Quotes

Religion

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
- Seneca
Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people’s souls, when we all ought to be worried abut our own souls, and other people’s bellies
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
- Theodore Parker
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
—Thomas Jefferson
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. – Andre Gide
“The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.” — Arthur C. Clarke

 

War

Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
-Jimi Hendrix
The purpose of all wars, is peace.
- Saint Augustine
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities
- Voltaire
Carl Sagan made a wry observation about exactly that, back during Iraq War I when the TV news programs were loaded with glowing reports about the Patriot interceptor missiles, “smart” bombs, etc. “[It] was a massive arms bazaar arranged by the United States to showcase some of the products that you, too, might acquire—and only for all the critical resources of your society that might otherwise be spent on bettering your people. Line up over here!” (excerpt from the Playboy interview).
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
~ Albert Einstein

 

Philosphy

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
- George Bernard Shaw
“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” Rabbi Hillel
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you…then you win
- Mahatma Gandhi
It’s impossible to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.
- Upton Sinclair
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it. H.L. Mencken
So let us regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)
Courage is like love; it must have hope to nourish it.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
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
All that is necessary for the triump of evil is for good people to do nothing
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
—Epictetus (c.55-c.135)
“Conservatives need…a significant percentage of the poor and middle class to vote against their economic interests. . . . Their method for achieving this has been cultural civil war . . . pitting Americans with strict father morality (called conservatives) against Americans with nurturant parent morality (the hated liberals), who are portrayed as threatening the way of life and the cultural, religious, and personal identities of conservatives.” George Lakoff – Don’t Think of an Elephant!
Pablo Picasso – “It takes a long time to become young.”
John Lennon – “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”
“If you’re going through hell – Keep Going!”—Winston Churchill
Quote of the Day – Frank Lloyd Wright – “The truth is more important than the facts.”
Doug Horton – “The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.”
James Thurber – “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”
Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more. Tesla
The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power. Tesla
Poverty is the worst form of violence. – Gandhi
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” – General Dwight David Eisenhower.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” — Henry Ford
Robert Heinlein’s ode to generalization: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Pablo Picasso – “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. W. B. Yeats,
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. – Bertrand Russell
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” – Voltaire
I felt a lot better when I gave up hope – Woody Allen

 

Politics

Dissent is the greatest form of Patriotism.
- FDR
Those who are willing to sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither. (Paraphrasing B. Franklin)
Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told—and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.
-Michael Crichton, The Lost World
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
Robert Frost – “Freedom lies in being bold.”
Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power. Mussolini
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.
- Margaret Thatcher
What does it profit us if we gain extreme security and lose our democracy?”—Norman Mailer
Clarence Darrow – “When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it.”
“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” ` Sinclair Lewis
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” (Jefferson)
The best way to control opposition is to lead it. Lenin
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. – Voltaire
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. – Socrates
“Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Stewart Udall – “We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.”
- Khalil Gibran

“Learning is the only wealth tyrants cannot despoil. Only death can dim the lamp of knowledge that is within you. The true wealth of a nation lies not in its gold or silver but in its learning, wisdom, and in the uprightness of its sons and daughters.”
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves” – Edward R. Murrow
On the altar of God, I swear eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man.”—Thomas Jefferson
huffingtonpost.com — America was founded by men of the Enlightenment: a movement which emphasized reason, rationality, liberalism, anti-authoritarianism and political equality. The founders were revolutionary liberals who believed strongly in secular government. This is nowhere near “right of center” or indicative of a Judeo-Christian Nation. More… (US Elections 2008)
No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn’t. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism. —- Mark Twain
James Madison – “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Fascist regimes functioned like an epoxy: an amalgam of two very different agents, fascist dynamism and conservative order, bonded by shared enmity toward liberalism and the Left, and a shared willingness to stop at nothing to destroy their common enemies.” – Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism
Thomas Jefferson wrote: “The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution…if the American people 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 – “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”
The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government—lest it come to dominate our lives and interests. —Patrick Henry
extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice no virtue. – Goldwater

History

Every time history repeats itself the price goes up
- Anon.
“God cannot alter the past, though historians can.” Samuel Butler
“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.” Plato quotes

Funny

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
-Steve Jobs
Today, of course, was the `Day Without Immigrants’ … Or as the Native Americans call it, the good old days.
- Jay Leno
What happens when Bush takes Viagra? he gets taller
- Robin Williams
Everything popular is wrong.
- Oscar Wilde
I think, therefore I am NOT A REPUBLICAN!!!
Fred Allen – “Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.”
Emma Goldman – “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
H. L. Mencken – “It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.”