Favorite quotes

Quotations Collected by BILL TRUSH.

3/2011

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 “A witty saying proves nothing.”

Voltaire

“Be convinced that to be happy means to be free, and that to be free means to be brave.”  Thucydides

“What is valued is practiced. What is not valued is not practiced.” Plato

“Be who you are, and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”  Dr. Seuss

“You can never guarantee victory, but you can guarantee defeat.”  Hall of Fame baseball writer Leonard Koppett

Whenever you speak the truth, keep one foot in the stirrup. Turkish Proverb

“We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience.”    Howard Zinn

As you go along in life, ask yourself, “Is this worthy of my soul? Is this what I’m meant to be doing?”   Nikos Kazantzakis

“Luminous beings are we . . . not this crude matter.”   Yoda

“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg, doesn’t make it a leg.”    Abraham Lincoln

“You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.”   Dorothy Parker

“Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake.”  Napoleon Bonaparte

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”  Gandhi

If you’re going to walk out on thin ice, you might as well dance.

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.”  Groucho Marx

“Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.”  Alexander Hamilton

A heavy snowfall melts into the sea … What Silence!  Zen Saying

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”   Lao-Tzu

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer.”  Camus

Confidence: the feeling you have just before you fully understand the situation.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.   Edmund Burke

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”  Thomas Jefferson

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”        W. Churchill

“There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: Those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.”   Ray Goforth

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”   Oscar Wilde

“The hands that help are holier than the lips that pray.” Robert G. Ingersoll

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” Yogi Berra

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”  Oscar Wilde

“Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.” Roy Goodman

Thou shalt not kill — except for a long list of good reasons — is like saying thou shall not covet a neighbor’s wife — unless she’s hot. George Carlin ?

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”   Abraham Lincoln

“There are men who can think no deeper than a fact.” Voltaire

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.

“You will become as small as your controlling desire, as great as your dominant aspiration.”    James Lane Allen

The only thing that helps me maintain my slender grip on reality is the friendship I share with my collection of singing potatoes.

“He has all the virtues I dislike, and none of the vices I admire.”   Winston Churchill

I always take life with a grain of salt…plus a slice of lemon…and a shot of tequila.

With one who does not speak his every thought, I spend a pleasant evening.      Hyakuchi in The Moon in the Pines, Zen Haiku

“Fixity of purpose requires flexibility of method.” H.G. Wolff   1952

I drank what?    Socrates

The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening; the smaller the doubt, the smaller the awakening. No doubt, no awakening.  C.C. Chang

When an old man dies, a library burns down.   African proverb

“What youth deemed crystal, age finds out was dew.”  Robert Browning

“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”   Albert Schweitzer

I come in peace, seeking only gold and slaves.

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”  William James

“Knowledge is a process of pilling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.”  Martin Fischer

“A learning experience is one of those things that says, You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.”    Douglas Adams

Silence is consent.

“I like a man who grins when he fights.”  Winston Churchill

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”  Winston Churchill

“Great and good are seldom the same man.”   Winston Churchill

“History is written by the victors.”  Winston Churchill

The obstacle is the path.    Zen Proverb

You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.    Author Unknown

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.  But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” Niels Bohr

“The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.”   Aldous Huxley

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”    John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911

“The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.”    Robert M. Pirsig

A stumble may prevent a fall.      English Proverb

“When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”  Friedrich Nietzche

“What you discover in a democracy is that it is difficult to build a house when each nail has an opinion.”    Robert Brault

The infinite is in the finite of every instant.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”  Henry David Thoreau

“Life is the sum of all your choices.”    Albert Camus

Jack Palance:  “Do you know what the secret of life is?  One thing.      Just one thing.  You stick to that, and everything else don’t mean shit.”
Billy Crystal:  “Yeah, but what’s that one thing?”
Jack Palance:  “That’s what you’ve got to figure out.”
From the movie City Slickers

“Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”    Confucius

“Love truth, but forgive error.”  Voltaire

Caution that the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train.

What’s at the end of the tunnel? Another tunnel.

