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Here are quotes that are curious, interesting, surprising. As I find them, I add to the page. Some sources for the quotes include Bartleby.Com Web site; Urban Legends Reference Pages (verifying quotes via email); Military-Quotes.Com; and the Unix "fortune" program. This page has the quotes sorted into categories.
God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.
-- George W. Bush (quoted in Ha'aretz, 26 June 2003)
The threat of terrorism does not overturn Christian ethics.
-- Jim Wallis, "God's Politics"
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
-- Martin Luther King
The best response to fundamentalism is to take religion more seriously than fundamentalism usually does. The best critique of fundamentalism comes from faith itself, which challenges the accommodation of fundamentalism to theocracy, power, and violence. It is faith that leads us to assert the vital religious commitments that fundamentalists often leave out, namely compassion, social justice, peacemaking, humility, tolerance, and even democracy as a religious commitment.
-- Jim Wallis, "God's Politics"
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
-- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
I am convinced that nothing will happen to me, for I know the greatness of the task for which Providence has chosen me.
-- Adolf Hitler, 1932 presidential campaign
We are not out against the hundred and one different sects of Christianity, but against Christianity itself.
-- Adolf Hitler (quoted in Life magazine editorial, 12-June-1944)
One of the principles of Sufi morality is that they refrain from exacting vengance. If ill is done to them, they reply with kindness. This is a major principle, for the Prophet—may God's salutation and peace be upon him—forbade exacting retribution for evil.
-- Iradi: Manaqib al-Sufiyya (from "The Wisdom of Sufism")
A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures on armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.
-- Anatole France
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is now in the American experience... We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications... We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his farewell address in 1961
There's no such thing as a crowded battlefield. Battlefields are lonely places.
-- Lt Gen Alfred M. Gray
Battles are sometimes won by generals; wars are nearly always won by sergeants and privates.
--F.E. Adcock, British classical scholar
Comment: In war, there are also many civilian deaths, especially from bombing. Critics of war often talk about who should be designated war criminals. The most infamous were tried in the Nuremberg Trials. There have been other war crimes trials. Here are two related quotes.
LeMay said, "If we lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals". And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose, and not immoral if you win?
-- Robert McNamara, speaking about bombing Japan in WW II in "The Fog of War"
What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals? War criminals are not confined to the Axis Powers alone. Roosevelt and Churchill are no less war criminals than Hitler and Mussolini. England, America and Russia have all of them got their hands dyed more or less red - not merely Germany and Japan.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi, commenting on WW II
Comment: I knew the following quote by the Nazi general Hermann Goering existed and decided to track it down. It is quoted a number of places on the Web but the Urban Legends Reference Pages verifies and gives its context.
Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
...the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
-- Hermann Goering, "Nuremberg Diary"
We also need to spotlight the "excuse makers," the former State Department spokesman James Rubin said. After every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed. When you live in an open society like London, where anyone with a grievance can publish an article, run for office or start a political movement, the notion that blowing up a busload of innocent civilians in response to Iraq is somehow "understandable" is outrageous. "It erases the distinction between legitimate dissent and terrorism," Mr. Rubin said, "and an open society needs to maintain a clear wall between them."
-- Thomas Friedman, NY Times columnist, author
It's strange... If I walked into any terrorist-apologist's house and shot his family to death, and then told him, "Hey, I was pretty pissed off about the US not doing enough to control illegal immigration," I really don't think even the terrorist-apologist would find that much of a justification. "So you disagree with US foreign policy--what the hell does that have to do with my family, whom you just murdered in cold blood?"
-- Ace of Spades HQ
When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to a fellow Quaker, 9 October 1780)
All men have a natural and infeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishment or modes of worship.
-- William Penn, "Declaration of Rights"
There are two ways that religion is brought into public life in American history. The first way — God on our side — leads inevitably to triumphalism, self-righteousness, bad theology, and often, dangerous foreign policy. The second way — asking if we are on God's side — leads to much healthier things, namely, penitence and even repentance, humility, reflection, and even accountability. We need much more of all these, because these are often the missing values of politics.
-- Jim Wallis, "God's Politics"
For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required:
-- The Bible (KJV), Luke: 12:48
Before destruction a man's heart is haughty, but humility goes before honour.
-- Psalms 18:12
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by men who are equally certain that they represent the divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other is mistaken in the belief, and perhaps in some respects, both.
I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Wherever mullahs are not around
It's there that paradise can be found.
Wherever mullahs' ire and crazed rage and delirious fits do not exist,
There heaven's own land is found to be.
From mullah fury and mullah zeal may the world all be set free,
So none again take heed of fatwas and mullah's mad decrees!
