beautiful on the inside, in your hearts, with the enduring quality of a gentle, peaceful spirit. This type of beauty is very precious in God’s eyes.
[CEB (2011)]Do not adorn yourselves outwardly by braiding your hair, and by wearing gold ornaments or fine clothing; rather, let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight.
[NRSV (2021 ed.)]
Time is a jewel more worth than a world. Time is not yours to dispose of as you please; it is a glorious talent that men must be accountable for as well as any other talent.
Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) English Puritan divine, writer
The Hypocrite Detected, Anatomized (1650)
First Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless; first Bach fugues, a bore; first differential equations, sheer torture. But training changes the nature of our spiritual experiences. In due course, contact with an obscurely beautiful poem, an elaborate piece of counterpoint or of mathematical reasoning, causes us to feel direct intuitions of beauty and significance. It is the same in the moral world.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Ends and Means (1937)
They say you shouldn’t shoot the messenger, but no one warns you how much you’ll want to.
Success has ruined many a man.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard’s Almanack (Dec 1752)
O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head!Thomas Hood (1799-1845) British humorist and poet
Miss Kilmansegg, and Her Precious Leg, “Her Dream”, st. 7 (1841-43)
Ardent desire for knowledge, in fact, is the one motive attracting and supporting investigators in their efforts; and just this knowledge, really grasped and yet always flying before them, becomes at once their sole torment and their sole happiness …. A man of science rises ever, in seeking truth; and if he never finds it in its wholeness, he discovers nevertheless very significant fragments; and these fragments of universal truth are precisely what constitutes science.
Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine [Introduction à l’Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale] (1865)
True courage … has so little to do with Anger, that there lies always the strongest Suspicion against it, where this Passion is highest. The true Courage is the cool and calm. The bravest of Men have the least of a brutal bullying Insolence; and in the very time of Danger are found the most serene, pleasant, and free. Rage, we know, can make a Coward forget himself and fight. But what is done in Fury, or Anger, can never be plac’d to the account of Courage.
Anthony Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) English politician and philosopher
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Vol. 1, “Sensus Communis” (1711)
The Day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and fall apart, the earth and all that it contains will be burnt up.
Since everything is coming to an end like this, you should be living holy and saintly lives while you wait and long for the Day of God to come, when the sky will dissolve in flames and the elements melt in the heat.The Bible (The New Testament) (AD 1st - 2nd C) Christian sacred scripture
2 Peter 3:10-12 [JB (1966)]
(Source)
Alternate translations:But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?
[KJV (1611)]But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief. On that Day the heavens will disappear with a shrill noise, the heavenly bodies will burn up and be destroyed, and the earth with everything in it will vanish.
Since all these things will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people should you be? Your lives should be holy and dedicated to God, as you wait for the Day of God and do your best to make it come soon -- the Day when the heavens will burn up and be destroyed, and the heavenly bodies will be melted by the heat.
[GNT (1976)]The Day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and melt away, the earth and all that it contains will be burned up.
Since everything is coming to an end like this, what holy and saintly lives you should be living while you wait for the Day of God to come, and try to hasten its coming: on that Day the sky will dissolve in flames and the elements melt in the heat.
[NJB (1985)]But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. On that day the heavens will pass away with a dreadful noise, the elements will be consumed by fire, and the earth and all the works done on it will be exposed.
Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be? You must live holy and godly lives, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God. Because of that day, the heavens will be destroyed by fire and the elements will melt away in the flames.
[CEB (2011)]But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.
[NIV (2011 ed.)]But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be destroyed with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.
Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and destroyed and the elements will melt with fire?
[NRSV (2011 ed.)]
A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
Let the great book of the world be your principal study.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #249 (7 Apr 1751)
(Source)
If you would not have affliction visit you twice, listen at once to what it teaches.
James Burgh (1714-1775) British politician and writer
(Attributed)
I think the most un-American thing you can say is, “You can’t say that.”
Garrison Keillor (b. 1942) American entertainer, author
(Attributed)
The rack, or question, to extort a confession from criminals, is a practice of a different nature; […] an engine of the state, not of law.
William Blackstone (1723-1780) British jurist, judge, politician
Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4 “Of Public Wrongs,” ch. 25 “Arraignment” (1769)
America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests, and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them; and every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.
A pretty girl is like a melody
That haunts you night and day,
Just like the strain of a haunting refrain,
She’ll start upon a marathon
And run around your brain.Irving Berlin (1888-1989) American songwriter [b. Isidore Beilin]
“A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody” (1919)
It is certain that great prosperity and worldly glory are no sure tokens of God’s love.
Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) English Puritan divine, writer
A Cabinet of Jewels
It is only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber’s craving for position and social distinction.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Ends and Means (1937)
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.Langston Hughes (1902-1967) American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright
“Justice” (1923)
There is such a thing as internal collapse. Despairing certitude does not infiltrate a human being without displacing and disrupting certain profound elements that sometimes constitute the man himself. Grief, when it reaches this pitch, routs all strength of conscience. These are deadly crises. Few of us emerge from them true to ourselves and steadfast in our duty. When the limit of endurance is exceeded, the most unshakeable virtue is undermined.
[Il y a des effondrements intérieurs. La pénétration d’une certitude désespérante dans l’homme ne se fait point sans écarter et rompre de certains éléments profonds qui sont quelquefois l’homme lui-même. La douleur, quand elle arrive à ce degré, est un sauve-qui-peut de toutes les forces de la conscience. Ce sont là des crises fatales. Peu d’entre nous en sortent semblables à eux-mêmes et fermes dans le devoir. Quand la limite de la souffrance est débordée, la vertu la plus imperturbable se déconcerte.]
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Les Misérables, Part 4 “Saint Denis,” Book 15 “The Rue de L’Homme Armé,” ch. 1 (4.15.1) (1862) [tr. Donougher (2013)]
(Source)
Valjean "internally collapsing" at the realization that Cosette plans to leave him for Marius, and deciding to track Marius down to confront or even kill him.