“God has no religion.”  Gandhi

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”   Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”  Isaac Asimov

“The question is not what, but who, you want to be.”  F.R. Prince

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”  Albert Einstein

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

“I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched … Eventually the watcher joined the river and then there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.  Norman Maclean

“Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”  Ambrose Bierce

“You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.”   Jessica Mitford

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”    Ambrose Bierce

“If you don’t stick to your values when they’re tested, they’re not values. They’re… hobbies.”  Jon Stewart, Jan. 22, 2009

“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”   G.B. Shaw

“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”  Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”   Voltaire

“The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.” Alfred Adler

T.H. Huxley’s reaction to the reading of Darwin’s The Origin of Species: “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.”

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” Booker T. Washington

“Statistics are people with the tears washed away.”   Sociologist Ruth Sidel

“All that a man does outwardly is but the expression of his inward thought. To work effectively, he must think clearly; to act nobly, he must think nobly.”  William Ellery Channing

“All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals.”  Mohandas Gandhi

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” Groucho Marx

“This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind.”   Robert F. Kennedy

“Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  Margaret Mead

“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.”  Joseph Stalin

“The great tragedy of Science, the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” T. H. Huxley

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”  Galileo

“I have lived with several Zen masters — all of them cats.”  Eckhart Tolle

“I used to be Snow White. And then I drifted.”  Mae West

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”  Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

“How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity.” William S Burroughs

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”    Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war.”  Mark Twain

“People who have what they want are fond of telling people, who haven’t what they want, that they really don’t want it.” Ogden Nash (on universal health care)

“All wars end with talking.”   C. Kendall

The only shame in ignorance is taking pride in it.

Each man’s memory is his private literature.   Aldous Huxley

You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.    Irish Proverb

The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it.    Chinese Philosopher

“All there is to thinking,” he said, “is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.”  Norman Maclean in A River Runs Through It

“The dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.”    T.E. Lawrence

Canada – where a pack of smokes is ten bucks and a heart transplant is free.

“Give me but one firm spot to stand, and I will move the earth.”    Archimedes

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”   Mohandas K. Gandhi

Lies return.  African proverb

My goal in life is to be as good a person as my dog already thinks I am.

To put the torture behind us is, inevitably, to put it in front of us.

The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.

There is never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.

“Be a loyal plastic robot boy in a world that doesn’t care.” Frank Zappa

“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”   Fredrick Douglass

“All war is stupid.”  JFK

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I.   Oscar Wilde

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”   Ralph Waldo Emerson

Having credibility when making an argument is the straightest path to persuasion.

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”  Mohandas Gandhi

“To kill one person is murder. To kill thousands is foreign policy.” Chinese writer Moh-Tze

“Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable, procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.” George Washington

“The goal is not to bring your adversaries to their knees but to their senses.”  Mahatma Gandhi

“The time for justice is always right now!”  Samantha Booke, Wiley College debate team, 1935

“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the star, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.”  Helen Keller

“Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.”   Paul Wellstone

“…the greatest tragedy…is not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” MLK, Jr.

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” JFK

“To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.” Bertrand Russell

It’s often said that life is strange. But compared to what?  Steve Forbert

War can be likened to an erectile penis: an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.

I used to wonder why somebody didn’t do something, then I realized I am somebody.

God gave you free will to define God, use it to make the best God that you can.

“Today’s problems are yesterday’s solutions.”  Don Beck

The wolfpack eats venison. The lone wolf eats mice.

Only dead fish “go with the flow.”

“I agree with you. I want to do it. Now make me do it!”   Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without.” W. S. Coffin

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny…”

The lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change.   Howard Zinn

“There are so many people in this world who refuse to see any vision they didn’t think of.”  Hyrum Graff, Ender in Exile, Orson Scott Card

“Freedom begins between the ears.”  Edward Abbey

She is only half a mother who does not see her child in every child.

“The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.”   Bruce Springsteen

“Nothing dollarable is safe, however guarded.”    John Muir, 1908

“One must not always think so much about what one should do, but rather what one should be. Our works do not ennoble us; but we must ennoble our works.”   Meister Eckhart

Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it is understood.

