dream quotes

Anais Nin: 

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.

Anais Nin: 

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.

Anais Nin: 

Dreams are necessary to life.

Anatole France: 

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Carl Jung: 

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Sandburg: 

Nothing happens unless first a dream.

Carl Sandburg: 

Nothing happens unless first we dream.

Dom Helder Camara: 

When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality.

Edward Kennedy: 

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.

Elizabeth Gilbert: 

The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.

George Bernard Shaw: 

Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?"
frequently attributed to Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy, who used it in a speech which his brother, Edward F. (Teddy) Kennedy quoted at RFK's funeral.


George Bernard Shaw: 

You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

Gloria Steinem: 

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

Goethe: 

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

H. L. Mencken: 

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

Henry David Thoreau: 

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Henry David Thoreau: 

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

High Eagle: 

In life, many thoughts are born in the course of a moment, an hour, a day. Some are dreams, some visions. Often, we are unable to distinguish between them. To some, they are the same; however, not all dreams are visions. Much energy is lost in fanciful dreams that never bear fruit. But visions are messages from the Great Spirit, each for a different purpose in life. Consequently, one person's vision may not be that of another. To have a vision, one must be prepared to receive it, and when it comes, to accept it. Thus when these inner urges become reality, only then can visions be fulfilled. The spiritual side of life knows everyone's heart and who to trust. How could a vision ever be given to someone to harbor if that person could not be trusted to carry it out. The message is simple: commitment precedes vision.

Hobbes (of Calvin and ...): 

I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each others dreams, we can be together all the time.

James A. Froude: 

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

Jean-Paul Sartre: 

Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.

Jesse Jackson: 

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.

John Lennon: 

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope someday you will join us, and the world will live as one.

John Lennon: 

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.

Kahlil Gibran: 

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

Kalidasa: 

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the 
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes 
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Marcel Proust: 

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

Margaret Mead: 

The liberals have not softened their view of actuality to make themselves live closer to the dream, but instead sharpen their perceptions and fight to make the dream actuality or give up the battle in despair.

Marian Wright Edelman: 

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

Mark Twain: 

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: 

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

Martin Luther King, jr.: 

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.
The Trumpet of Conscience


Mary Beth Danielson: 

If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life should be, then maturity is letting go again.

Norman Lindsay: 

The best love affairs are those we never had.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Samuel Gompers: 

What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.

Victor Hugo: 

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

Virginia Woolf: 

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Will Durant: 

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

Zadok Rabinowitz: 

A man's dreams are an index to his greatness.

doubt/uncertainty quotes

Alfred Korzybski: 

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

Andre Gide: 

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

Bertrand Russell: 

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others. 
"Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?"


Bertrand Russell: 

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise. 
"The Philosophy of Logical Atomism"


Blaise Pascal: 

To deny, to believe, and to doubt absolutely -- this is for man what running is for a horse.

Blaise Pascal: 

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

Carl Sagan: 

It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.

Carl Sagan: 

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones. (1987 lecture "The Burden of Skepticism")

David Hume: 

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.

Donald Rumsfeld: 

As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.

Erich Fromm: 

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Frank Crane: 

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: 

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

G Gaia: 

The common dogma [of fundamentalists] is fear of modern knowledge, inability to cope with the fast change in a scientific-technological society, and the real breakdown in apparent moral order in recent years.... That is why hate is the major fuel, fear is the cement of the movement, and superstitious ignorance is the best defense against the dangerous new knowledge. ... When you bring up arguments that cast serious doubts on their cherished beliefs you are not simply making a rhetorical point, you are threatening their whole Universe and their immortality. That provokes anger and quite frequently violence. ... Unfortunately you cannot reason with them and you even risk violence in confronting them. Their numbers will decline only when society stabilizes, and adapts to modernity. 
AOL Member


G. K. Chesterton: 

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

Georg C. Lichtenberg: 

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

Henri Bergson: 

An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.

Isaac Bashevis Singer: 

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters. 
New York Times, December 3, 1978


James Baldwin: 

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart, for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

James Joyce: 

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

Jane Addams: 

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we often might win, by fearing to attempt.

Johann Goethe: 

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of douts of my own.

Johann Kaspar Lavater: 

Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.

John A. Hutchinson: 

Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind.

John Naisbitt: 

We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.

John Wooden: 

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

Mary Kay Ash: 

Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway.