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:There are interior subsoilings. The penetration of a torturing certainty into man does not occur without breaking up and pulverising certain deep elements which are sometimes the man himself. Grief, when it reaches this stage, is a panic of all the forces of the soul. These are fatal crises. Few among us come through them without change, and firm in duty. When the limit of suffering is overpassed, the most imperturbable virtue is disconcerted.
[tr. Wilbour (1862)]There are such things as internal landslides; the penetration of a desperate certainty into a man is not effected without removing and breaking certain profound elements which are at times the man himself. Grief, when it attains that pitch, is a frantic flight of all the forces of the conscience, and such crises are fatal Few among us emerge from them equal to ourselves and firm in our duty, for when the limit of suffering is exceeded the most imperturbable virtue is disconcerted.
[tr. Wraxall (1862)]There is such a thing as the sudden giving way of the inward subsoil. A despairing certainty does not make its way into a man without thrusting aside and breaking certain profound elements which, in some cases, are the very man himself. Grief, when it attains this shape, is a headlong flight of all the forces of the conscience. These are fatal crises. Few among us emerge from them still like ourselves and firm in duty. When the limit of endurance is overstepped, the most imperturbable virtue is disconcerted.
[tr. Hapgood (1887)]There is such a thing as spiritual collapse. The thrust of a desperate certainty into a man cannot occur without the disruption of certain profound elements which are sometimes the man himself. Anguish, when it has reached this stage, becomes a panic-flight of all the powers of conscience. There are mortal crises from which few of us emerge in our right mind, with our sense of duty still intact. When the limit of suffering is overpassed the most impregnable virtue is plunged in disarray.
[tr. Denny (1976)]There are interior collapses. The penetration of a torturing certainty within man does not occur without breaking up and pulverizing certain deep elements that are sometimes the man himself. Grief, when it reaches this level, is a panic of all the forces of consciousness. These are fatal crises. Few among us come through them unchanged and firm in duty. When the limit of suffering is topped, the most imperturbable virtue is disconcerted.
[tr. Wilbour/Fahnestock/MacAfee (1987)]
I have not succeeded if I have an antagonist who fails. It must be humanity’s success.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Journal (22 Mar 1842)
There are some people who will never understand what loyalty means. They could tell you what it was, of course, but they will never know. They will never see it from the inside. They couldn’t imagine a world where something like that was real.
Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
First Lord’s Fury (2009)
Since history is not an objective reality, but only an imaginative reconstruction of vanished events, the pattern that appears useful or agreeable to one generation is never entirely so to the next.
Carl L. Becker (1873-1945) American historian
The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932)
(Source)
The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.
James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
The Federalist #57 (19 Feb 1788)
‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.
‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) English writer and mathematician [pseud. of Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson]
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, ch. 12 (1865)
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.
Lao-tzu (604?-531? BC) Chinese philosopher, poet [also Lao-tse, Laozi]
Tao te Ching
When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
“On the Mindless Menace of Violence,” speech, City Club of Cleveland (5 Apr 1968)
(Source)
Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date on which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
“Reflections on the Guillotine” (1957)
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
(Attributed)
Self-trust is the first secret of success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Success,” Society and Solitude (1870)
To carry care to bed is to sleep with a pack on your back.
Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865) Canadian politician, judge, humorist
Sam Slick’s Wise Saws and Modern Instances, Vol. 2 (1853)
Christianity has probably the most flexible morals of any religion, because Jesus left no code of law behind him like Moses or Muhammad, and his moral precepts are so different from those of ordinary life that no society has ever made any serious attempt to carry them out, such as was possible in the case of Israel and Islam. But every Christian church has tried to impose a code of morals of some kind for which it has claimed divine sanction. As these codes have always been opposed to those of the gospels a loophole has been left for moral progress such as hardly exists in other religions. This is no doubt an argument for Christianity as against other religions, but not as against none at all, or as against a religion which will frankly admit that its mythology and morals are provisional. That is the only sort of religion that would satisfy the scientific mind, and it is very doubtful whether it could properly be called a religion at all.
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“Daedalus, or Science and the Future,” speech, Cambridge (24 Feb 1923)
(Source)
All Politeness is owing to Liberty. We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Men’s Understandings.
Anthony Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) English politician and philosopher
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Vol. 1, “Sensus Communis” (1711)
It is difficult for a majority to see, let alone sympathize with, a practice that discriminates against a minority. It’s not unlike trying to get a fish to understand the concept of water! It is simply the medium in which the fish resides, requiring no cognition of the water that supports it. Discrimination — not just individual, but systemic — is the “water” in which the majority swims, and unless something happens to bring that discrimination into the view and consciousness of the majority, nothing will change, because the majority hardly, if ever, notices it.
Gene Robinson (b. 1947) American Episcopal bishop
God Believes in Love (2012)
If you leap into a Well, Providence is not bound to fetch you out.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #2795 (1732)
(Source)
The elevation of the mind ought to be the principal end of all our studies.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Anglo-Irish statesman, orator, philosopher
A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, 1.19 (1756)
No man ought to be hindered saying or writing what he pleases on the conduct of those who undertake the management of national affairs, in which all are concerned, and therefore have the right to inquire, and to publish their suspicions concerning them. For if you punish the slanderer, you deter the fair inquirer.
James Burgh (1714-1775) British politician and writer
Political Disquisitions, Book 1 “Of Government, briefly” (1774)
(Source)
There is almost no marital problem that can’t be helped enormously by taking off your clothes.
Garrison Keillor (b. 1942) American entertainer, author
“The Old Scout,” The Writer’s Almanac (4 Oct 2005)
Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.
Russell L. Ackoff (1919-2009) American organizational theorist, consultant, management scientist
Redesigning the Future (1974)
Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953-1956: A Personal Account (1963)
Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Spectator #306 (6 Feb 1712)
Books may preach when the author cannot, when the author may not, when the author dares not, yes, and which is more, when the author is not.
Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) English Puritan divine, writer
Heaven on Earth (1654)
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Vedanta for the Western World, “Distractions I” (1954)
A modern poet has characterized the personality of art and the impersonality of science as follows: Art is I: Science is We.
Claude Bernard (1813-1878) French physiologist, scientist
Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. IV (1928)
Often only the summary at the end is quoted.
Complete success alienates a man from his fellows, but suffering makes kinsmen of us all.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American writer, businessman, philosopher
An American Bible [ed. Alice Hubbard] (1918)
To accomplish almost anything worthwhile, it is necessary to compromise between the ideal and the practical.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
In Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen, “How the President Works,” Harper’s (Jun 1936)
Pain is a byproduct of life. That’s the truth. Life sometimes sucks. That’s true for everyone. But if you don’t face the pain and the suck, you don’t ever get the other things either. Laughter. Joy. Love. Pain passes, but those things are worth fighting for. Worth dying for.
Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
(Attributed)
Often cited to the short story "Vignette" (also known as "Publicity and Advertising"), but not found there.
It is from the ruins of the Capitol that we perceive, as from a great distance, a thousand years filled with dim shapes of men moving blindly, performing strangely, in an unreal shadowy world.
Carl L. Becker (1873-1945) American historian
The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-century Philosophers, “The New History” (1932)
(Source)
In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.
Coco Chanel (1883-1971) French dress designer [Gabrielle Chanel]
(Attributed)
If the first button of one’s coat is wrongly buttoned, all the rest will be crooked.
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) Italian philosopher
(Attributed)
(Source)
Attributed in John Emerich & Edward Dalberg, The Cambridge Modern History (1904).
We measure the excellency of other men by some excellency we conceive to be in ourselves.
John Selden (1584-1654) English jurist, legal scholar, antiquarian, polymath
Table Talk, § 86 “Measure of Things” (1689)
What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason. Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily — whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence — whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
“On the Mindless Menace of Violence,” speech, City Club of Cleveland (5 Apr 1968)
(Source)
The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
The Rebel (1951)
I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
George Eliot (1819-1880) English novelist [pseud. of Mary Ann Evans]
Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)
(Source)
It took me twenty years to become an overnight success.
Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) American comedian, dancer, singer, actor, songwriter [b. Isidore Itzkowitz]
(Attributed)
Though most often attributed to Cantor, the phrase is also associated with Danny Thomas and many others. Sometimes given as "It takes twenty years to become an overnight success" (or sometimes ten years). More here.
You may batter your way through the thick of the fray,
You may sweat, you may swear, you may grunt;
You may be a jack-fool, if you must, but this rule
Should ever be kept at the front:–
Don’t fight with your pillow, but lay down your head
And kick every worriment out of the bed.Edmund Vance Cooke (1866-1932) Canadian poet
“Don’t Take Your Troubles to Bed”, l. 7 (1903)
Science is as yet in its infancy, and we can foretell little of the future save that the thing that has not been is the thing that shall be; that no beliefs, no values, no institutions are safe. So far from being an isolated phenomenon the late war is only an example of the disruptive result that we may constantly expect from the progress of science. The future will be no primrose path. It will have its own problems. Some will be the secular problems of the past, giant flowers of evil blossoming at last to their own destruction. Others will be wholly new. Whether in the end man will survive his ascensions of power we cannot tell. But the problem is no new one. It is the old paradox of freedom re-enacted with mankind for actor and the earth for stage.
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“Daedalus, or Science and the Future,” speech, Cambridge (24 Feb 1923)
(Source)
We may have an excellent Ear in Musick, without being able to perform in any kind. We may judge well of Poetry, without being Poets, or possessing the least of a Poetick Vein: But we can have no tolerable Notion of Goodness, without being tolerably good.
Anthony Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) English politician and philosopher
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Vol. 1, “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm” (1711)
The trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention to the organization than to what they’re organized for.
Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) American writer
Little Town on the Prairie (1941)
With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Sartor Resartus, Book 2, ch. 7 (1831)
(Source)
Crafty men condemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
“Of Studies,” Essays, No. 50 (1625)
(Source)
Journalism is a good place for any writer to start — the retelling of fact is always a useful trade and can it help you learn to appreciate the declarative sentence. A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.
That all history shows the necessity, in order to the preservation of liberty, of every subjects having a watchful eye on the conduct of Kings, Ministers, and Parliament, and of every subjects being not only secured, but encouraged in alarming his fellow subjects on occasion of every attempt upon public liberty.
James Burgh (1714-1775) British politician and writer
Political Disquisitions, Book 1 “Of Government, briefly,” ch. 9 “Of the Liberty of Speech and Writing on Political Subjects” (1774)
(Source)
“But do you really mean, sir,” said Peter, “that there could be other worlds — all over the place, just round the corner — like that?”
“Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, “I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.”
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)
Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation — not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That is the true genius of America — a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles.
Beauty is only skin deep, but it is a valuable asset if you are poor or have not any sense.
Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard (1868-1930) American caricaturist and humorist
(Attributed)
See Thomas Adams.
An excellent master is always better than an excellent law. Let your laws be ever so good, if the lawmakers are bad, all will come to nothing.
Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) English Puritan divine, writer
Heaven on Earth (1654)
Life is a biography, not a series of disconnected moments, more or less pleasurable but increasingly tedious and unsatisfying unless one imposes a purposive pattern upon them.
Theodore Dalrymple (b. 1949) English writer, journalist, psychiatrist [pen name for Anthony (A.M.) Daniels]
Life at the Bottom (2001)
Oh, if there is a man out of hell that suffers more than I do, I pity him.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
(Attributed) (1862)
In Emmanuel Hertz, ed., Lincoln Talks: A Biography in Anecdote, "Father Abraham" (1939); a remark following the Army of the Potomac's defeat at Fredericksburg.
In looking at the world as it is, we shall find it folly to deny that, to worldly success, a surer path is Villainy than Virtue.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) American author, poet, editor, literary critic
Marginalia, June 1849 (1981)
“What’s up, boss?”