-- Dara Shikuh in Hasrat: Dara Skikuh, 139
There has been and always will be plenty of arguments about the usefulness and harm of the spreading of the Bible. In my view the Bible will continue to cause harm when used in a dogmatic and fantastic manner; it will do good when used for didactic purposes and with sensitivity.
-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
-- Jesus (Luke 4:18-19)
Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Letters to Thurlow Weed, March 14, 1865
In modern society, science has become a primary force in human and planetary development. In this way, scientific and technological innovations have been responsible for great material progress. However, science does not have all the answers, any more than religion did in the past. The more we pursue material improvement, ignoring the contentment that comes of inner growth, the faster ethical values will disappear from our communities. Then we will all experience unhappiness in the long run, for when there is no place for justice and honesty in people's hearts, the weak are the first to suffer. And the resentments resulting from such inequity ultimately affect everyone adversely.
With the ever-growing impact of science on our lives, religion and spirituality have a greater role to play in reminding us of our humanity. What we must do is balance scientific and material progress with the sense of responsibility that comes of inner development. That is why i believe this dialogue between religion and science is important, for from it may come developments that can be of great benefit to mankind.
-- Dalai Lama, Foreward to "Destructive Emotions"
Sometime in the twenty-first century, our self-deluded recklessness will collide with our growing technological power.
-- Michael Crichton
Science explains how the world is; religion explains why the world is. Science explains material processes. Religion attributes meaning to those processes.
-- Rabbi Gerald Zelizer (quoted in USA Today)
Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around the sun. At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact. That all present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology. Biologists differ only with respect to theories about how the process operates.
-- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
Congress has just given Terri Schiavo another chance. When the President signs this bill, a new opportunity for Terri begins. These efforts affirm our nation's commitment to preserving the sanctity of life.
-- Bill Frist, US Senator
So if you are wondering just how sick you need to be before Congress acted to improve your health care... now you know.
-- Jon Stewart, "The Daily Show" on legislation to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case
The [Terri Schiavo] case is full of great ironies. A large part of Terri's hospice costs are paid by Medicaid, a program that the administration and conservatives in Congress would sharply reduce. Some of her other expenses have been covered by the million-dollar proceeds of a malpractice suit - the kind of suit that President Bush has fought to scale back.
-- NPR commentator Daniel Schorr
I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.
-- "Einstein and Religion" quoted on deism.com
[See President John F. Kennedy's long quote on separation of church and state to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association.]
The best defense of democracy is an informed electorate.
-- Thomas Jefferson, U.S. president
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
-- George Orwell
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
-- Edward R. Murrow
In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.
-- James W. Fulbright (US senator)
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.
-- Barbara Ehrenreich
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
-- Barry Goldwater
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
-- John F. Kennedy
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.
-- Mark Twain
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy, U.S. President
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
-- Thomas Paine
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts
-- Daniel Patrick Monyhan, U.S. Senator
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
-- Mark Twain, author and social critic
It is essential in a democratic society that young people and adults learn how to think, learn how to make up their minds. They must learn how to think independently, and they must learn how to think together. They must come to conclusions, but at the same time they must recognize the right of other men to come to opposite conclusions. So far as individuals are concerned, the art of democracy is the art of thinking and discussing independently together.
-- "Fine Art of Propaganda", Institute for Propaganda Analysis (1937)
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
-- Bill Vaughan
The first casualty when war comes is truth.
-- Attributed to Senator Hiram Johnson, remarks in the Senate, 1918
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
-- Samuel Butler (1835-1902), British author
Our loyalty is due entirely to the United States. It is due to the President only and exactly to the degree in which he efficiently serves the United States. It is our duty to support him when he serves the United States well. It is our duty to oppose him when he serves it badly. This is true about Mr. Wilson now and it has been true about all our Presidents in the past. It is our duty at all times to tell the truth about the President and about every one else, save in the cases where to tell the truth at the moment would benefit the public enemy.
-- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), U.S. President
The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was, not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy.
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis (Whitney v. California)
Reasons and opinions concerning acts are not history. Acts themselves alone are history... Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish! All that is not action is not worth reading. Tell me the What; I do not want you to tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that out myself, as well as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions, that you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think is improbable or impossible.
-- William Blake (1757-1827), poet, painter, printmaker, pious man.
It is not, perhaps, unreasonable to conclude, that a pure and perfect democracy is a thing not attainable by man, constituted as he is of contending elements of vice and virtue, and ever mainly influenced by the predominant principle of self-interest. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted, that there never was that government called a republic, which was not ultimately ruled by a single will, and, therefore, (however bold may seem the paradox,) virtually and substantially a monarchy.
-- Alexander Fraser Tytler
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for.
-- Molly Ivins
Dissent protects the body politic from the virus of totalitarianism.
-- Roger Ebert, ending a review of the film Max
There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
A political man can have as his aim the realization of freedom, but he has no means to realize it other than through violence.