Oliver Wendell Holmes: 

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

Peter F. Drucker: 

There are no creeds in mathematics.

Pierre Abelard: 

The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.

Princess Diana: 

Only do what your heart tells you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Our distrust is very expensive.

Rollo May: 

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.

Theodore Rubin: 

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

Thomas H. Huxley: 

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever or whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

Tom Peters: 

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.

Umberto Eco: 

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

Ursula K. LeGuin: 

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

Victor Frankl: 

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

Vince Lombardi: 

Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

Virginia Woolf: 

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.

dogs quotes

Aldous Huxley: 

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

G.K. Chesterton: 

I always like a dog so long as he isn't spelled backward.

George Bird Evans: 

I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying.

George Eliot: 

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

Mme. de Staël: 

The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.

Robert A. Heinlein: 

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

Will Rogers: 

I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons.

diversity quotes

   

Algernon Black: 

Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one's own way to the highest, to one's own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one's ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication.

This entry continued ...
Anais Nin: 

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

Anne Frank: 

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

Donald Williams: 

For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.

Ecclesiastes: 

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8


Elbert Hubbard: 

Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one. 
The Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams, 1923


Eugene McCarthy: 

As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.

Felix Adler: 

[People] may be said to resemble not the bricks of which a house is built, but the pieces of a picture puzzle, each differing in shape, but matching the rest, and thus bringing out the picture.

Franklin Thomas: 

One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings. 
in Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, 1983


Harry Emerson Fosdick: 

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth. The Living of These Days, 1956

James Baldwin: 

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

Jerome Nathanson: 

The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.

Jerome Nathanson: 

The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.

Jimmy Carter: 

We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

John F. Kennedy: 

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

John F. Kennedy: 

The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

Lillian Hellman: 

Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?

Margaret Mead: 

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

Margaret Mead: 

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

Marian Wright Edelman: 

When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn't say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn't have a mental or physical handicap. He said, "Let all children come unto me."

Mark Twain: 

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

Martin Luther King Jr.: 

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Mary Catherine Bateson: 

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stiffled. I want all the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

It is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others' religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly study of the world's religions is a sacred duty.

Pearl S. Buck: 

We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity.

Rene Dubos: 

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival. 
Celebrations of Life, 1981 


Robert A. Heinlein: 

One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.

Robert F. Kennedy: 

Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.

Thomas Jefferson: 

Difference of opinion is helpful in religion.

dissent quotes

Archibald Macleish: 

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

Barbara Ehrenreich: 

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

David Ogilvy: 

Talent ... is most likely to be found among non-conformists, dissenters, and rebels.

Edward R. Murrow: 

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

Edward R. Murrow: 

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices. (about Senator Joseph McCarthy's accusations about Communism in the American government)

Eleanor Holmes Norton: 

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

Elie Wiesel: 

It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment

Eric Hoffer: 

The beginning of thought is in disagreement -- not only with others but also with ourselves.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall: 

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. (paraphrasing Voltaire)

Florynce Kennedy: 

You've got to rattle your cage door. You've got to let them know that you're in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away, but you'll sure have a lot more fun.

George Orwell: 

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

Harry S Truman: 

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

J. William Fulbright: 

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.

James Luther Adams: 

Nothing is complete and thus nothing is exempt from criticism.

John F. Kennedy: 

Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed -- and no republic can survive

John Lewis: 

We live in a country where we're supposed to have freedom of the press and religious freedom, but I think to some degree, there’s a sense of fear in America today, that if you say the wrong thing, what some people will consider what is wrong, if you step out of line, if you dissent, whether you be an entertainer, that somehow and some way this government or the forces to be will come down on you.

Martin Luther King Jr.: 

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.

Vaclav Havel: 

You do not become a "dissident" just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.

William O. Douglas: 

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

disobedience quotes

Erich Fromm: 

Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason.

George Bernard Shaw: 

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

Henry David Thoreau: 

If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Martin Luther King, jr.: 

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Oscar Wilde: 

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

difficulties quotes

Albert Einstein: 

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.

Albert Schweitzer: 

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.