“Evil’s afoot.”
“Well, sure,” Bob said, “because it refuses to learn the metric system. Otherwise it’d be up to a meter by now.”Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
White Night (2007)
Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental questions about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.
Carl L. Becker (1873-1945) American historian
The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932)
Happy is he who learns to bear what he cannot change!
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) German poet, playwright, critic [Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller]
“On the Sublime”
You’re the top!
You’re the Colosseum.
You’re the top!
You’re the Louvre Museum.
You’re a melody from a symphony by Strauss,
You’re a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet,
You’re Mickey Mouse.You’re the Nile,
You’re the Tow’r of Pisa,
You’re the smile
On the Mona Lisa.
I’m a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop,
But if, baby, I’m the bottom
You’re the top!Cole Porter (1891-1964) American composer and songwriter
“You’re the Top” (1934)
Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. And everyone here will ultimately be judged — will ultimately judge himself — on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
“Day of Affirmation,” address, University of Capetown, South Africa (6 Jun 1966)
(Source)
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
The Plague (1947)
“My dear young lady,” said the Professor, suddenly looking up with a very sharp expression at both of them, “there is one plan which no one has yet suggested and which is well worth trying.”
“What’s that?” said Susan.
“We might all try minding our own business,” said he. And that was the end of that conversation.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)
Success is relative:
It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-British poet, critic, playwright [Thomas Stearns Eliot]
The Family Reunion, 2.3 (1939)
Bed is a bundle of paradoxes; we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; and we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.
Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 2, § 262 (1822)
(Source)
The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deiciders.
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“Daedalus, or Science and the Future,” speech, Cambridge (24 Feb 1923)
(Source)
That thro certain Humours or Passions, and from Temper merely, a Man may be completely miserable; let his outward Circumstances be ever so fortunate.
Anthony Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) English politician and philosopher
“An Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit”
Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Postscriptum de Ma Vie [Victor Hugo’s Intellectual Autobiography] (1907) [tr. O’Rourke]
(Source)
All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator, must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech (1915-10-12), “Americanism,” Knights of Columbus, Carnegie Hall, New York City
(Source)
Beauty is only skin-deep.
Thomas Adams (1583–1653) English Calvinist clergyman and preacher
The Blacke Devill or the Apostate (1615)
There is nothing in the world that renders a man more unlike to a saint, and more like to Satan — than to argue from God’s mercy to sinful liberty; from divine goodness to licentiousness.
Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) English Puritan divine, writer
Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (1652)
Maybe this world is another planet’s Hell.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
(Attributed)
Quoted in Laurence J. Peter, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1979).
One can pay back a loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Malayan proverb
Suffering cleanses only when it is free of resentment. Wholehearted contempt for our tormentors safeguards our soul from the mutilations of bitterness and hatred.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
The Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 263 (1955)
(Source)
‘Tis a lesson you should heed,
Try, try again;
If at first you don’t succeed,
Try, try again.(Other Authors and Sources)
T. H. Palmer, “Try, Try Again,” The Teacher’s Manual (1840)
(Source)
Sometimes attributed to Charles Theodore Hart Palmer (1827-1897), but the book is clearly by Thomas H. Palmer, and was published in 1840 when Charles T. H. Palmer was 13 years old.
The wacky thing about those bad guys is that you can’t count on them to be obvious. They forget to wax their mustaches and goatees, leave their horns at home, send their black hats to the dry cleaners. They’re funny like that.
Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
White Night (2007)
It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.
Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) American lawyer, activist, Supreme Court Justice (1916-39)
New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 311 (1932) [dissent]
To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.
François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Maxims] (1665-1678)
YOKE: Things past redress are now with me past care.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Richard II, Act 2, sc. 3, l. 175 (2.3.175) (1595)
(Source)
We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don’t care for.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) Austrian writer
Aphorisms (1905)
The cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress. This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
“Day of Affirmation,” address, University of Capetown, South Africa (6 Jun 1966)
(Source)
When a war breaks out, people say: “It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.” But though the war may well be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
The Plague (1947)
No man is lonely while eating spaghetti — it requires too much attention.
Christopher Morley (1890-1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist, poet
In Life (24 Oct 1969)
The penalty of success is to be bored by people who used to snub you.
Nancy Astor (1879-1964) American socialite and English politician [Nancy Witcher Langhorne; Viscountess Astor; Lady Astor]
In the Daily Express (12 Jan 1956)
If I try to be like him, who will be like me?
(Other Authors and Sources)
Yiddish proverb
There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“Daedalus, or Science and the Future,” speech, Cambridge (24 Feb 1923)
(Source)
I began my talk by saying that I had not written my plays for purposes of discussion. At once, I felt a ripple of panic run through the hall. I suddenly realised why. To everyone present, discussion was the whole point of drama. That was why the faculty had been endowed — that was why all those buildings had been put up! I had undermined the entire reason for their existence.
Tom Stoppard (b. 1937) Czech-English playwright and screenwriter
In Kenneth Tynan, “Tom Stoppard,” The New Yorker (19 Dec 1977)
There once was a time in history when the limitation of governmental power meant increasing liberty for the people. In the present day the limitation of governmental power, of governmental action, means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations who can only be held in check through the extension of governmental power.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, San Francisco (14 Sep 1912)
(Source)
Stupidity … is nature’s favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion.
Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) British businessman, essayist, journalist
Letter to London Inquirer (1851)
Studies themselves give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded by experience.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
“Of Studies,” Essays, No. 50 (1625)
(Source)
That government only can be pronounced consistent with the design of all government, which allows to the governed the liberty of doing what, consistently with the general good, they may desire to do, and which only forbids their doing the contrary. Liberty does not exclude restraint; it only excludes unreasonable restraint. To determine precisely how far personal liberty is compatible with the general good, and of the propriety of social conduct in all cases, is a matter of great extent, and demands the united wisdom of a whole people. And the consent of the whole people, as far as it can be obtained, is indispensably necessary to every law, by which the whole people are to be bound; else the whole people are enslaved to the one, or the few, who frame the laws for them.