-- Jean Paul Sartre
All bad precedents begin as justifiable measures.
-- Julius Caesar (100 BC - 44 BC)
If every tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
-- Abraham Maslow, American pyschologist
Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-- Lord Acton
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke (1729-1797), British statesman and philosopher
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
-- H. G. Wells, "The Outline of History"
In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.
-- "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear", BBC documentary.
War is hell. But it's also true that war is an easier route to follow than peace -- throughout history, war has been the path more frequently taken. Attacking someone you don't agree with is a fairly straightforward affair; sitting down with your adversary and working out your disagreements is much more difficult. At the end of the day, it takes more courage to negotiate than to fight.
-- George Johnson, US Navy Vietnam Veteran
And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient—that we are only 6 percent of the world's population—that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind—that we cannot right every wrong or reverse every adversity—and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem
-- John F. Kennedy, U.S. President
I have more respect for people who change their views after acquiring new information than for those who cling to views they held thirty years ago. The world changes. Ideologues and zealots don't...
I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.
-- Michael Crichton, "State of Fear"
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
Money doesn't talk, it swears.
-- Bob Dylan
George W. Bush, when asked by Bob Woodward "how is history likely to judge your Iraq war?" replied, "History, we don't know. We'll all be dead."
-- (Woodward Shares War Secrets, CBS News, 60 Minutes, April 18, 2004).
America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
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
In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.
-- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.
-- Attributed to Abraham Lincoln (or P. T. Barnum)
Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Don't overdo it.
-- Lao Tsu
Comment: The following quote arrived via email and I verified its veracity at the Urban Legends Reference Pages.
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre -- the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
-- H. L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, 26 July 1920
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
-- General Omar N. Bradley
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln
dulce bellum inexpertis [War is sweet to the inexperienced.]
-- Desiderius Erasmus, Dutch humanist, ca. 1466 - 1536
Fear, craft, and avarice cannot rear a state.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher.
[One group] calls the militants freedom fighters. [The opposition] calls them terrorists.
-- News article
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher.
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.
-- Everett McKinley Dirksen (1896-1969), US Senator (attributed remark)
I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news... I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world.
-- US President George W. Bush in (quote from article about Fox News interview)
I don't do nuance.
-- U.S. President George W. Bush, quoted in magazine article
I don't do quagmires.
I don't do diplomacy.
I don't do foreign policy.
I don't do predictions.
I don't do numbers.
-- Various quotes from Donald Rumsfeld, collected on About.Com
I don't do carrots.
-- John Bolton, when asked about a carrot-and-stick approach to negotiating with Iran.
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Horace Greeley, Aug. 22, 1862.
Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Letters to Thurlow Weed, March 14, 1865
Comment: Here are a couple of quotes from Adam Smith, the important Scottish political economist and author of "The Wealth of Nations", published in 1776, or quotes about Adam Smith.
Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the publick interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
-- Adam Smith (1723-1790)
The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand." This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us.
-- Bill Moyers, Keynote speech at Inequality Matters Forum, June 3, 2004
Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.
-- Adam Smith (1723-1790)
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
-- Adam Smith, (1723-1790)
Additionally, one editorial describes the value of Adam Smith's economic theories to American capitalism but continues by using the example of Enron to wonder what Adam Smith would do in the face of such "greed run amok".
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
-- H.H. Williams
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
-- Albert Einstein
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced from pressures from below.
-- Roger Nash Baldwin, founding member, ACLU
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. A revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast between poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists in the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America only to take profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: 'This is not just.'
-- Martin Luther King Jr.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
-- Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky (Unverified)
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions.
-- Thomas Jefferson
If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.
-- Bible: New Testament, Luke 6:29
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature.
-- Voltaire
When Americans look out on the world, they see nothing but dark and menacing strangers who appear to have no sense of rhythm at all, nor any respect or affection for white people; and white Americans really do not know what to make of all this, except to increase the defense budget.
-- James Baldwin, U.S. author
Woe to the legislators of infamous laws, to those who issue tyrannical decrees, who refuse justice to the unfortunate and cheat the poor among my people of their rights, who make widows their prey, and rob the orphan.
-- Isaiah 10: 1-2
It is a good thing for an uneducated man
to read books of quotations.
-- Sir Winston Churchill
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-- George Santayana
We learn from experience that we never learn from experience.
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
Main Entry: ideoˇlogue
Variant(s): also ideaˇlogue /'I-dE-&-"log, -"läg/
Function: noun
Etymology: French idéologue, back-formation from idéologie
1 : an impractical idealist : THEORIST
2 : an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology
-- Merriam-Webster Online
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer
Who is wise? He who learns from all men.
-- Talmud