Anne Bradstreet: 

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

Corita Kent: 

Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

David Halverstam: 

Bart Giamatti did not grow up (as he had dreamed) to play second base for the Red Sox. He became a professor at Yale, and then, in time . . . president of the National Baseball League. He never lost his love for the Boston Red Sox. It was as a Red Sox fan, he later realized that human beings are fallen, and that life is filled with disappointment. The path to comprehending Calvinism in modern America, he decided, begins at Fenway Park.

Denise Levertov: 

Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.

Dorothy Parker: 

As only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.

George Washington: 

Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

Goethe: 

Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.

Helen Keller: 

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

James Russell Lowell: 

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

Jane Jacobs: 

Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems.

John Quincy Adams: 

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: 

But the fruit that can fall without shaking
Indeed is too mellow for me.

M. Scott Peck: 

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

Madame de Stael: 

The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.

Mark Twain: 

December is the toughest month of the year. Others are July, January, September, Aprll, November, May, March, June, October, August, and February.

Maya Lin: 

To fly, we have to have resistance.

Norbert Capek: 

It is worthwhile to live
and fight courageously
for sacred ideals.

This entry continued ...
Rainer Maria Rilke: 

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

Ralph Waldo Emerson (probably erroneously): 
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Scott Alexander: 

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.

Stephen Sigmund: 

Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations will never become a strong productive plant.

Theodore Dreiser: 

If I were personally to define religion I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstance. 
(attributed) 


Thomas Jefferson: 

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

Thomas Paine: 

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

William Ellery Channing: 

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

Winston Churchill: 

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

democracy quotes

A. J. Muste: 

The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.

Agnes Repplier: 

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

Alex Carey: 

... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
Australian social scientist, quoted by Noam Chomsky in World Orders Old and New


Alexis de Tocqueville: 

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

Aristotle: 

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

Barbara Ehrenreich: 

That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose.

Bill Vaughan: 

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.

C. S. Lewis: 

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Demosthenes: 

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.

Dorothy Thompson: 

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.

Dorothy Thompson: 

The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld.

Dorothy Thompson: 

Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare.

E. B. White: 

Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.

E. B. White: 

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Edward Dowling: 

The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. [1941]

Eleanor Holmes Norton: 

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

Eugene McCarthy: 

As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.

Eugene V. Debs: 

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.

Frank Owen: 

In 1929 the wise, far-seeing electors of my native Hereford sent me to Westminster and, two years later, the lousy bastards kicked me out.

G. K. Chesterton: 

The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.

George Bernard Shaw: 

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

George Orwell: 

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

George Washington: 

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

Gore Vidal: 

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

H. L. Mencken: 

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

H. L. Mencken: 

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920


H. L. Mencken: 

A good politician under democracy is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Hermann Goering: 

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. quote verified at snopes.com

Howard Winters: 

Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term 'we' or 'us' and at the same time decreases those labeled 'you' or 'them' until that category has no one left in it.

Hubert H. Humphrey: 

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

Irving Kristol: 

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

J. William Fulbright: 

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.

Jane Addams: 

We have learned to say that the good must be extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one person or any one class. But we have not yet learned to add to that statement, that unless all [people] and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having.

Jane Auer: 

Voting is one of the few things where boycotting in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better.

Jerome Nathanson: 

The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.

Jerome Nathanson: 

The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.

Jesse Jackson: 

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

John Bright: 

Demand the ballot as the undeniable right of every man who is called to the poll, and take special care that the old constitutional rule and principle, by which majorities alone shall decide in Parliamentary elections, shall not be violated.

John Dewey: 

The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.

John F. Kennedy: 

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

John Gardner: 

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

John Simon: 

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.

Laurence J. Peter: 

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.

Lillian Hellman: 

Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create.

Lord Acton: 

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Lyndon B. Johnson: 

We preach the virtues of democracy abroad. We must practice its duties here at home. Voting is the first duty of democracy.

Mark Twain: 

Citizenship is what makes a republic -- monarchies can get along without it.

Mark Twain: 

We adore titles and heredities in our hearts and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.

Meg Greenfield: 

Everybody's for democracy in principle. It's only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

In true democracy every man and women is taught to think for himself or herself.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS.

Molly Ivins: 

The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.

Noam Chomsky: 

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

Noam Chomsky: 

There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for institutional change -- and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future."

Noam Chomsky: 

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.

Paulo Freire: 

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

Plato: 

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Robert Coles: 

Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?

Robert M. Hutchins: 

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Rosa Luxemburg: 

Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.

