Quotes about uncategorised

A mans life is interesting primarily when he has failedI well know. For its a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

— Georges Clemenceau

The power of administrative bodies to make finding of fact which may be treated as conclusive, if there is evidence both ways, is a power of enormous consequence. An unscrupulous administrator might be tempted to say Let me find the facts for the people of my country, and I care little who lays down the general principles.

— Charles Evans Hughes

It seems to me that it is these extremists who are advocating a soft approach. Their oversimplifications and their baseless generalizations reflect the softness of those who cannot bear to face the burdens of a continuing struggle against a powerful and resourceful enemy. A truly tough approach, in my judgment, is one which accepts the challenge of communism with the courage and determination to meet it with every instrumentality of foreign policypolitical and economic as well as military, and with the willingness to see the struggle through as far into the future as may be necessary. Those who seek to meet the challengeor, in reality, to evade itby bold adventures abroad and witch hunts at home are the real devotees of softnessthe softness of seeking escape from painful realities by resort to illusory panaceas.

— J. William Fulbright

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihoodthe virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

— Theodore Roosevelt

All my life Ive known better than to depend on the experts. How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?

— John F. Kennedy

It little profits that an idle king,By this still hearth, among these barren crags,Matchd with an aged wife, I mete and doleUnequal laws unto a savage race,That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel; I will drinkLife to the lees. All times I have enjoydGreatly, have sufferd greatly, both with thoseThat loved me, and alone; on shore, and whenThro scudding drifts the rainy HyadesVext the dim sea. I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known,cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honord of them all,And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethroGleams that untravelld world whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnishd, not to shine in use!As tho to breathe were life! Life piled on lifeWere all too little, and of one to meLittle remains; but every hour is savedFrom that eternal silence, something more,A bringer of new things; and vile it wereFor some three suns to store and hoard myself,And this gray spirit yearning in desireTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho much is taken, much abides; and thoWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But Im not concerned about that now. I just want to do Gods will. And Hes allowed me to go up to the mountain. And Ive looked over, and Ive seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

— King Jr. Martin Luther

The Good of man is the active exercise of his souls faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them.

— Aristotle

Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over which, in the past, the nation has triumphed; because of the blood and sweat and tears, the labor and the anguish, through which, in the days that have gone, our forefathers moved on to triumph.

— Theodore Roosevelt

He that has light within his own cleer brestMay sit ith center, and enjoy bright day,But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughtsBenighted walks under the mid-day Sun;Himself is his own dungeon.

— John Milton

A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.

— William Penn

The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

— Plato

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

— Henry David Thoreau

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Europe has been at peace since 1945. But it is a restless peace thats shadowed by the threat of violence. Europe is partitioned. An unnatural line runs through the heart of a very great and a very proud nation [Germany]. History warns us that until this harsh division has been resolved, peace in Europe will never be secure. We must turn to one of the great unfinished tasks of our generationand that unfinished task is making Europe whole again.

— Lyndon B. Johnson

My conclusion will be simple. It will consist of saying, in the very midst of the sound and the fury of our history: Let us rejoice. Let us rejoice, indeed, at having witnessed the death of a lying and comfort-loving Europe and at being faced with cruel truths.

— Albert Camus

In regard to this principle, that all men are born free and equal, if there is an animal on earth to which it does not applythat is not born free, it is manhe is born in a state of the most abject want, and in a state of perfect helplessness and ignorance, which is the foundation of the connubial tie. Who should say that all the soil in the world is equally rich, the first rate land in Kentucky and the Highlands of Scotland because the superficial content of the acre is the same, would be just as right as he who should maintain the absolute equality of man in virtue of his birth. The ricketty and scrofulous little wretch who first sees the light in a work-house, or in a brothel, and who feels the effects of alcohol before the effects of vital air, is not equal in any respect to the ruddy offspring of the honest yeoman; nay, I will go further, and say that a prince, provided he is no better born than royal blood will make him, is not equal to the healthy son of a peasant.

— John Randolph

Equal laws protecting equal rights the best guarantee of loyalty & love of country.

— James Madison

Free at last, free at lastThank God almightyWe are free at last

— King Jr. Martin Luther

Legislation to apply the principle of equal pay for equal work without discrimination because of sex is a matter of simple justice.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.