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”    William A. Ward

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” Stephen R. Covey

“My ultimate goal is to live long enough to make sure my daughter doesn’t marry some jackass.”  Craig Playstead, freelance writer on fatherhood

“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.”    Feynman

“I refuse to live in a country like that. And I’m not moving.”   Michael Moore

“Thinking is my fighting.”  Virginia Woolf

“The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”  R.W. Emerson

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”     Mark Twain

“Good to be here, good to be anywhere.”    Keith Richards

“No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered.”  President Theodore Roosevelt

Never get the mothers too angry.

Is there a hyphen in anal retentive?

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.           George Santayana

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”     James Madison

“Loyalty comes from love of good government, not fear of a bad one.”                                            Justice Hugo Black.

“No special skill, no standard attitude, no technology, and no organization – no matter how valuable – can safely replace thought itself.”

“The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.”  Rachel Carlson

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”          Thomas Jefferson

Life isn’t a battle between good and evil, it’s a battle between signal and noise.

If nothing is very different from you, what is a little different from you is very different from you.   Ursula K. Le Guin

“Sometimes paranoia’s just having all the facts.”   William S. Burroughs

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the difference between a dog and a man.”   Mark Twain

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”   Jeannette Rankin

I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.

“Your silence will not protect you.”            Audre Lorde

I’m at the junction of short, nerdy, and oddly attractive.

…fighting the wildfires of my life with a squirt gun.

“Arguments are to be avoided. They are always vulgar, and are often convincing.”  Oscar Wilde

“I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.” Margaret Mead

“There are several causes for which I’d die, but none for which I’d kill.”  Ghandi

“The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”  Milan Kundera

Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

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

News is what someone, somewhere, doesn’t want you to know. Everything else is just advertising.

“It was involuntary. They sank my boat.” John F. Kennedy, on being called a war hero.

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”  George Carlin

So this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause.

“To resist the influence of others, knowledge of oneself is most important.”  Teal’c

Maturity: Doing what you know is right even though you were told to do it.

“They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” Confucius

“The real war will never get in the books.”  Walt Whitman

“Statistics are people with the tears washed away.”  Sociologist Ruth Sidel

Saying the Iraq “Surge” worked is like saying Thelma & Louise had a flying car.

“The [National Government] regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.”  Adolf Hitler

“Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them.”  Suzanne Necker

Some days I don’t know if I suffer from depression or if everything just really does suck.

Yeah, I’m mad! I’ve been paying attention.

“When fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the flag and carrying the cross.”  Sinclair Lewis

Low-Information: it’s the new Stupid.

“You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.”   Anne Lamott

“I think I am, therefore I am, I think.”  George Carlin

“Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security.”  Ben Franklin

“The First Amendment was not fashioned as a vehicle for dispensing tranquilizers to the people.” Justice William O. Douglas

“A society of sheep will in time beget a government of wolves.”  Bertrand de Juvenal

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”   Thomas Pynchon

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”   Howard Zinn

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”    Frederick Douglass

“I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.”   Thomas Edison

“Never cut what you can untie.” Joseph Joubert

“If you don’t lie down in front of the door, you’re less likely to get used as a doormat.” Rachel Maddow

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.”    Theodore Roosevelt

The time will soon come when you must choose between what is right and what is easy.   Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter

“I do not know what weapons World War III will be fought with. World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”   Albert Einstein

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”        Mark Twain

You can’t choose sides on a round planet.

Their talk was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage.  Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness

You can have your “Under God” back when I get my “Liberty and Justice for All” back.

“Common sense is not common.”  Voltaire

Be good to each other. It matters.

“Those who dance appear insane to those who can’t hear the music.”  George Carlin

“Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.”    Marcus Garvey

“…wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”   MLK Jr.

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”   Rudyard Kipling

“Don’t think for a moment that power concedes.” Obama

“There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”    Sun Tzu

Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

There’s something attractive about invincible ignorance… for the first 5 seconds.

