The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
— Daniel J. Boorstin
We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place.
— Daniel J. Boorstin
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
— William Blake
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to speak out and remove all doubt.
— Abraham Lincoln
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something.
— Plato
The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.
— Mark Twain
Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin--a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. . . . The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.
— GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
— General George Smith Patton, Jr.
The 7 Modern Sins: Politics without principles, Pleasures without conscience, Wealth without work, Knowledge without character, Industry without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice.
— Canon Frederic Donaldson
My creed is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people and the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but to be fought, that honor is to be earned but not bought.
— Margret Chase Smith
Political Correctness, what does it mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can’t be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on American campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who’re supposed to debate ideas, surrender to suppression? Lets be honest who thinks professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason.
— Charlton Heston, speech at Harvard Law School (Winning The Culture War)
Men who have offered their lives for their country know that patriotism is not the fear of something, it is the love of something.
— Adlai Stevenson
We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.
— Vince Lombardi
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
— James Madison, The Federalist Papers No. 46 243-244
Everyone can recognize history when it happens. Everyone can recognize history after it has happened; but it is only the wise man who knows at the moment what is vital and permanent, what is lasting and memorable.
— Winston Churchill
But I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, his greatest fulfillment of all he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.
— Vince Lombardi
It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever - the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.
— Vince Lombardi
It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up.
— Vince Lombardi
Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.
— Vince Lombardi
Mental toughness is many things. It is humility because it behooves all of us to remember that simplicity is the sign of greatness and meekness is the sign of true strength. Mental toughness is spartanism with qualities of sacrifice, self-denial, dedication. It is fearlessness, and it is love.
— Vince Lombardi
Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure, and the temporary failures.
— Vince Lombardi
The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.
— Vince Lombardi
We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.
— Vince Lombardi
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
— Vince Lombardi
Leadership rests not only upon ability, not only upon capacity; having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it. His leadership is then based on truth and character. There must be truth in the purpose and will power in the character.
— Vince Lombardi
That a moderate Government is most agreeable to the Christian Religion, and a despotic Government to the Mahometan. The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the gospel, is incompatible with the despotic rage with which a prince punishes his subjects, and exercises himself in cruelty. . . . It is a misfortune to human nature, when religion is given by a conqueror. The Mahometan religion, which speaks only by the sword, acts still upon men with that destructive spirit with which it was founded.
— Montesquieu
In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, [.....] Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST.- TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.... Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant ... While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.
— John Quincy Adams, Sixth President of the United States
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
— Albert Einstein
Civilization: a thin veneer over barbarianism.
— John M. Shanahan
Civilized people are taught by logic, barbarians, by necessity, communities by tradition; and the lesson inculcated even in wild beasts by nature itself. They learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons lives from violence of any and every kind by all means within their power.
— Cicero
When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.
— Daniel Webster, Remarks on Agriculture
I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.
— Bertrand Russell
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
— Thomas Paine
One cannot expect to make an omelette without breaking eggs.
— Maximilian Robespierre, central figure in the Reign of Terror (approximately 40,000 were executed in 15 months) during the French Revolution
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
— Eric Hoffer
The wisest men follow their own direction.
— Euripides
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
— Bertrand Russell
The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurements anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.
— George Bernard Shaw
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.
— Michelangelo
Measure a thousand times and cut once.
— Turkish Proverb
Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one's aim.
— John D. Rockefeller
I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.
— John D. Rockefeller
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
— John D. Rockefeller
Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.
— John D. Rockefeller
Every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.
— John D. Rockefeller
Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.
— John D. Rockefeller
Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It's to see my dividends coming in.
— John D. Rockefeller
Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principles of fear or reason, but from passion.
— Montesquieu
Man, when perfected, is the best of animals; but when isolated he is the worst of all; for injustice is more dangerous when armed, and man is equipped at birth with the weapons of intelligence, and with qualities of character which he may use for the vilest ends. Wherefore if he have not virtue he is the most unholy and savage of animals, full of gluttony and lust.
— Aristotle, Politics
The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.
— Montesquieu
Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
— Aristotle, Poetics
My advice to you is to get married. If you find a good wife, you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.
— Socrates
At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.
— Montesquieu
To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong admit it;
Whenever you're right shut up.
— Ogden Nash
Virtue in a republic is the love of one's country, that is the love of equality.
— Montesquieu
There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
— Homer
Liberty… is there only when there is no abuse of power.
— Montesquieu
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.
— Thomas Jefferson
Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.
— Montesquieu
It was not expected in this age, that nations so honorably distinguished by their advances in science and civilization, would suddenly cast away the esteem they had merited from the world and, revolting from the empire of morality, assume a character in history which all the tears of their posterity will never wash from its pages.
— Thomas Jefferson
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
— John Adams
The spirit of commerce… renders every man willing to live on his own property...& prevents the growth of luxury.
— Montesquieu
But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.
— Robert Heinlein
In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.
— Montesquieu
The moral sense reappears today with the same morning newness that has been from of old the fountain of beauty and strength. You say there is no religion now. 'Tis like saying in rainy weather, There is no sun, when at that moment we are witnessing one of its superlative effects.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.
— Montesquieu
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.
— Barry Lopez
The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality… are felt.