James Burgh (1714-1775) British politician and writer
Political Disquisitions, Book 1 “Of Government, briefly” (1774)
(Source)
Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
Garrison Keillor (b. 1942) American entertainer, author
“The Meaning of Life,” We Are Still Married (1989)
Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.
Antisthenes (c. 445 - c. 365 BC) Greek Cynic philosopher
In Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, VI, xii
I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal — equal in “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.
Don’t panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends’ embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce … Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there’s prayer. St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too.
Sarah Waters (b. 1966) Welsh novelist
In “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” The Guardian (20 Feb 2010)
(Source)
The snow covers many a dunghill, so doth prosperity many a rotten heart.
Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) English Puritan divine, writer
Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (1652)
An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
(Attributed)
The first found reference is after Huxley's death, and it's most likely based on a variant by someone else. More discussion here.
It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Last Battle, ch. 15 (1956)
If Afflictions refine some, they consume others.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs, #2666 (1732)
(Source)
Success in war, like charity in religion, covers a multitude of sins.
William Napier (1785-1860) Irish soldier and military historian
History of the War in the Peninsula, Vol. 5, Book 25, ch. 2 (1837)
(Source)
Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.
Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
(Attributed)
Often cited to the short story "Vignette" (also known as "Publicity and Advertising"), but not found there.
The prevalence of the corporation in America has led men of this generation to act, at times, as if the privilege of doing business in corporate form were inherent in the citizen; and has led them to accept the evils attendant upon the free and unrestricted use of the corporate mechanism as if these evils were the inescapable price of civilized life, and, hence to be borne with resignation.
Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) American lawyer, activist, Supreme Court Justice (1916-39)
Liggett Co. v. Lee, 288 U.S. 517 (1933) [dissent]
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
The Bible (The Old Testament) (14th - 2nd C BC) Judeo-Christian sacred scripture [Tanakh, Hebrew Bible], incl. the Apocrypha (Deuterocanonicals)
Psalm 119:105 [KJV (1611)]
(Source)
Alternate translations:Now your word is a lamp to my feet, a light on my path.
[JB (1966)]Your word is a lamp to guide me
and a light for my path.
[GNT (1976)]Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
[NJB (1985)]Your word is a lamp before my feet
and a light for my journey.
[CEB (2011)]Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path.
[NRSV (2021 ed.)]Your word is a lamp to my feet,
a light for my path.
[RJPS (2023 ed.)]
Things cannot always go your way. Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity and consume your own smoke with an extra draught of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaints.
Sir William Osler (1849-1919) Canadian physician
Counsels and Ideals from the Writings of William Osler (1905)
Only he who has seen better days and lives to see better days again knows their full value.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Note (1902-12-30), Mark Twain’s Notebook, ch. 23 “Back in America” (1935) [ed. Albert Bigelow Paine]
(Source)
All do not develop in the same manner, or at the same pace. Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others. What is important is that all nations must march toward increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all its own people, and a world of immense and dizzying change.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
“Day of Affirmation,” address, University of Capetown, South Africa (6 Jun 1966)
(Source)
Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.
[Pauvre et libre plutôt que riche et asservi. Bien entendu les hommes veulent être et riches et libres et c’est ce qui les conduit quelquefois à être pauvres et esclaves.]
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
Notebooks: 1942-1951, Notebook 4, Jan 1942 – Sep 1945 [tr. O’Brien/Thody (1963)
(Source)
The only way in which our people can increase their power over the big corporation that does wrong, the only way in which they can protect the working man in his conditions of work and life, the only way in which the people can prevent children working in industry or secure women an eight-hour day in industry, or secure compensation for men killed or crippled in industry, is by extending, instead of limiting, the powers of government.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, San Francisco (14 Sep 1912)
(Source)
Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.
Henry Lawson (1867-1922) Australian writer and poet
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted in Denton Prout, Henry Lawson: The Grey Dreamer (1963); David Low, Autobiography(1956). Also attributed to David McKee Wright.
God gave us teeth to hold back our tongue.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Greek proverb
But, such is the perverse disposition of man, the most unruly of all animals, that this most useful institution has been generally debauched into an engine of oppression and tyranny over those, whom it was expressly and solely established to defend. And to such a degree has this evil prevailed, that in almost every age and country, the government has been the principal grievance of the people, as appears too dreadfully manifest, from the bloody and deformed pages of history. For what is general history, but a view of the abuses of power committed by those, who have got it into their hands, to the subjugation, and destruction of the human species, to the ruin of the general peace and happiness, and turning the Almighty’s fair and good world into a butchery of its inhabitants, for the gratification of the unbounded ambition of a few, who, in overthrowing the felicity of their fellow-creatures, have confounded their own?
James Burgh (1714-1775) British politician and writer
Political Disquisitions, Book 1 “Of Government, briefly,” ch. 1 (1774)
(Source)
Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through.
Garrison Keillor (b. 1942) American entertainer, author
“The Meaning of Life,” We Are Still Married (1989)
One ship drives east and another drives west,
With the self-same winds that blow,
‘Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
That tell them way to go.
Like the winds of the sea are the winds of fate,
As we journey along through life,
‘Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) American author and poet.
“The Winds of Fate” (1913), Poems of Optimism (1915)
(Source)
Sometimes called "'Tis the Set of the Sail."
There is a longer variant of the poem, sometimes called "One Ship Sails East," that includes two stanzas in front, and has slightly different words in the analogous stanzas. I have not found a primary source for this version:But to every mind there openeth,
A way, and way, and away,
A high soul climbs the highway,
And the low soul gropes the low,
And in between on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.
But to every man there openeth,
A high way and a low,
And every mind decideth,
The way his soul shall go.
One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.
Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
'Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable. The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is that which we are here to honor tonight, the Emancipation Proclamation. All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations, no matter how extensive their legions, how vast their power and how malignant their evil.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address, New York City (12 Sep 1962)
(Source)
You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.
