- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony. Please feel free to browse and borrow.
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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,110)
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- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,899)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,874)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,938)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,834)
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- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,124)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 17-Sep-20 - Tristam Shandy, 1.17 (1759-67) | WIST on Religio Medici, Part 1, sec. 25 (1642) [ed. Symonds (1886)].
- 16-Sep-20 - Dave on “To Those Born Later [An die Nachgeborenen],” (1938) [tr. Horton (2008)].
- 16-Sep-20 - (Attributed) | WIST on Thus Spoke Zarathustra [Also Sprach Zarathustra], Part 2, “Of the Compassionate [Von den Mitleidigen]” (1892) [tr. Hollingdale (1961)].
- 16-Sep-20 - "One Must Not Forget," interview by Alvin P. Sanoff, US News & World Report (27 Oct 1986) | WIST on Thus Spoke Zarathustra [Also Sprach Zarathustra], Part 2, “Of the Compassionate [Von den Mitleidigen]” (1892) [tr. Hollingdale (1961)].
- 9-Sep-20 - William Timberman on “To Those Born Later [An die Nachgeborenen],” (1938) [tr. Horton (2008)].
- 9-Sep-20 - Dave on “To Those Born Later [An die Nachgeborenen],” (1938) [tr. Horton (2008)].
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Quotations about ends and means
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
Robert Brault (b. c. 1945) American aphorist, programmer
(Attributed)
Men of faith know that throughout history the crimes committed in liberty’s name have been exceeded only by those committed in God’s name.
Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
The Conduct of Life, “Considerations Along the Way” (1860)
(Source)
Nations are most commonly saved by the worst men in them. The virtuous are too scrupulous to go to the lengths which are necessary to rouse the people against their tyrants.
Horace Walpole (1717-1797) English novelist, letter writer
Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, Vol. 1, ch. 12 (1859)
(Source)
Variants:
- "The adventurer's career suggests the reflection that nations are usually saved by their worse men, since the virtuous are too scrupulous to go to the lengths needed to rouse the people against their tyrants." (Source)
- "The virtuous are too scrupulous to go to the lengths that are necessary to rouse the people against their tyrants."
- Modern paraphrase: "No great country was ever saved by good men because good men will not go to the lengths necessary to save it."
- Modern paraphrase: "No great country was ever saved by good men, because good men may not go to the lengths that may be necessary."
For the Bolsheviki the end to be achieved was the Communist State, or the so-called Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Everything which advanced that end was justifiable and revolutionary. The Lenins, Radeks, and Zorins were therefore quite consistent. Obsessed by the infallibility of their creed, giving of themselves to the fullest, they could be both heroic and despicable at the same time. They could work twenty hours a day, live on herring and tea, and order the slaughter of innocent men and women. Occasionally they sought to mask their killings by pretending a “misunderstanding,” for doesn’t the end justify all means? They could employ torture and deny the inquisition, they could lie and defame, and call themselves idealists. In short, they could make themselves and others believe that everything was legitimate and right from the revolutionary viewpoint; any other policy was weak, sentimental, or a betrayal of the Revolution.
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) Lithuanian-American anarchist, activist
My Disillusionment in Russia, ch. 12 (1920)
(Source)
Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result. For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it.
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
The Prince, ch. 18 (1513) [tr. Marriott (1908)]
(Source)
Origin of the paraphrase "The ends justify the means," which is generally attributed to Machiavelli.
[Capitalism is] the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
(Attributed)
Attributed by Sir George Schuster, Christianity and Human Relations in Industry (1951). Frequently quoted, but no direct citation found. More information here.
Variations:
- "... the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- "... the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- "The great merit of the capitalist system, it has been said, is that it succeeds in using the nastiest motives of nasty people for the ultimate benefit of society." (written by E. A. G. Robinson, Monopoly (1941). (Robinson was a colleague of Keynes.)
Terror is the most effective political instrument. I shall not permit myself to be robbed of it simply because a lot of stupid, bourgeois mollycoddles choose to be offended by it.
Adolph Hitler (1889-1945) German leader
Table talk (1933)
Quoted in Hermann Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, ch. 6 (1940). Note: I don't actually wish I'd said this, but it's a useful quotation for those who similarly think torture and terror are legitimate political tools to consider who their bedfellow is.
Obstinacy in a bad cause is but consistency in a good.
Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, Part 1, sec. 25 (1642) [ed. Symonds (1886)]
(Source)
There are things a man must not do even to save a nation.
Murray Kempton (1917-1997) American journalist.
“To Save a Nation,” America Comes of Age (1963)
DARLA: You really think that safety can be plucked from the arms of an evil deed?
Steven S. DeKnight (b. 1964) American television screenwriter, producer
Angel, 4×17 “Inside Out” (2 Apr 2003)
Self-interest sets in motion virtues and vices of all kinds.
François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Maxims], #263 (1665-1678) [tr. Tancock (1959)]
Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“Heretics and Heresies” (1874)
(Source)
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
George Santayana (1863-1952) Spanish-American poet and philosopher [Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruíz de Santayana y Borrás]
The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress, Introduction (1905-06)
(Source)