Stuart Chase: 

Democracy, as has been said of Christianity, has never really been tried.

Theodore Parker: 

Democracy means not "I am as good as you are" but "You are as good as I am."

Thomas Jefferson: 

I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education.

Thomas Jefferson: 

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Thomas Jefferson: 

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Thomas Jefferson: 

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

Thomas Jefferson: 

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Unknown: 

[C]reative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy.

Vince Lombardi: 

Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Voltaire: 

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

Walt Whitman: 

Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between [people], and their beliefs -- in religion, literature, colleges and schools -- democracy in all public and private life....

Walt Whitman: 

The purpose of democracy -- supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance -- is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures, 
This entry continued ...
Wendell Phillips: 

Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.

Will Rogers: 

Elections are a good deal like marriages. There's no accounting for anyone's taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it's the same with public officials.

William Hastie: 

Democracy is not being, it is becoming. It is easily lost, but never finally won.

William J. Bennett: 

America's support for human rights and democracy is our noblest export to the world.

death quotes

Amelia Burr: 

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.

Anais Nin: 

People living deeply have no fear of death.

Charlie Daniels: 

A brief candle; both ends burning 
An endless mile; a bus wheel turning 
A friend to share the lonesome times 
A handshake and a sip of wine 
So say it loud and let it ring 
We are all a part of everything 
The future, present and the past 
Fly on proud bird 
You're free at last.
written en route to the funeral for his friend, Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd.


Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb, said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

Death? Why this fuss about death. Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! ... Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or "broken heart," is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. 
(Suicide Note, August 17, 1935)


Ecclesiastes: 

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8


Edna St. Vincent Millay: 

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Elie Wiesel: 

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. 
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. 
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
(Oct. 1986) 


Emily Dickinson: 

My life closed twice before its close;
  It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
  A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
  As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
  And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson: 

What is—"Paradise"—
Who live there—
Are they "Farmers"—
Do they "hoe"—
Do they know that this is "Amherst"—
And that I—am coming—too—

This entry continued ...
Emily Dickinson: 
Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The Carriage held but just Ourselves --
And Immortality.
This entry continued ...
Emily Dickinson: 

Love—is anterior to Life—
Posterior—to Death—
Initial of Creation, and
The Exponent of Earth—

Emily Dickinson: 

Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen -- 
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs -- between --

This entry continued ...
Emily Dickinson: 

Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
"Dissolve" says Death—The Spirit "Sir
I have another Trust"—

Death doubts it—Argues from the Ground—
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.

Emily Dickinson: 

All but Death, can be Adjusted—
Dynasties repaired—
Systems—settled in their Sockets—
Citadels—dissolved—

Wastes of Lives—resown with Colors
By Succeeding Springs—
Death—unto itself—Exception—
Is exempt from Change—

Epicurus: 

Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.

Ernest Becker: 

The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.

Ernest Becker: 

The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.

Ernest Becker: 

[W]e now know that the human animal is characterized by two great fears that other animals are protected from: the fear of life and the fear of death... Heidegger brought these fears to the center of his existential philosophy. He argued that the basic anxiety of [humanity] is anxiety about being-in-the-world, as well as anxiety of being-in-the-world. That is, both fear of death and fear of life, of experience and individuation.

F. Forrester Church: 

Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.

Felix Adler: 

Religion is a wizard, a sibyl . . . 
She faces the wreck of worlds, and prophesies restoration.
She faces a sky blood-red with sunset colours that deepen into darkness, and prophesies dawn.
She faces death, and prophesies life.

Gilda Radner: 

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 
Life is but an empty dream! 
For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
and things are not what they seem. 
Life is real! Life is earnest! 
And the grave is not its goal; 
Dust thou art; to dust returnest, 
Was not spoken of the soul.

Isaac Asimov: 

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

James F. Bymes: 

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death

John Muir: 

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.

Louisa May Alcott: 

Beth could not reason upon or explain the faith that gave her courage and patience to give up life, and cheerfully wait for death. Like a confiding child, she asked no questions, but left everything to God and nature, Father and Mother of us all, feeling sure that they, and they only, could teach and strengthen heart and spirit for this life and the life to come.
in Little Women, chapter 36


Margaret J. Wheatley: 

Destroying is a necessary function in life. Everything has its season, and all things eventually lose their effectiveness and die.

Norbert Capek: 

It is worthwhile to live
and fight courageously
for sacred ideals.