— Felix Frankfurter

Here was buriedThomas Jeffersonauthorof the Declaration ofAmerican Independenceofthe Statute of Virginiafor Religious Freedom, andFather of the Universityof Virginia

— Thomas Jefferson

Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the worldor to make it the last.

— John F. Kennedy

In the last few decades entire new categories of waste have come to plague and menace the American scene. Pollution is growing at a rapid rate. Pollution destroys beauty and menaces health. It cuts down on efficiency, reduces property values and raises taxes. Almost all these wastes and pollutions are the result of activities carried on for the benefit of man. A prime national goal must be an environment that is pleasing to the senses and healthy to live in. Our Government is already doing much in this field. We have made significant progress. But more must be done.

— Lyndon B. Johnson

We have come tardily to the tremendous task of cleaning up our environment. We should have moved with similar zeal at least a decade ago. But no purpose is served by post-mortems. With visionary zeal but the greatest realism, we must now address ourselves to the vast problems that confront us.

— Gerald R. Ford

Ive often thought that if our zoning boards could be put in charge of botanists, of zoologists and geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers.

— William O. Douglas

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large mattertis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

— Mark Twain

To make it possible for our children, and for our childrens children, to live in a world of peace. To make this country be more than ever a land of opportunityof equal opportunity, full opportunity for every American. To provide jobs for all who can work, and generous help for those who cannot work. To establish a climate of decency and civility, in which each person respects the feelings and the dignity and the God-given rights of his neighbor. To make this a land in which each person can dare to dream, can live his dreamsnot in fear, but in hopeproud of his community, proud of his country, proud of what America has meant to himself and to the world.

— Richard M. Nixon

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

— Winston Churchill

This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put.

— Winston Churchill

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

— George Bernard Shaw

There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

— George Bernard Shaw

I return you many thanks for the honour you have done me; but Europe is not to be saved by any single man. England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.

— William Pitt

We do not intend to part from the Americans and we do not intend to be satellites. I am sure they do not want us to be so. The stronger we are, the better partners we shall be; and I feel certain that as the months pass we shall draw continually closer together with mutual confidence and respect.

— Harold Macmillan

I have not become the Kings First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

— Winston Churchill

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars Englandhe should have said Britain, of coursealways wins one battlethe last.

— Winston Churchill

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

— Abraham Lincoln

We must proceed with our own energy development. Exploitation of domestic petroleum and natural gas potentialities, along with nuclear, solar, geothermal, and non-fossil fuels is vital. We will never again permit any foreign nation to have Uncle Sam over a barrel of oil.

— Gerald R. Ford

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this Nation. This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war, except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.

— Jimmy Carter

I have beheld no day since the commencement of hostilities that I have thought her liberties in such eminent danger as at present. Friends and foes seem now to combine to pull down the goodly fabric as we have hitherto been raising at the expence of so much time, blood, and treasure; and unless the bodies politick will exert themselves to bring things back to first principles, correct abuses, and punish our internal foes, inevitable ruin must follow.

— George Washington

Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.

— James Madison

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

— Abraham Lincoln

Now the trumpet summons us againnot as a call to bear arms, though arms we neednot as a call to battle, though embattled we arebut a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulationa struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.

— John F. Kennedy

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will talk sense to the American people. But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.

— John F. Kennedy

I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election.

— Walt Whitman

And as it [the federal district] is to be appropriated to this use with the consent of the State ceding it; as the State will no doubt provide in the compact for the rights, and the consent of the citizens inhabiting it; as the inhabitants will find sufficient inducements of interest to become willing parties to the cession; as they will have had their voice in the election of the Government which is to exercise authority over them; as a municipal Legislature for local purposes, derived from their own suffrages, will of course be allowed them; and as the authority of the Legislature of the State, and of the inhabitants of the ceded part of it, to concur in the cession, will be derived from the whole people of the State, in their adoption of the Constitution, every imaginable objection seems to be obviated.

— James Madison

I am superstitious. I have scarcely known a party, preceding an election, to call in help from the neighboring states, but they lost the state.

— Abraham Lincoln

I have serious doubts about the value of debates in a presidential election. They tend to be a test of reaction time rather than a genuine exposition of the participants philosophies and programs. Further, in debate, candidates tend to overstate their views. In the 1960 situation I had a very practical objection: Nixon was widely known; Kennedy was not; dramatic debates would therefore help Kennedy.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

— George Eliot

In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your heroism, not all your social charm, not all your wit, not all your victories on land or at sea, can move back the finger of fate. To-day we maintain ourselves. To-morrow science will have moved forward yet one more step, and there will be no appeal from the judgment which will then be pronounced on the uneducated.

