Quotes about uncategorised

Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.

— John F. Kennedy

Even in war moral power is to physical as three parts out of four.

— Napoleon III

For what end shall we be connected with men, of whom this is the character and conduct? Is it, that we may see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution; soberly dishonoured; speciously polluted; the outcasts of delicacy and virtue, and the lothing of God and man?

— Timothy Dwight

He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread.

— Daniel Webster

ihave often noticed thatancestors never boastof the descendants who boastof ancestors i wouldrather start a family thanfinish one blood will tell but oftenit tells too much

— Don Marquis

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

— Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.

— John Maynard Keynes

All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.

— John Adams

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

— Thomas Jefferson

Things won are done, joys soul lies in the doing.

— William Shakespeare

A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.

— Edmund Burke

Those words, temperate and moderate, are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.

— Thomas Paine

If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work on brass, time will efface it. If we rear temples, they will crumble to dust. But if we work on mens immortal minds, if we impress on them high principles, the just fear of God, and love for their fellow-men, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface, and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity.

— Daniel Webster

Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?

— Daniel Webster

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

— Samuel Johnson

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a mans property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Women should be permitted to volunteer for non-combat service, they should not be accepted, voluntarily or through the draft, as combat soldiers. We know of no comparable ways of training women and girls, and we have no real way of knowing whether the kinds of training that teach men both courage and restraint would be adaptable to women or effective in a crisis. But the evidence of history and comparative studies of other species suggest that women as a fighting body might be far less amenable to the rules that prevent warfare from becoming a massacre and, with the use of modern weapons, that protect the survival of all humanity. This is what I meant by saying that women in combat might be too fierce.

— Margaret Mead

No man who is not willing to bear arms and to fight for his rights can give a good reason why he should be entitled to the privilege of living in a free community.

— Theodore Roosevelt

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even his personal services to the defence of it, and consequently that the Citizens of America from 18 to 50 Years of Age should be borne on the Militia Rolls, provided with uniform Arms, and so far accustomed to the use of them, that the Total strength of the Country might be called forth at a Short Notice on any very interesting Emergency,

— George Washington

Nothing can be more hurtful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another.

— George Washington

We must train and classify the whole of our male citizens, and make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education.

— Thomas Jefferson

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

— John F. Kennedy

A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living. Todays military rejects include tomorrows hard core unemployed.

— John F. Kennedy

I could as easily bail out the Potomac River with a teaspoon as attend to all the details of the army.

— Abraham Lincoln

Enjoin this upon the Officers, and let them inculcate, and press home to the Soldiery, the Necessity of Order and Harmony among them, who are embarkd in one common Cause, and mutually contending for all that Freeman [sic] hold dear. I am persuaded, if the Officers will but exert themselves, these Animosities, this Disorder, will in a great Measure subside, and nothing being more essential to the Service than that it should, I am hopeful nothing on their Parts will be wanting to effect it.

— George Washington

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for ones own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didnt, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didnt have to; but if he didnt want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

— Joseph Heller

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citzenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Some day there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in their estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could happen in this country

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Right Honourable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Nay, number itself in armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for, as Virgil saith, It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.

— Francis Bacon

We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.

— Eric Hoffer

I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.

— Benjamin Disraeli

A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.

— Samuel Johnson

When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled. It has no apparatus to deal with the boor, the liar, the lout, and the antidemocrat in general.

— J. William Fulbright

Never were abilities so much below mediocrity so well rewarded; no, not when Caligulas horse was made Consul.

— John Randolph

It is therefore necessary that memorable things should be committed to writing, and not wholly betaken [i. e. , committed] to slippery memory which seldom yields a certain reckoning.

— Sir Edward Coke

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

— Henry David Thoreau

Mankind which began in a cave and behind a windbreak will end in the disease-soaked ruins of a slum.

— H.G. Wells

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marryA young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

— Francis Bacon

man, proud man,Dressd in a little brief authority,

— William Shakespeare

This was the noblest Roman of them all. All the conspirators, save only he,Did that they did in envy of Caesar;He only, in a general honest thoughtAnd common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle, and the elementsSo mixd in him that Nature might stand upAnd say to all the world, This was a man!