This entry continued ...
Paul Anka: 

And now the end is near
And so I face the final curtain,
My friends, I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case of which I'm certain.
I've lived a life that's full, I've travelled each and evr'y highway
And more, much more than this, I did it my way.

Rabbi Zusya: 

In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you not Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"

Robert Fulghum: 

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.

Roman Tombstone: 

Do not pass by my epitaph, traveler.
But having stopped, listen and learn, then go your way.
There is no boat in Hades, no ferryman Charon,
No caretaker Aiakos, no dog Cerberus.
All we who are dead below
Have become bones and ashes, but nothing else.
I have spoken to you honestly, go on, traveler,
Lest even while dead I seem loquacious to you.

Sogyal Rinpoche: 

...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.

Toni Morrison: 

Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

W. Somerset Maugham: 

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

William Shakespeare: 

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
This entry continued ...
Winston Churchill: 

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

curiosity quotes

Albert Einstein: 

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

Albert Einstein: 

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.

Anatole France: 

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards

Eleanor Roosevelt: 

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Ellen Parr: 

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Isaiah Berlin: 

Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.

criticism quotes

David Brinkley: 

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her. 

Elbert Hubbard: 

The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified, and misunderstood. This is part of the penalty for greatness, and evey man understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness.

Elbert Hubbard: 

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Elias Canetti: 

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.

Franklin P. Jones: 

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

H. L. Mencken: 

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

Henri Frederic Amiel: 

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.

Henry Steele Commager: 

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

James Luther Adams: 

Nothing is complete and thus nothing is exempt from criticism.

John Gardner: 

Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.

John Wooden: 

You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (probably erroneously): 
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Theodore Roosevelt: 

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

creed/credo quotes

Abraham Lincoln: 

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.

Abraham Lincoln: 

I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

Adlai E. Stevenson: 

What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand. 
speech, Libertyville, Illinois, May 21, 1954


Albert Schweitzer: 

Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life and that to destroy, harm, or to hinder life is evil. Affirmation of the world -- that is affirmation of the will to live, which appears in phenomenal forms all around me -- is only possible for me in that I give myself out for other life.

Alex Noble: 

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.

Arthur Dobrin: 

A Humanist Code of Ethics:
Do no harm to the earth, she is your mother.
Being is more important than having.
Never promote yourself at another's expense.
Hold life sacred; treat it with reverence.
Allow each person the digity of his or her labor.
This entry continued ...
Bertrand Russell: 

Three passions have governed my life: 
The longings for love, the search for knowledge, 
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind]. 

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness. 
In the union of love I have seen 
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision 
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined. 

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. 
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people]. 
I have wished to know why the stars shine. 

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens, 
But always pity brought me back to earth; 
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart 
Of children in famine, of victims tortured 
And of old people left helpless. 
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, 
And I too suffer. 

This has been my life; I found it worth living. 
adapted


Charles A. Beard: 

All the lessons of history in four sentences:
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. 
The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. 
The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. 
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

Let us revere, let us worship, but erect and open-eyed, the highest, not the lowest; the future, not the past!

Colette: 

I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.

D. H. Lawrence: 

This is what I believe:
That I am I.
That my soul is a dark forest.
That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.
That I must have the courage to let them come and go.
That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.
There is my creed.

Ecclesiastes: 

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8


Emily Dickinson: 

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Eugene V. Debs: 

Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Everett Dirksen: 

I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.

Friedrich Nietzsche: 

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

George Santayana: 

The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular. 
Scepticism and Animal Faith, 1923 


George Washington Carver: 

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.

Harry Emerson Fosdick: 

Nothing else matters much -- not wealth, nor learning, nor even health -- without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.

Henry David Thoreau: 

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

John Steinbeck: 

This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

John Wesley: 

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.

Kalidasa: 

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the 
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes 
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Katherine Mansfield: 

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only for wallowing in.

Margaret Chase Smith: 

My creed is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned, not bought.

Mark Twain: 

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: 

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

Norbert Capek: 

In the name of that which implants in the seed the future of the tree and in the hearts of humanity the longing for people living in neighborly love;

In the name of the highest, in whom we move and who makes the mother, the father, brother, and the sister what they are;

In the name of sages and great religious leaders, who sacrificed their lives to hasten the coming of the kingdom of peace and justice;

Let us renew our resolution sincerely to be real brothers and sisters regardless of any kind of barrier which estranges person from person.