— Alfred North Whitehead

What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.

— Edmund Burke

Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious naturethis is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

— Herbert Spencer

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men,the balance-wheel of the social machinery.

— Horace Mann

To me, the irony of this involvement with size, as I observed earlier, is the unwillingness or inability of so many Americans to identify themselves with something as vast as the United States. Bigger cars, bigger parking lots, bigger corporate structures, bigger farms, bigger drug stores, bigger supermarkets, bigger motion-picture screens. The tangible and the functional expand, while the intangible and the beautiful shrink. Left to wither is the national purpose, national educational needs, literature and theater, and our critical faculties. The national dialogue is gradually being lost in a froth of misleading self-congratulation and cliche. National needs and interests are slowly being submerged by the national preoccupation with the irrelevant.

— J. William Fulbright

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty & Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?

— James Madison

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

— James Madison

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

— Thomas Jefferson

I ask that you offer to the political arena, and to the critical problems of our society which are decided therein, the benefit of the talents which society has helped to develop in you. I ask you to decide, as Goethe put it, whether you will be an anvilor a hammer. The question is whether you are to be a hammerwhether you are to give to the world in which you were reared and educated the broadest possible benefits of that education.

— John F. Kennedy

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

— Thomas Jefferson

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion as the mind is contented and happy.

— Anatole France

Education is the cheap defence of nations.

— Edmund Burke

An education isnt how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. Its being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you dont. Its knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and its knowing how to use the information you get.

— William Feather

[The educated differ from the uneducated] as much as the living from the dead.

— Aristotle

The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts. I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

— John Adams

Too often in recent history liberal governments have been wrecked on rocks of loose fiscal policy.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.

— Daniel Webster

The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward through the ranks.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

I have very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our Nation. I believe it practically inexhaustible. It abounds all over the western country, from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, and its development has scarcely commenced. Immigration, which even the war has not stopped, will land upon our shores hundred of thousands more per year from overcrowded Europe. I intend to point them to the gold and silver that waits for them in the West. Tell the miners from me, that I shall promote their interests to the utmost of my ability; because their prosperity is the prosperity of the Nation, and we shall prove in a very few years that we are indeed the treasury of the world.

— Abraham Lincoln

We all know our duty better than we discharge it.

— John Randolph

Majesty: when a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

— George Bernard Shaw

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

The land was ours before we were the lands. She was our land more than a hundred yearsBefore we were her people. She was oursIn Massachusetts, in Virginia,But we were Englands, still colonials,Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weakUntil we found out that it was ourselvesWe were withholding from our land of living,And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outrightTo the land vaguely realizing westward,But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,Such as she was, such as she would become.

— Robert Frost

The republic is a dreamNothing happens unless first a dream.

— Carl Sandburg

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

— George Bernard Shaw

When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.

— Alexander Hamilton

Duty, then is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.

— Robert E. Lee

[Only by] the good influence of our conduct may we bring salvation in human affairs; or like a fatal comet we may bring destruction in our train.

— Desiderius Erasmus

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:Out of a misty dreamOur path emerges for a while, then closesWithin a dream.

— Ernest Dowson

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

— King Jr. Martin Luther

But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing. And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.

— Bible

Ye been oure lord, dooth with youre owene thyngRight as yow list.

— Geoffrey Chaucer

Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as little as another, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriotically, if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglosaxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy. But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said. Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there. Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions.

— Thomas Carlyle

There are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just dont like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is go and bleed It is more important to keep law and order in society than to be worried about weak-kneed people Society must take every means at its disposal to defend itself against the emergence of a parallel power which defies the elected power.

— Pierre Elliott Trudeau

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

— Frederick Douglass

There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is responsive to human needs. If society is to be responsive to human needs, a vast restructuring of our laws is essential. Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young peoples unrestin other words there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system. If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations. Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true. The tools and the opportunity exist. Only the moral imagination is missing.