— William Shakespeare

All the worlds a stage,And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,Mewling and puking in the nurses arms. Then the whining school-boy, with his satchelAnd shining morning face, creeping like snailUnwillingly to school. And then the lover,Sighing like furnace, with a woeful balladMade to his mistress eyebrow. Then a soldier,Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,Seeking the bubble reputationEven in the cannons mouth. And then the justice,In fair round belly with good capon lind,With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,Full of wise saws and modern instances;And so he plays his part. The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and slipperd pantaloon [dotard],With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,His youthful hose, well savd, a world too wideFor his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,Turning again toward childish treble, pipesAnd whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,That ends this strange eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.

— William Shakespeare

The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics.

— Albert Schweitzer

Every actual animal is somewhat dull and somewhat mad. He will at times miss his signals and stare vacantly when he might well act, while at other times he will run off into convulsions and raise a dust in his own brain to no purpose. These imperfections are so human that we should hardly recognise ourselves if we could shake them off altogether. Not to retain any dulness would mean to possess untiring attention and universal interests, thus realising the boast about deeming nothing human alien to us; while to be absolutely without folly would involve perfect self-knowledge and self-control. The intelligent man known to history flourishes within a dullard and holds a lunatic in leash. He is encased in a protective shell of ignorance and insensibility which keeps him from being exhausted and confused by this too complicated world; but that integument blinds him at the same time to many of his nearest and highest interests. He is amused by the antics of the brute dreaming within his breast; he gloats on his passionate reveries, an amusement which sometimes costs him very dear. Thus the best human intelligence is still decidely barbarous; it fights in heavy armour and keeps a fool at court.

— George Santayana

When I die, my epitaph or whatever you call those signs on gravestones is going to read: I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I dident like. I am so proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come to my grave you will find me sitting there, proudly reading it.

— Will Rogers

Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.

— John Stuart Mill

Man, created to Gods image and likeness , is not just flesh and blood. The sexual instinct is not all that he has. Man is also, and pre-eminently, intelligent and free; and thanks to these powers he is, and must remain, superior to the rest of creation; they give him mastery over his physical, psychological and affective appetites.

— John Paul VI

A great man left a watchword that we can well repeat: There is no indispensable man.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

It is said that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo because he forgot his infantryhe staked too much upon the more spectacular but less substantial calvary. The present administration in Washington provides a close parallel. It has either forgotten or it does not want to remember the infantry of our economic army. These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Who is wise? He that learns from every One. Who is powerful? He that governs his Passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

— Benjamin Franklin

There is a great deal of human nature in man.

— Charles Kingsley

We all are blind until we seeThat in the human planNothing is worth the making ifIt does not make the man. Why build these cities gloriousIf man unbuilded goes?In vain we build the world, unlessThe builder also grows.

— Edwin Markham

Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman. The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer.

— William O. Douglas

Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity; begins even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free.

— Thomas Carlyle

Make no more giants, God!But elevate the race at once!

— Robert Browning

I am in bloodSteppd in so far that, should I wade no more,Returning were as tedious as go oer.

— William Shakespeare

Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so tonightto you, the great silent majority of my fellow AmericansI ask for your support.

— Richard M. Nixon

I hold it true, whateer befall;I feel it, when I sorrow most;Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

One with the law is a majority.

— Calvin Coolidge

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs.

— Eric Hoffer

On this tenth day of June, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Lobbyists are in many cases expert technicians and capable of explaining complex and difficult subjects in a clear, understandable fashion. They engage in personal discussions with Members of Congress in which they can explain in detail the reasons for positions they advocate. Because our congressional representation is based on geographical boundaries, the lobbyists who speak for the various economic, commercial, and other functional interests of this country serve a very useful purpose and have assumed an important role in the legislative process.

— John F. Kennedy

Four things a man must learn to doIf he would make his record true:To think without confusion clearly;To love his fellow-men sincerely;To act from honest motives purely;To trust in God and Heaven securely.