Will Self (b. 1961) English author, journalist, television personality
In “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” The Guardian (20 Feb 2010)
(Source)
Ah! how many Judases have we in these days, that kiss Christ, and yet betray Christ; that in their words profess him, but in their works deny him; that bow their knee to him, and yet in their hearts despise him; that call him Jesus, and yet will not obey him for their Lord.
Thomas Brooks (1608-1680) English Puritan divine, writer
Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, “A Word to the Reader” (1652)
Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Island (1962)
Five foot two, eyes of blue,
But oh! what those five feet could do,
Has anybody seen my girl?Sam M. Lewis (1885-1959) American singer and lyricist
“Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue” (1925)
The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.
Georges Bidault (1899-1983) French politician, diplomat
In The Observer (15 Jul 1962)
The successful people are the ones who can think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.
Don Marquis (1878-1937) American journalist and humorist
“Variety,” Collier’s (12 May 1933)
(Source)
I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it for a sudden yelp of unmanly fear, but trust me. It was a battle cry.
Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
“Something Borrowed,” My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding (2006)
Stare decisis is usually the wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right. … This is commonly true even where the error is a matter of serious concern, provided correction can be had by legislation. But in cases involving the Federal Constitution, where correction through legislative action is practically impossible, this court has often overruled its earlier decisions. The court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function.
Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) American lawyer, activist, Supreme Court Justice (1916-39)
Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393 (1932) [dissent]
So long as governmental power existed exclusively for the king and not at all for the people, then the history of liberty was a history of the limitation of governmental power. But now the governmental power rests in the people, and the kings who enjoy privilege are the kings of the financial and industrial world; and what they clamor for is the limitation of governmental power, and what the people sorely need is the extension of governmental power.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, San Francisco (14 Sep 1912)
(Source)
Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Henry Miller (1891-1980) American novelist
The World of Sex (1940)
Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.
Richard Steele (1672-1729) Irish writer and politician
The Guardian # 24 (8 Apr 1713)
We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not because the laws of God command it, although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
“Day of Affirmation,” address, University of Capetown, South Africa (6 Jun 1966)
(Source)
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
“The Myth of Sisyphus”, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
(Source)
Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.
Roger Fry (1866-1934) English artist and art critic
(Attributed)
Quoted in Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, ch. 11 (1940).
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Woody Allen (b. 1935) American comedian, writer, director [b. Allan Steward Konigsberg]
Comment
Originally attributed to Allen by collaborator Marshall Brickman in Susan Brady, "He's Woody Allen's Not-So-Silent Partner," New York Times (21 Aug 1977) as "Showing up is 80 percent of life." On inquiry, Allen confirmed that he'd said the quotation above in a letter to William Safire (1989). More information here.
To be one’s self, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity.
Irving Wallace (1916-1990) American author and screenwriter
Square Pegs: Some Americans Who Dared to Be Different, ch. 1 (1958)
(Source)
My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
Fact and Faith, Preface (1934)
BAKUNIN: Left to themselves people are noble, generous, uncorrupted. They’d create a completely new kind of society if only people weren’t so blind, stupid and selfish.
HERZEN: Is that the same people or different people?
BAKUNIN: The same people.Tom Stoppard (b. 1937) Czech-English playwright and screenwriter
The Coast of Utopia: Salvage (2002)
There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Porsche 911 Cabriolet.
P. J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American humorist, editor
Modern Manners (1989 ed.)
I wish to see this beverage become common instead of the whisky which kills one-third of our citizens and ruins their families.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter (1816-01-06) to Charles Yancey
(Source)
On beer.
There should be a reason for speech but not for silence.
(Other Authors and Sources)
French proverb
The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk.
Garrison Keillor (b. 1942) American entertainer, author
“We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore,” In These Times (26 Aug 2004)
(Source)
All lawful authority, legislative, and executive, originates from the people. Power in the people is like light in the sun: native, original, inherent, and unlimited by anything human. In governors it may be compared to the reflected light of the moon, for it is only borrowed, delegated, and limited by the intention of the people; whose it is, and to whom governors are to consider themselves as responsible, while the people are answerable only to God; — themselves being the losers, if they pursue a false scheme of politics.
James Burgh (1714-1775) British politician and writer
Political Disquisitions, Book 1 “Of Government, briefly” (1774)
(Source)
Drove up a newcomer in a covered wagon: “What kind of folks live around here?”
“Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?”
“Well, they was mostly a lowdown, lying, thieving gossiping, backbiting kind lot of people.”
“Well, I guess, stranger, that’s about the kind of folks you’ll find around here.”
And the dusty gray stranger had just about blended into the dusty gray cottonwoods in a clump on the horizon when another newcomer drove up: “What kind of folks live around here?”
“Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?”
“Well, they was mostly a decent, hard-working, law-abiding, friendly lot of people.” “Well, I guess, stranger, that’s about the kind of folks you’ll find around here.”Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) American poet, biographer
The People, Yes, Poem #52 (1936)
Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a “sacred right of self-government.” These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech, Peoria (16 Oct 1854)
If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.
Hilary Mantel (b. 1952) English writer
In “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” The Guardian (20 Feb 2010)
(Source)
A religion without mystics is a philosophy.
Francis I (b. 1936) Argentinian Catholic Pope (2013- ) [b. Jorge Mario Bergoglio]
“How the Church Will Change,” interview with Eugenio Scalfari, La Repubblica (1 Oct 2013) [tr. K Wallace]
(Source)
For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism, and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
“Knowledge and Understanding,” Vedanta and the West (May-Jun 1956)
(Source)
Revision of a 1955 lecture given at the Vedanta Society of Southern California; this phrase, however, does not occur in it (the surrounding text is found around the 10:00 mark). Reprinted in Adonis and the Alphabet, and Other Essays (in the US Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and Other Essays) (1956).
If I had to choose, I should detest the tyranny of one man less than that of many. A despot always has his good moments; an assembly of despots never.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Philosophical Dictionary, “Tyranny” (1764) [tr. Gay (1962)]
(Source)
Gentle in manner, strong in deed.