— William O. Douglas

Freedom of speech is useless without freedom of thought. And I fear that the politics of protest is shutting out the process of thought, so necessary to rational discussion. We are faced with the Ten Commandments of Protest:Thou Shalt Not Allow Thy Opponent to Speak. Thou Shalt Not Set Forth a Program of Thine Own. Thou Shalt Not Trust Anybody Over Thirty. Thou Shalt Not Honor Thy Father or Thy Mother. Thou Shalt Not Heed the Lessons of History. Thou Shalt Not Write Anything Longer than a Slogan. Thou Shalt Not Present a Negotiable Demand. Thou Shalt Not Accept Any Establishment Idea. Thou Shalt Not Revere Any but Totalitarian Heroes. Thou Shalt Not Ask Forgiveness for Thy Transgressions, Rather Thou Shalt Demand Amnesty for Them.

— Spiro T. Agnew

Once upon a time all the animals in the zoo decided that they would disarm, and they arranged to have a conference to arrange the matter. So the Rhinoceros said when he opened the proceedings that the use of teeth was barbarous and horrible and ought to be strictly prohibited by general consent. Horns, which were mainly defensive weapons, would, of course, have to be allowed. The Buffalo, the Stag, the Porcupine, and even the little Hedgehog all said they would vote with the Rhino, but the Lion and the Tiger took a different view. They defended teeth and even claws, which they described as honourable weapons of immemorial antiquity. The Panther, the Leopard, the Puma, and the whole tribe of small cats all supported the Lion and the Tiger. Then the Bear spoke. He proposed that both teeth and horns should be banned and never used again for fighting by any animal. It would be quite enough if animals were allowed to give each other a good hug when they quarreled. No one could object to that. It was so fraternal, and that would be a great step towards peace. However, all the other animals were very offended with the Bear, and the Turkey fell into a perfect panic. The discussion got so hot and angry, and all those animals began thinking so much about horns and teeth and hugging when they argued about the peaceful intentions that had brought them together that they began to look at one another in a very nasty way. Luckily the keepers were able to calm them down and persuade them to go back quietly to their cages, and they began to feel quite friendly with one another again.

— Winston Churchill

Naturepitiless in a pitiless universeis certainly not concerned with the survival of Americans or, for that matter, of any of the two billion people now inhabiting this earth. Hence, our destiny, with the aid of God, remains in our own hands.

— J. William Fulbright

Roper:So now youd give the Devil benefit of law![Sir Thomas] More:Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? Yes, Id give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safetys sake.

— Robert Bolt

So, let us not be blind to our differencesbut let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

— John F. Kennedy

A Foreign Secretaryand this applies also to a prospective Foreign Secretaryis always faced with this cruel dilemma. Nothing he can say can do very much good, and almost anything he may say may do a great deal of harm. Anything he says that is not obvious is dangerous; whatever is not trite is risky. He is forever poised between the cliche and the indiscretion.

— Harold Macmillan

But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest Sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a Coach and sixthe swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.

— John Adams

We can make this thing into a Party, instead of a Memory.

— Will Rogers

Youve got to be [an] optimist to be a Democrat, and youve got to be a humorist to stay one.

— Will Rogers

No, sir, th dimmycratic party aint on speakin terms with itsilf. Whin ye see two men with white neckties go into a sthreet car an set in opposite corners while wan mutthers Thraiter an th other hisses Miscreent ye can bet theyre two dimmycratic leaders thryin to reunite th gran ol party.

— Finley Peter Dunne

I am not a member of any organized partyI am a Democrat.

— Will Rogers

It may be that without a vision men shall die. It is no less true that, without hard practical sense, they shall also die. Without Jefferson the new nation might have lost its soul. Without Hamilton it would assuredly have been killed in body.

— James Truslow Adams

Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ.

— Thomas Carlyle

When I examined my political faith I found that my strongest belief was in democracy according to my own definition. Democracythe essential thing as distinguished from this or that democratic governmentwas primarily an attitude of mind, a spiritual testament, and not an economic structure or a political machine. The testament involved certain basic beliefsthat the personality was sacrosanct, which was the meaning of liberty; that policy should be settled by free discussion; that normally a minority should be ready to yield to a majority, which in turn should respect a minoritys sacred things. It seemed to me that democracy had been in the past too narrowly defined and had been identified illogically with some particular economic or political system such as laissez-faire or British parliamentarism. I could imagine a democracy which economically was largely socialist and which had not our constitutional pattern.

— John Buchan

To be prepared for War is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

— George Washington