In this holy resolution may we be strengthened, knowing that we are one family; that one spirit, the spirit of love, unites us; and that our work together for a more perfect and more joyful life leads us on.

Paul Ricoeur: 

The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct.

Peter F. Drucker: 

There are no creeds in mathematics.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 
Go put your creed into the deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.


Robert Byrne: 

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

Robert Ingersoll: 

My creed:
To love justice, to long for the right, 
to love mercy,
to pity the suffering, to assist the weak,

This entry continued ...
Thomas Jefferson: 

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Thomas Paine: 

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Thomas Paine: 

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Thornton Wilder: 

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate -- that's my philosophy. 
The Skin of Our Teeth, 1942


Unknown: 

The Procrastinator's Creed:

1. I believe that if anything is worth doing, it would have been done already. 

2. I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuses.

This entry continued ...
Walt Whitman: 

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men [sic] -- go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families -- re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
from the 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass


William E. Gladstone : 

Never forget that the purpose for which a man lives is the improvement of the man himself, so that he may go out of this world having, in his great sphere or his small one, done some little good for his fellow creatures and labored a little to diminish the sin and sorrow that are in the world.

William Henry Channing: 

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony. [William Henry Channing's Symphony: some background, and its appearance in an Arthur Brisbane editorial - from the 1906 collection, "Editorials From The Hearst Newspapers"]

William James: 

These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact.
Is Life Worth Living?

creation quotes

Alfonso the Wise (attributed): 

Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. 
13th century


Anton Chekhov: 

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day. [Uncle Vanya, 1897]

Friedrich Von Schlegel: 

The innermost meaning of sacrifice is the annihilation of the finite just because it is finite. In order to demonstrate that this is the only purpose, the most noble and beautiful must be chosen; above all, man, the fulfillment of the earth. Human sacrifices are the most natural sacrifices. Man, however, is more than the fulfillment of the earth; he is reasonable, and reason is free and nothing but an eternal self-determination toward the infinite. Thus man can sacrifice only himself, and that is what he does in the omnipresent sanctissimum of which the masses are not aware. All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods. The meaning of divine creation is primarily revealed in the enthusiasm of annihilation. Only in the throes of death is the spark of eternal life ignited.

Henri Bergson: 

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

Victor Hugo: 

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

William Schulz: 

Unitarian Universalism affirms:

That Creation is too grand, complex, and mysterious to be captured in a narrow creed. That is why we cherish individual freedom of belief. At the same time our convictions lead us to other affirmations . . .

courage qoutes

Alan Cohen: 

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

Aristotle: 

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Baltasar Gracian: 

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.

Bernadette Devlin: 

Yesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win.

Buckminster Fuller: 

Dare to be naive.

Charles DuBois: 

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

Clare Booth Luce: 

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.

Dorothy Thompson: 

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.

Dorothy Thompson: 

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.

Eleanor Roosevelt: 

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

Erich Fromm: 

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: 

All serious daring starts from within.

Helen Keller: 

I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Helen Keller: 

We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.

Henry David Thoreau: 

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

James Freeman Clarke: 

Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.

John Quincy Adams: 

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.

Keshavan Nair: 

With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.

Margaret Chase Smith: 

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.

Marian Wright Edelman: 

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?

Martin Luther King, jr.: 

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.
The Trumpet of Conscience


Maya Angelou: 

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Maya Angelou : 

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (probably erroneously): 
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Robert Coles: 

Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?

Robert Frost: 

The best way out is always through.

Robert G. Ingersoll: 

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

Soren Kierkegaard: 

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.

Susan B. Anthony: 

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.

Theodore H. White: 

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.

Theodore Roosevelt: 

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910


Winston Churchill: 

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

controversy quotes

David Brinkley: 

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her. 

Lillian Hellman: 

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group. [Letter to the US House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1952]

Margaret Chase Smith: 

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: 

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Toni Morrison: 

I'm a controversial figure. My friends either dislike me or hate me. 
speech, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, 1978

conservatives quotes

Abraham Lincoln: 

What is conservativism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?

Alfred E. Wiggam: 

A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.

