Great Quotes

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. --C.S. Lewis

During this [last] century's wars, there were some 38 million battle deaths, but almost four times more people -- at least 170 million -- were killed by governments for ethnic, racial, tribal, religious, or political reasons. I call this phenomenon democide, and it means that authoritarian and totalitarian governments are more deadly than war. (emphasis added) --R.J. Rummel

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. --Albert Einstein

Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class. This, at least, is its inevitable consequence, if not the immediate result. --Alexis de Tocqueville

I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. --Voltaire

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. --James Madison, principal author of the US Constitution

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. --George Santayana

That government is best which governs least. --Thomas Paine

After all is said and done, more is said than done. --Aesop

When people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic. --Benjamin Franklin

Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you. --Satchel Paige

Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly. --Henry Spencer

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age. --Robert Frost

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt. --Mark Twain

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance. --George Bernard Shaw

Nothing is easier than spending public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody. --Calvin Coolidge

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. --Barry Goldwater

With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the details of powers (enumerated in the Constitution) connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proof was not contemplated by its creators. --James Madison

What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child. --George Bernard Shaw.

If Michelangelo had been concerned about risk, he would have painted the Sistine floor. --Neil Simon

Familiarity breeds contempt. --Aesop

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. --Winston Churchill

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson

If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him. --Voltaire

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. --James Madison

Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded. --Yogi Berra

Scientists discover the world that exists, engineers create the world that never was. --Theodore von Karman

When you're arguing with a fool, make sure he isn't doing the same thing. --Anon

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from wise men. --Marcus Porcius Cato

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. --Benjamin Disraeli

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. --Benjamin Franklin

Those who would give up essential public safety to purchase a little personal liberty don't understand liberty. --Anon

The people get the government they deserve. --Alexis de Tocqueville

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it. --Ashleigh Brilliant

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. --Anon.

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home. --Ken Olsen, President, Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

Appeasers believe that if you keep throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian. --Heywood Broun

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy. --Thomas Jefferson

Better to be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own. --Aesop

Fail to plan, plan to fail. --Anon

A little planning is a fine thing. Too much planning may be an excuse for not getting anything done. --Anon

I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her. --Rodney Dangerfield

The greatest security against the introduction of corrupt practices and principles into our government is to make [Congress keep] ... public expenses down to their minimum. --Thomas Jefferson

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. --P. J. O'Rourke

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is always astonished when other do. --Charles De Gaulle

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. --Niels Bohr

Lead, follow, or get out of the way. --Thomas Paine

We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. --Wernher von Braun

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. --Albert Einstein

I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. --Thomas Jefferson

The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. [Got that, Bill Clinton and Al Gore?] --Thomas Jefferson

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? --Thomas Jefferson

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests," I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can. --Barry Goldwater

Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours. --Yogi Berra

Only a mediocre person is always at his best. --Somerset Maugham

Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan. --Count Galeazzo Ciano

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --Edsger W. Dijkstra

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country. --James Madison

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. --James Madison

This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future! --Adolf Hitler

It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low -- and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now. --President John F. Kennedy

Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much. --Walter Lippmann

We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors, and furniture polish is made from real lemons. --Alfred E. Neuman

It ain't over 'till it's over. --Yogi Berra

A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. --Frank Lloyd Wright.

If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen. --Samuel Adams

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. ... And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure--reason & experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. --George Washington

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government. --James Madison

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. --Voltaire

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced. --Frank Zappa

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them. --Eric Hoffer

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. --Alexis de Tocqueville

The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion for equality made vain the hope for freedom. --Lord Acton

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it. --Ronald Reagan

Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems. --Linus Torvalds

The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things. --Richard P. Feynman

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. --Oscar Wilde

Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it don't matter. --Satchel Paige

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more intersting than sex. --Aldous Huxley

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. --Sir Winston Churchill

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand. --Vince Lombardi

By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies [Microsoft?], trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline. --Thomas Jefferson

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy. --Milton Friedman

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. --George Santayana

Don't let schooling interfere with your education. --Mark Twain

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not true. --Oliver Wendell Holmes

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between he does what he wants to do. --Bob Dylan

What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian Senate. --Thomas Jefferson

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. --Sir Winston Churchill

Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. --Sir Winston Churchill

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. --Dwight D. Eisenhower

We're not going to just shoot the sons of bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. --General George S. Patton

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. --Confucius

I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward. --Thomas A. Edison

Chance favors the prepared mind. --Louis Pasteur

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it people will eventually come to believe it. --Joseph Goebbels

Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration. --Thomas A. Edison

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. --Barry Goldwater

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. --Thomas Paine

Courage is grace under pressure. --Ernest Hemingway

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. --H L Mencken

My psychiatrist told me I was crazy, and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you're ugly too. --Rodney Dangerfield

One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But speaking for myself, I can honestly say this is not so...I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success. --Thomas A. Edison

We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. --Albert Einstein

There never was any remarkable lawgiver amongst any people who did not resort to divine authority. --Niccolo Machiavelli

Time makes more converts than reason. --Tom Paine

No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect. --Edward Teller

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. --Thomas Paine

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. --George Orwell

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. --Henry Ford

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. --Derek Bok

The man with a new idea is a crank, until the idea succeeds. --Mark Twain

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. -- Jim Horning

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted. --Dan Stanford

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. --Henry Ford

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. --John F. Kennedy.