[Suaviter in modo, fortirer in re.]
(Other Authors and Sources)
Latin proverb
Pres. Dwight Eisenhower kept a small wooden sign with this proverb on his desk at the White House.
There are but two ways of rising in the world: either by your own industry or by the folly of others.
[Il n’y a au monde que deux manières de s’élever, ou par sa propre industrie, ou par l’imbécillité des autres.]
Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) French essayist, moralist
The Characters [Les Caractères], ch. 6 “Of Gifts of Fortune [Des Biens de Fortune],” § 52 (6.52) (1688) [tr. Van Laun (1885)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:There is but two ways of rising in the World, by your own Industry, and another's Weakness.
[Bullord ed. (1696)]There are only two ways of rising in the World, by your own Industry, or by the Weakness of others.
[Curll ed. (1713)]There are but two ways of rising in the World, by your own Industry, or the Weakness of others.
[Browne ed. (1752)]There are only two ways of getting on in the world: either by one's own cunning efforts, or by other people's foolishness.
[tr. Stewart (1970)]
I sometimes give myself excellent advice. Occasionally, I even listen to it.
Jim Butcher (b. 1971) American author
Ghost Story (2011)
If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.
Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) American lawyer, activist, Supreme Court Justice (1916-39)
New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262 (1932) [dissent]
Since the gleaming expanse on the top of your head,
Marinus, seems painfully wide,
You gather together and spread on the tract
The hairs that remain on each side.
But the breath of the wind promptly blows them about
And straightway the middle space clears.
And long strands so surround the bare waste that you seem
Like a Roundhead ‘twixt two Cavaliers.
Now why not be candid, confess that you’re old,
Meet nature with heart unappalled?
You’ll at least then seem one man: there’s nothing so bad
As a being hirsute and yet bald.[Raros colligis hinc et hinc capillos
Et latum nitidae, Marine, calvae
Campum temporibus tegis comatis;
Sed moti redeunt iubente vento
Reddunturque sibi caputque nudum
Cirris grandibus hinc et inde cingunt:
Inter Spendophorum Telesphorumque
Cydae stare putabis Hermerotem.
Vis tu simplicius senem fateri,
Ut tandem videaris unus esse!
Calvo turpius est nihil comato.]Martial (AD c.39-c.103) Spanish Roman poet, satirist, epigrammatist [Marcus Valerius Martialis]
Epigrams [Epigrammata], Book 10, epigram 83 (10.83) (AD 95, 98 ed.) [tr. Nixon (1911), “A Most Delicate Matter”]
(Source)
"To Marinus." (Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:Your thin-sown hairs on any side
With dextrous care you cull;
And rob your temples of their pride,
To thatch your shining skull.
Repell'd by ev'ry puff of wind,
They take their former stand,
And then your desert poll they bind,
With locks in either hand.
So 'twixt two tuzzy youthful pates,
One Halmyrotes sees.
Throw ridicule no more such baits:
The bare old-man will please.
But, that at length you may seem one,
The shaver quick be call'd;
And let him o'er the remnant run:
Belock'd! oh shame! and bald!
[tr. Elphinston (1782), Book 6, part 2, ep. 17]You collect together a few locks of hair that remain on your temples, and cover with them the wide expanse of your shining bald pate; but no sooner are the locks commanded by the wind than they return to their places; and, as before, they gird, on each side, your naked head; just as if Cidas's statue of the old man were placed between two youths having luxuriant hair. Will you candidly confess your senility? In order that you may appear what you really are, let some barber shave the remnant of your hairs; nothing is more disgraceful than a bald man wearing hair.
[tr. Amos (1858), ch. 4, #138]You collect your straggling hairs on each side, Marinus, endeavouring to conceal the vast expanse of your shining bald pate by the locks which still grow on your temples. But the hairs disperse, and return to their own place with every gust of wind; flanking your bare pole on either side with crude tufts. We might imagine we saw Hermeros of Cydas standing between Spendophorus and Telesphorus. Why not confess yourself an old man? Be content to seem what you really are, and let the barber shave off the rest of your hair. There is nothing more contemptible than a bald man who pretends to have hair.
[tr. Bohn's Classical (1859)]From one side and the other you gather up your scanty locks and you cover, Marinus, the wide expanse of your shining bald scalp with the hair form both sides of your head. But blown about, they come back at the bidding of the wind, and return to themselves and gird your bare poll with big culres on this side and on that. You would think that Hermeros of Cydas is standing between Spendophorus and Telephorus. Will you, please, in simpler fashion confess yourself old, so as after all to appear a single person? Nothing is more unsightly than a bald man covered with hair.
[tr. Ker (1919)]You scrape a few hairs from the side of your head,
So that over your bare-shining baldness they spread;
But blown by the wind they return to their place
And with two big curls your poor naked poll grace.
You’ld think that we had old Silenus in sight
Between young Adonis and Hermaphrodite.
Confess your old age and leave all your head bare:
There’s nothing more ugly than bald men with hair
[tr. Pott & Wright (1921)]Your scattered side-locks to a bunch you train,
And draw a forest to the shining plain.
Then comes the wind, and once again are seen
Two curly masses with a space between.
Spendophorus and Telesphorus you'ld swear
And Hermerotes in the midst were there.
Be one, Marinus; your old age confess;
A bald coot feathered vaunts his ugliness.
[tr. Francis & Tatum (1924), #572 "To One Who Hides His Baldness"]Marinus, you collect your scattered locks from this side and from that, and cover the broad expanse of your shining baldness with hair from your temples. But at the wind's bidding they move and return and are restored to themselves, to surround your bare top with big curls on either side. You would think that Cydas' Hermeros was standing between Spendophorus and Telesphorus. Why not be straightforward and admit to being an old man, so that at least you look like one man? Nothing is uglier than a baldhead with a lot of hair.
[tr. Shackleton Bailey (1993)]Your hairs are carefully disposed
Lest your bald pate should be disclosed.