Ambrose Bierce: 

Conservative: a statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

Andy Rooney: 

Democrats (I think to myself) are liberals who believe the people are basically good, but that they need government help to organize their lives. They believe in freedom so fervently that they think it should be compulsory. They believe that the poor and ignorant are victims of an unfair system and that their circumstances can be improved if we give them help. Republicans (I think to myself) are conservatives who think it would be best if we faced the fact that people are no damned good. They think that if we admit that we have selfish, acquisitive natures and then set out to get all we can for ourselves by working hard for it, that things will be better for everyone. They are not insensitive to the poor, but tend to think the poor are impoverished because they won't work. They think there would be fewer of them to feel sorry for if the government did not encourage the proliferation of the least fit among us with welfare programs.

Ann Richards: 

Ann Richards on How to Be a Good Republican: 

1. You have to believe that the nation's current 8-year prosperity was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, but yesterday's gasoline prices are all Clinton's fault. 

2. You have to believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own. 

3. You have to be against all government programs, but expect Social Security checks on time.

This entry continued ...
Barbara Ehrenreich: 

The only truly new ideas [the right] has come up with in the last twenty years are (1) supply side economics, which is a way of redistributing the wealth upward toward those who already have more than they know what to do with, and (2) creationism, which is a parallel idea for redistributing ignorance out from its fundamentalist strongholds to those who know more than they need to.

Benjamin Disraeli: 

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

Benjamin Disraeli: 

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

Carolyn Heilbrun: 

Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidentially expect utopia. Both are wrong. 

Dave Barry: 

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.

Elbert Hubbard: 

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: 

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

G. K. Chesterton: 

The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

G. K. Chesterton: 

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

George H. W. Bush: 

I'm conservative, but I'm not a nut about it.

Hannah Arendt: 

It is well known that the most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.

James W. Skillen: 

American liberals and conservatives share much of the same political heritage. Originally the term Liberal referred to the political and economic ideal of liberating individuals from unrepresentative and arbitrary governments. Early liberalism set in motion patterns for the rule of law that would guarantee individual rights, representation in law making, access to the courts, and protection of private property. Both conservatives and liberals are Liberal in this sense. But whereas American conservatives of various stripes have continued to place primary emphasis on individual freedom, the autonomy of private institutions, and limits to government in the economic area, American liberals have more frequently appealed to government to advance the liberation of individuals from economic, racial, and political disadvantages in society as a whole.

Jane Auer: 

It may be true that the government that governs best governs least. Unfortunately, the same is also true of the government that governs worst.

John Kenneth Galbraith: 

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

John Stuart Mill: 

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

Leo C. Rosten: 

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

Mark Twain: 

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

Mignon McLaughlin: 

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.

Mort Sahl: 

Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen.

P. J. O'Rourke: 

The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then get elected and prove it.

Paul Weyrich: 

We are different from previous generations of conservatives. We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure of this country.

Paulo Freire: 

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

Peter C. Newman: 

Conservatives usually prefer twin beds, which may contribute to the fact that Canada has more Liberals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made. 
The Conservative


Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.
The Conservative


Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.
The Conservative


Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own. 
The Conservative


Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night.
The Conservative


Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is debonnair and social; reform is individual and imperious.
The Conservative


Robert Anton Wilson: 

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.

Robert S. McElvaine: 

Most liberals never lost sight of the potential for evil in big government. They have consistently opposed government power in matters of personal and political belief. Liberals are not unconcerned with economic liberty, but they have come to believe that the common good requires that social justice be given a higher priority than absolute economic freedom. Conservatives are—and always have been—on the other side of both questions. They are much more prone than liberals to limiting personal and political liberties, but they place the freedom of an individual to do as he pleases in the economic realm at the top of their concerns. Social justice has held a lower priority for conservatives, from the days of Alexander Hamilton when they favored strong government as a means of protecting their economic privileges to the days of Ronald Reagan when they see government as an instrument of social justice and therefore a threat to their economic position.

Tom DeLay: 

Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills. [on causes of the Columbine High School massacre, 1999]

Wendy Kaminer: 

A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.

William E. Gladstone : 

Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear.

William Ralph Inge: 

There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better."

Winston Churchill: 

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

Woodrow Wilson: 

A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.

Woodrow Wilson: 

By 'radical,' I understand one who goes too far; by 'conservative,' one who does not go far enough; by 'reactionary,' one who won't go at all.

Woodrow Wilson: 

A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.