Great Quotations
On Boredom
"I'm sure it's not your fault, but
honestly you bore me."
-Anonymous:
seen on a coffee mug
On Dissent
"To announce that...we are to stand by
the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
-Theodore Roosevelt
On Greed
The things that will destroy
- Teddy Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt Kids Discover, p. 14.
On Loneliness
What Jack remembered and craved in a way he
could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on
- Annie Proulx, "
On Men
"He may have hair upon his chest, but
ladies so does Lassie."
- I Hate Men, Kiss me Kate, as performed by
the ASO
On Social Security
"The test of our progress is not whether
we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide
enough for those who have too little."
- Franklin Roosevelt, second Inaugural Address
Should any political party attempt to abolish
social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm
programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.
There is a splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these
things. Among them are a few
--
Dwight David Eisenhower, 11/8/1954
On War
Every gun that is made, every warship
launched, every rocket fired, is in a final sense, a theft from those who
hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
-- Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953
I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas
against uncivilized tribes. The moral effect should be good ... and it would
spread a lively terror. ...
- Winston Churchill, on gassing the Iraqis
after World War I had ended
All warfare is based on deception. Hence,
when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem
inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe that we are far
away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to
entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
- Sun-tzu, Ping-fa (The Art of
War)
I know war as few other men now living know
it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete
abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it
useless as a method of settling international disputes.
- Ernest Hemingway
Never think that war, no matter how
necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
Ernest Hemingway
No weapon has ever settled a moral problem.
It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.
Ernest Hemingway
-
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernest_hemingway.html
On Freedom
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
- Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in
On Healing
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.
Ernest Hemingway
On Propaganda
"The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."
-Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
On Risk-Taking
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
-Teddy Roosevelt, speech at the Sorbonne,
On Communism and Fascism
Iron Curtain:
"Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would
occupy all eastern and south-eastern
ATTRIBUTION: Joseph Goebbels
(1897–1945), German Nazi leader, Minister of Propaganda. Das Reich (Feb. 23,
1945).
Das Reich was a Nazi propaganda weekly. This is thought to be the first use of
the phrase "iron curtain" (ein eiserner Vorhang) in this
context.
- source: The Columbia
World of Quotations. 1996.
On Religion
"Of all knaves the religious
knave is the worst."
- Pierce Franklin,
Benjamin Franklin's brother
"Too much of it [religion] is
worse than none at all"
- Benjamin
Franklin, 1722
"Lighthouses are more helpful
than churches."
- Benjamin Franklin "In this "sacred" book of
family scandals we find filth, sex orgies, cannibalism, atrocities, sex
perversions, incest, bloody violence unparalleled in any other chronicle in all
the literature of the world. Fortunately, not one-third of the human family has
ever heard of the Christian Bible; not one-tenth of the Christians have ever
read it, and no two who have read it agree as to its meaning. Won't you help
get this book out of the hands of our children, out of decent homes, and out of
hotel and motel rooms? "
- Frank C.
Hughes
"I believe in God, only I spell
it Nature."
- Frank
Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)
"I believe in an
- President
John F. Kennedy
"Let us thank God, the Almighty, that he has blessed our generation and us and
granted us to be a part of this time and this hour."
- Adolf
Hitler (who, like most high-ranking Nazis and fascists, including Franco and
Mussolini, was raised as a Christian (Catholic)).
On Uncertainty
When we are not sure, we are alive.
- Graham Greene
On Writing
The great thing is to last and get
your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there
is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after.
- Ernest Hemingway
Medicine is my lawful wife, but
literature is my mistress. When I'm bored with one, I spend the night with the
other.
- Anton
Chekhov
The most essential gift for a good
writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar
and all great writers have had it.
- Ernest Hemmingway
Writing is a form of therapy;
sometimes I wonder how all those, who do not write, compose, or paint can
manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, which is
inherent in a human condition.
- Graham Greene
Behind the complicated details of
the world stand the simplicities: God is good, the grown-up man or woman knows
the answer to every question, there is such a thing as truth, and justice is as
measured and faultless as a clock. Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they
tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run
really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were
read to us in childhood /for those promised a world of great simplicity of
which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory
with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories.
- Graham Greene
If you would not be forgotten as
soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write
something worth reading or do something worth writing.
- Benjamin Franklin