But winds lift them in wavy drifts,
Moved in a blur of constant shifts.
How can you have so little hair,
Yet have it show up everywhere?
[tr. Wills (2007)]
For after all, the best thing one can do
When it is raining, is to let it rain.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
Tales of a Wayside Inn, “The Poet’s Tale; The Birds of Killingworth” (1863)
But we live through the fine days without noticing them; only when we fall on evil ones do we wish to have back the former. With sour faces we let a thousand bright and pleasant hours slip by unenjoyed and afterwards vainly sigh for their return when times are trying and depressing. Instead of this, we should cherish every present moment that is bearable, even the most ordinary, which with such indifference we now let slip by, and even with impatience push on.
[Aber wir verleben unsre schönen Tage, ohne sie zu bemerken: erst wann die schlimmen kommen, wünschen wir jene zurück. Tausend heitere, angenehme Stunden lassen wir, mit verdrießlichem Gesicht, ungenossen an uns vorüberziehn, um nachher, zur trüben Zeit, mit vergeblicher Sehnsucht ihnen nachzuseufzen. Statt dessen sollten wir jede erträgliche Gegenwart, auch die alltägliche, welche wir jetzt so gleichgültig vorüberziehn lassen, und wohl gar noch ungeduldig nachschieben.]
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German philosopher
Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 1, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life [Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit],” ch. 5 “Counsels and Maxims [Paränesen und Maximen],” § 2.5 (1851) [tr. Payne (1974)]
(Source)
(Source (German)). Alternate translation:But we live through our days of happiness without noticing them; it is only when evil comes upon us that we wish them back. A thousand gay and pleasant hours are wasted in ill-humor; we let them slip by unenjoyed, and sigh for them in vain when the sky is overcast. Those present moments that are bearable, be they never so trite and common, -- passed by in indifference, or, it may be, impatiently pushed away.
[tr. Saunders (1890)]
At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any Western society.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
“Day of Affirmation,” address, University of Capetown, South Africa (6 Jun 1966)
(Source)
If the world were clear, art would not exist.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
“Absurd Creation,” The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Yes, there is a conspiracy, indeed there are a great number of conspiracies, all tripping each other up. … The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in the conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy, or the grey aliens, or the twelve-foot reptilioids from another dimension that are in control, the truth is far more frightening: no-one is in control, the world is rudderless.
Alan Moore (b. 1953) British writer
In Dez Vylenz (dir), The Mindscape of Alan Moore, film (2005)
(Source)
Discussing his research about conspiracy theories while writing "Shadowplay: The Secret Team" (1988).
This is the character of truth: it is of all time, it is for all men, it has only to show itself to be recognized, and one cannot argue against it. A long dispute means that both parties are wrong.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. of Francois-Marie Arouet]
Philosophical Dictionary, “Sect” (1764) [tr. Gay (1962)]
(Source)
Let’s work hard at being real. This means we are free to question, to admit failure or weakness, to confess wrong, to declare the truth. When a person is authentic, he or she does not have to win or always be in the top ten or make a big impression or look super-duper pious. […] Authentic people usually enjoy life more than most. They don’t take
themselves so seriously. They actually laugh and cry and think more freely because they have nothing to prove — no big image to protect, no role to play. They have no fear of being found out, because they’re not hiding anything.Charles Rozell "Chuck" Swindoll (b. 1934) American evangelist, author, educator
Strengthening Your Grip, “On Priorities” (1982)
In scientific thought we adopt the simplest theory which will explain all the facts under consideration and enable us to predict new facts of the same kind. The catch in this criterion lies in the word “simplest.” It is really an aesthetic canon such as we find implicit in our criticisms of poetry or painting.
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) English geneticist [John Burden Sanderson Haldane]
“Science and Theology as Art Forms,” Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927)
(Source)
HENRY: I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.
Tom Stoppard (b. 1937) Czech-English playwright and screenwriter
The Real Thing, Act 2, sc. 5 (1982)
(Source)
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Coraline (2002)
Paraphrase by Gaiman of G. K. Chesterton. Gaiman included it as an epigraph, attributed to Chesterton, but without looking up the exact wording.
It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects. … If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer.
Frederick II (1712-1786) King of Prussia (a.k.a. Frederick the Great)
Proclamation (13 Sep 1777)
Even fools who keep silent are considered wise;
when they close their lips, they are deemed intelligent.The Bible (The Old Testament) (14th - 2nd C BC) Judeo-Christian sacred scripture [Tanakh, Hebrew Bible], incl. the Apocrypha (Deuterocanonicals)
Proverbs 17:28 [NRSV (2021 ed.)]
(Source)
See Twain.
Alternate translations:Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.
[KJV (1611)]If a fool can hold his tongue, even he can pass for wise, and pass for clever if he keeps his lips tight shut.
[JB (1966)]After all, even fools may be thought wise and intelligent if they stay quiet and keep their mouths shut.
[GNT (1976)]If the fool holds his tongue, he may pass for wise; if he seals his lips, he may pass for intelligent.
[NJB (1985)]Fools who keep quiet are deemed wise;
those who shut their lips are smart.
[CEB (2011)]Even fools who keep silent are deemed wise;
Intelligent, while their mouth is shut.
[RJPS (2023 ed.)]
Did reason govern mankind, there would be little occasion for any other government, either monarchical, aristocratical, democratical, or mixed. But man, whom we dignify with the honourable title of Rational, being much more frequently influenced, in his proceedings, by supposed interest, by passion, by sensual appetite, by caprice, by any thing, by nothing, than by reason; it has, in all civilized ages and countries, been found proper to frame laws and statutes fortified by sanctions, and to establish orders of men invested with authority to execute those laws, and inflict the deserved punishments upon the violators of them. By such means only has it been found possible to preserve the general peace and tranquility.
James Burgh (1714-1775) British politician and writer
Political Disquisitions, Book 1 “Of Government, briefly,” ch. 1 “Government by Laws and Sanctions, why necessary” (1774)
(Source)