“Politics is not left, right or center … It’s about improving people’s lives.” Paul Wellstone

“I once asked a literary agent what writing paid the best, and he said, ‘Ransom notes.'”  Gene Hackman as Harry Zimm in “Get Shorty”

“Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.”   Voltaire 1694-1778

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”  Eleanor Roosevelt

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.”   Gregory Bateson

“My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.”   Benjamin Disraeli

“Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.”    Edward R. Murrow

“When the bar is low enough, you can never be too wrong.”   Bill Moyers

“Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.”  Mignon McLaughlin

“Great men do not commit murder. Great nations do not start wars.”  William Jennings Bryan

“Think Tank: A place where people are paid to think by the makers of tanks.”   Naomi Klein.

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”   Mark Twain

“We’re in a culture that increasingly holds that science is just another belief.”  Alan Alda

“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”   Adam Smith

“Oh, TV. Is there anything you can’t do?”   Homer Simpson

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Life is not a ‘dress rehearsal’!

Never trust a hooker with walkie talkies.

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.”   Blaise Pascal

“I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps himself in the Constitution than someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps himself in the flag!”

“Stupidity is the great equalizer!”    NonnyO

The degree to which you resist injustice is the degree to which you are free.  Utah Phillips

 

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”   Benito Mussolini

“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.”  Ansel Adams

I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason.  Klaatu

But don’t forget that most men without property would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich, than face the reality of being poor. (1776)

There’s really no point in listening to other people. They’re either going to be agreeing with you or saying stupid stuff.    Dogbert

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”   Milan Kedrun

Words escape me, but deeds are always noticed.

“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”  James Baldwin

“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”   Thomas Jefferson

Most truly profound and inspirational thoughts require more than 160 characters.

The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice, and truth.

H.L. Mencken

Armageddon was yesterday. Today we have a serious problem.

“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” John Wooden

The future isn’t what it used to be.  Yogi Berra

“I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early.”  Yogi Berra

“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”  Yogi Berra

“The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.”  Henry Louis Mencken

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.”  Buddha

“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”  Arthur Carlson

“Forever is composed of nows.”  Emily Dickinson

“One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity nothing beats teamwork.”   Mark Twain

“You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.”   Buddha

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Buddha

“Status quo, you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in.”
Ronald Reagan

“When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.” Buddha [remember last book scene in Zorba the Greek]

“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.” Voltaire

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”  Voltaire

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” Voltaire

“One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.” Voltaire

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.  Abraham Lincoln

“Never give control of government to people who think government doesn’t work, because they end up proving it every time.”   Alyosha Karamazov

“All it takes is one person to stand up and say ‘f–k this.'”   Henry Rollins

So, Pal, now tell me: What did YOU do to help the least among your people?” “Well, ummm, Mr. God, Sir…

We’re all one heartbeat away from Forever.   kasandra.us

What if this … is as good as it gets?

For every difficult question, there is an answer that is simple, easily understood, and wrong.   H.L. Mencken

“Unrestricted immigration is a dangerous thing — look at what happened to the Iroquois.” Garrison Keillor

“You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.”   Abbie Hoffman

Imagine if the government took David’s sling away and gave it to Goliath. Now you understand tort reform.

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”   Edward Abbey

Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not?

“Animals are my friends. And I don’t eat my friends.”  George Bernard Shaw

After the farce, comes the tragedy.

“It is time to make peace with the planet.”   Al Gore (Nobel acceptance speech)

Norman Thomas, a prominent socialist who ran for president six times: “I am not a champion of lost causes, but of causes not yet won.”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”  Nelson Mandela

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Generosity, Ethics, Patience, Effort, Concentration, and Wisdom.”  Dudehisattva

“This chamber reeks of blood.”   Sen. George McGovern, 1970

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” Carlos Castaneda

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

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.  Theodore Roosevelt

You become old only when the regrets replace the dreams.

If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.  Bishop Desmond Tutu

“What lies ahead of you and what lies behind you is nothing compared to what lies within you.” Mohandas K. Ghandi

“The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.” Charles Lamb

“Much law, but little justice.” Proverb

It ain’t called paranoia – when they’re really out to get you.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The great lie of democracy, its essential paradox, is that democracy is first to be sacrificed when its security is at risk.”  Ian McDonald

There is no avant-garde. There are only people who are a little late.   Edgar Varese

“The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a pirate.”