— Henry Van Dyke

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

— Henry David Thoreau

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Every one lives by selling something, whatever be his right to it.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

More will sometimes be demanded of you than is reasonable. Bear it meekly, and exhaust your time and strength in performing your duties, rather than in vindicating your rights. Be silent, even when you are misrepresented. Turn aside when opposed, rather than confront opposition with resistance. Bear and forbear, not defending yourselves, so much as trusting to your works to defend you. Yet, in counselling you thus, I would not be understood to be a total non-resistant;a perfectly passive, non-elastic sand-bag, in society; but I would not have you resist until the blow be aimed, not so much at you, as, through you, at the sacred cause of human improvement, in which you are engaged,a point at which forbearance would be allied to crime.

— Horace Mann

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

— Jack London

1. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. 2. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. 3. You cannot help small men up by tearing big men down. 4. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. 5. You cannot lift the wage-earner up by pulling the wage-payer down. 6. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. 7. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. 8. You cannot establish sound social security on borrowed money. 9. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a mans initiative and independence. 10. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

— Abraham Lincoln

Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.

— Bible

Never complain and never explain.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.

— Carl Sandburg

That what is true of business and politics is gloriously true of the professions, the arts and crafts, the sciences, the sports. That the best picture has not yet been painted; the greatest poem is still unsung; the mightiest novel remains to be written; the divinest music has not been conceived even by Bach. In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has to be discovered. We know only a few streaks about astronomy. We are only beginning to imagine the force and composition of the atom. Physics has not yet found any indivisible matter, or psychology a sensible soul.

— Lincoln Steffens

And when he fell in whirlwind, he went downAs when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

— Edwin Markham

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

— Henry David Thoreau

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. It is an uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethics whisper into my ear. You are happy, they say; therefore you are called upon to give much.

— Albert Schweitzer

So farewell to the little good you bear me. Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!This is the state of man: to-day he puts forthThe tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surelyHis greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,And then he falls, as I do. I have venturd,Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,This many summers in a sea of glory,But far beyond my depth. My high-blown prideAt length broke under me, and now has left me,Weary and old with service, to the mercyOf a rude stream that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!I feel my heart new opend. O, how wretchedIs that poor man that hangs on princes favours!There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,More pangs and fears than wars or women have;And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,Never to hope again.

— William Shakespeare

A baby is Gods opinion that life should go on.

— Carl Sandburg

The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the question is what is his attitude to the world and all life that comes within his reach. A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, and that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help. Only the universal ethic of the feeling of responsibility in an ever-widening sphere for all that livesonly that ethic can be founded in thought. The ethic of Reverence for Life, therefore, comprehends within itself everything that can be described as love, devotion, and sympathy whether in suffering, joy, or effort.

— Albert Schweitzer

Life is not so important as the duties of life.

— John Randolph

We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.

— Theodore Roosevelt

I do the very best I know howthe very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me wont amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

— Abraham Lincoln

O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q. !Strange is the gift that I owe to you;Such a gift as never a kingSave to daughter or son might bring,All my tenure of heart and hand,All my title to house and land;Mother and sister and child and wifeAnd joy and sorrow and death and life!

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

the giver of life, who gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness.

— Thomas Jefferson

There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. Its very hard in military or in personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair.

— John F. Kennedy

He was, first and last, the born fighter, to whom the consciousness of being matched against a great adversary suffices and who can dispense with success. Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.

— Edith Hamilton

Life is a romantic business. It is painting a picture, not doing a sumbut you have to make the romance, and it will come to the question how much fire you have in your belly.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people cant. But I dont believe that the Federal Government should take action to try to make these opportunities exactly equal, particularly when there is a moral factor involved.

— Jimmy Carter

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

— Daniel Webster

Fraud and prevarication are servile vices. They sometimes grow out of the necessities, always out of the habits, of slavish and degenerate spirits. It is an erect countenance, it is a firm adherence to principle, it is a power of resisting false shame and frivolous fear, that assert our good faith and honor, and assure to us the confidence of mankind.

— Edmund Burke

The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss.

— Max Stirner

The contest, for ages, has been to rescue Liberty from the grasp of executive power.

— Daniel Webster

Eternal vigilance is the price of libertypower is ever stealing from the many to the few. The hand entrusted with power becomes the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.

— Wendell Phillips

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England.

— John Stuart Mill

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other mens labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same nameliberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable namesliberty and tyranny.

— Abraham Lincoln

The Democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another mans right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.

— Abraham Lincoln

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

— Abraham Lincoln