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor. --Eric Hoffer

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. --Mark Twain

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. --Galileo Galilei

The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science. --Albert Einstein

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. --George Orwell

Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. --Saint Augustine

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. --Ronald Reagan

Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read. --Frank Zappa

The control man has secured over nature has far outrun his control over himself. --Ernest Jones

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. --Albert Einstein

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. --Samuel Johnson

In any non-trivial axiomatic system, there are true theorems which cannot be proven. --Kurt Goedel

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. --Ernest Hemingway

Sometimes the pleasure of the wanting is greater than the pleasure of the having. --Mr. Spock (Star Trek)

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! --Patrick Henry

Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions. --Oliver Wendell Holmes

The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed. --Lloyd Jones

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies. --Alexis de Tocqueville

Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who don't. --Anon

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. --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. --Ann Landers

Knowledge is power. --Sir Francis Bacon

The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor. --Vince Lombardi

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. --Al Capone

A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's printed on. --Sam Goldwyn

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made. --George Burns

If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet. --Niels Bohr

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? --Albert Einstein

Research is what I do when I don't know what I'm doing. --Werner von Braun

An expert is somebody who is more than 50 miles from home, has no responsibility for implementing the advice he gives, and shows slides. --Edwin Meese III

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. --Richard P. Feynman

Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser. --Vince Lombardi

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. --George Santayana

All cruelty springs from weakness. --Seneca (4 BC-65 AD)

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead. --Voltaire

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. --Isaac Newton

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up. --Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor

The greatest wealth is to live content with little. --Plato

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. --George Orwell

Things are never so bad they can't be made worse. --Humphrey Bogart

Every man is ignorant -- just on different subjects. --Will Rodgers

Courage is the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear. --Mark Twain

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know. --Saint Augustine

If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age. --George Burns

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them. --Mark Twain

Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. --Andy Warhol

Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. --Milton Friedman

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. --Howard Aiken

To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association--the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it. --Thomas Jefferson

Work keeps us from three great evils: boredom, vice and poverty. --Voltaire

The multitude of books is making us ignorant. --Voltaire

Many useful results go unnoticed because the good work is buried in the rest. --David Parnas

Anything too stupid to be said is sung. --Voltaire

Baseball is 90 percent mental, and the other half is physical. --Yogi Berra.

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. --Paul Valery

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's just too much fraternizing with the enemy. --Henry Kissinger

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. --George Washington

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. --George Santayana

Cynicism is knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. --Oscar Wilde

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. --Alfred North Whitehead

There's no such thing as a free lunch. --Milton Friedman

Courage is being scared to death -- but saddling up anyway. --John Wayne

Character is much easier kept than recovered. --Thomas Paine

I'm not comfortable being preachy, but more people need to start spending as much time in the library as they do on the basketball court. --Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. --George Bernard Shaw

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half. --John Wanamaker

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe. --Marilyn vos Savant

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. --George Orwell, 1942

United we stand, divided we fall. --Aesop

The quickest way to end a war is to lose it. --George Orwell

If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster. --Clint Eastwood

The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer. --George Santayana

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. --Lord Acton

Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic. --Dan Rather

A witty saying proves nothing. --Voltaire

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. --Milton Friedman

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. --Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

Nobody believes a theoretical analysis -- except the guy who did it. Everybody believes an experimental analysis -- except the guy who did it. --Unknown

Who shall guard the guardians themselves? --Juvenal

They talk most who have the least to say. --Matthew Prior

Hindsight is always 20/20. --Billy Wilder

It ain't over till it's over. --Yogi Berra

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff. --Frank Zappa

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. --James Madison

Appearances can be deceiving. --Aesop

The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind. --Thomas Jefferson

Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind. --Albert Einstein

When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood. --James Madison

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It is twice as large as it needs to be. --Anon

Today it takes more brains and effort to make out the income tax form than it does to make the income. --Alfred E. Neuman

Never fight an inanimate object. --P.J. O'Rourke

The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood. --Alexander M. Haig, Jr.

All generalizations are false -- including this one. --Mark Twain

My toughest fight was with my first wife. --Muhammad Ali

You can't build a reputation on what your're going to do. --Henry Ford

If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, then you will be fired with enthusiasm. --Vince Lombardi

It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens. --Woody Allen

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

Don't count your chickens before they hatch. --Aesop

76.4% of all statistics are meaningless. --Anon

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. --Aesop

A woman has the last word in any argument. Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument. --Unknown

Don't carry moderation to extremes. --Unknown

Tautologies are tautological. --Unknown

People have one thing in common: they are all different. --Robert Zend

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. --Voltaire

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. --George Orwell

If missile defense never works, the money "wasted" on it will be the least of our concerns. --Russ Paielli

If we don't get a missile defense before terrorist nations get missiles, we could end up looking back at September llth as a "minor" incident. --Russ Paielli

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