“Hold back the edges of your gowns, ladies, we are going through hell.” William Carlos Williams’ intro to “Howl”

My Karma just ran over your Dogma.

“I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”   Thomas Jefferson

“We arrived in St. Louis at noon. I took a walk down by the Mississippi River and watched the logs that came floating from Montana in the north – grand Odyssean logs of our continental dream.”     Jack Kerouac in “On the Road”

“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Too much sanity may be madness. But maddest of all is to see the world as it is and not as it should be.   Don Quixote “Man of La Mancha”

“Don’t be a janitor on the Death Star!”  Grey Lady Bast

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.    Euripides

“When the powerful say that the price was worth the blood and treasure, you can bet your ass it wasn’t their blood, nor their treasure.”

“Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”  Thomas Jefferson

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”   A. Einstein

“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.” Thomas Jefferson

I remember when A.P. didn’t mean American Pravda.

“Dream for just a second and then do it!”   Kolmogorov

“Everybody does better, when everybody does better.”   Paul Wellstone 1997

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”   Abraham Lincoln

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.    Aristotle

Character is beauty.

Ability is what you’re capable of doing … motivation determines what you do … attitude determines how well you do it.

“I wish to die a slave to principles, not men.” Zapata

One for the doctor who cures disease; and one for the lorax who speaks for the trees. Dr. Seus
Michael Franti & Spearhead

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Dalai Lama

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” Samuel Johnson

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.” Noam Chomsky

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”   Gandhi

“Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.”

Jerry Garcia

You can’t repeat a lie enough to make it true.

“Balance” [in the media] does not mean giving the same weight to a lie as you do to the truth.

“My moments in Denver were coming to an end. I could feel it when I walked her home, on the way back I stretched out on the grass of an old church with a bunch of hobos, and their talk made me want to get back on that road.”         Jack Kerouac in “On the Road”

No matter how cynical I get, it’s impossible to keep up.

Four out five sock puppets agree, that …

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin

“When people show you who they really are, believe them.”  Maya Angelou

“I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence.”    Doug McLeod

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition #34: “War is good for business … but only from a distance, the closer to the front lines, the less profitable it gets.”

“It does not require many words to speak the truth.”  Chief Joseph, native American leader (1840 -1904)

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”   George W Bush

“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”   Justice A. Kennedy

A ship adrift in a sea of rhetoric & recycled clichés.

“We, two, form a multitude.”    Ovid

Raising children: long days and short years.

“Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt

“One fish. Two fish…Some are red. And some are blue. Some are old. And some are new. Some are sad. And some are glad. And some are very, very bad.”   Dr. Seuss

“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.  We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others.  He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”  A River Runs Through It, by Norman MacLean

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”    Samuel Adams

Those who do not study history should not be permitted to make it.

“I belong to no organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”    Will Rogers

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”
Abraham Lincoln

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”  John Cage

“The truth shall set you free, but first it’ll piss you off.” Gloria Steinem

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”  Albert Einstein

“Our promises are made in proportion to our hopes, but kept in proportion to our fears.” LaRouchefoucauld

What if the hokeypokey IS what it’s all about?

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”   Albert Einstein

“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”   Charles Darwin

The fights that matter have never been waged based on probability of success.

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”  Abraham Lincoln

“My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.”   Henny Youngman

“The most effective way to remember your wife’s birthday is to forget it once.” Nash

“A good wife always forgives her husband when she’s wrong.”
Rodney Dangerfield

National Socialism is to Socialism, as counter clockwise is to clockwise.

Never confuse kindness and patience with stupidity and weakness!!

Don’t believe everything you think.

“Want to make God laugh? …tell him your plans.”  Randy Wayne White — Shark River

“The word bipartisan usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”  George Carlin

“You have proven yourself an able contortionist, twisting circumstances to your convenience and naively believing that your self-serving yelps of success will drown out the shocking volume of your ineptitude.” Blogger ‘Georgia10’ Monday July 6, 2009 DailyKos

 


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