— Montesquieu
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
— Barbara Tuchman
Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this we need only represent, on the one hand, the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; and on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, a laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything.
— Montesquieu
Education is the transmission of civilization.
— Ariel and Will Durant
It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is less need of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.
— Montesquieu
Compare mathematics and the political sciences -- it's quite striking. In mathematics, in physics, people are concerned with what you say, not with your certification. But in order to speak about social reality, you must have the proper credentials, particularly if you depart from the accepted framework of thinking. Generally speaking, it seems fair to say that the richer the intellectual substance of a field, the less there is a concern for credentials, and the greater is concern for content.
— Noam Chomsky
Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
— Montesquieu
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
— John W. Gardner
The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.
— Montesquieu
Development of Western science is based on two great achievements: the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during the Renaissance). In my opinion one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made those steps. The astonishing thing is that those discoveries were made at all.
— Albert Einstein
Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
— Montesquieu
The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
— Edward Gibbon
Say not that honor is the child of boldness, nor believe thou that the hazard of life alone can pay the price of it: it is not to the action that it is due, but to the manner of performing it.
— Akhenaton
Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.
— Aquinas
Dignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
— Aristotle
The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.
— Francis Bacon
There is in all of a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because the law makes them so.
— Fredric Bastiat
But what is Freedom? Rightly understood, A universal licence to be good.
— Hartley Coleridge
He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.
— Charles Caleb Colton
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
— Jonathan Swift
I've always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I'm going to make the next one.
— Jonathan Swift
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
— Jonathan Swift
Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
— Jonathan Swift
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
— Jonathan Swift
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
— Jonathan Swift
So weak thou art that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
— Jonathan Swift
The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
— Jonathan Swift
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
— Jonathan Swift
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
— Jonathan Swift
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
— Jonathan Swift, A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind (1707)
You can't, in sound morals, condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.
— Joseph Conrad
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.
— Montesquieu
The only vice that can not be forgiven is hypocrisy.
— William Hazlitt
...Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed...so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger.
— Patrick Henry
Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
— Patrick Henry
To many a man, and sometimes to a youth, there comes the opportunity to choose between honorable competence and tainted wealth. The young man who starts out to be poor and honorable, holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success.
— Orison Swett Marden
Those who excel in war first cultivate their own humanity and justice and maintain their laws and institutions. By these means they make their governments invincible.
— Sun Tzu
Cowards die many times before their death; the valiant never tastes of death but once.
— William Shakespeare
Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.
— James Harvey Robinson
When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that would be stupid and irrational; but he whose noble soul subdues its fear, and bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from.
— Joanna Baillie
Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
— Frederick Douglass
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
— Sir Winston Churchill
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
— Steve Biko
To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social estab- lishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps, as part of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific" establishment, however, is the easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously brave, without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group of astronomers denounces it.
— Isaac Asimov
In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever steps beyond them. Not that he is exposed to the terrors of an auto-da-f'e, but he is tormented by the slights and persecutions of daily obloquy. His political career is closed forever, since he has offended the only authority which is able to promote his success. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is refused to him. Before he published his opinions he imagined that he held them in common with many others; but no sooner has he declared them openly than he is loudly censored by his overbearing opponents, whilst those who think without having the courage to speak, like him, abandon him in silence. He yields at length, oppressed by the daily efforts he has been making, and he subsides into silence, as if he was tormented by remorse for having spoken the truth.
— Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
— Sir Winston Churchill
For myself, I am an optimist--it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
— Winston Churchill
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
— Winston Churchill
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing has happened.
— Winston Churchill
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master This expresses my idea of democracy.
— Abraham Lincoln
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.
— James Madison
One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.
— Thomas Sowell
You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt. I am satisfied that a scholar who tries to combine these parts sells his birthright for a mess of pottage; that, when the final count is made, it will be found that the impairment of his powers far outweighs any possible contribution to the causes he has espoused.
— Learned Hand
Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.
— Turkish proverb
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
— Winston Churchill
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time--a tremendous whack.
— Winston Churchill
A great man, tender of heart, strong of nerve, boundless patience and broadest sympathy, with no motive apart from his country.
— Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote, where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
— John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1960.
Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
— Shakespeare
When we doubt our powers, we give power to our doubts.
— from "Mystery Men"
For nothing is laid down by philosophers - nothing right and honourable at any rate -- which has not been brought into being and established by those who have drawn up laws for states. Where does devotion come from? Who gave us our religious observances? What is the source of law, either the law of nations, or this civil law of ours? From where did justice, good faith, and fair dealing come? Or decency, restraint, the fear of disgrace, and the desire of praise and honour? Or fortitude in hardship and danger? Why, from those men who have taken these values, already shaped by teaching, and either established them in custom or confirmed them in law. In fact Xenocrates, one of the most illustrious philosophers, when asked what his pupils got from him, is said to have answered 'to do of their own free will what they are compelled to do by law'. So then, the statesmen who by official authority and legal sanctions obliges everyone to do what barely a handful can be induced to do by philosophy lectures, must take a precedence over the teachers who theorize about such matters.
— Cicero, The Republic
But since, as the number of known facts increases, the human mind learns how to classify them, and to subsume them under more general facts, and, at the same time, the instruments and methods employed in their observation and their exact measurement acquire a new precision; since, as more relations between various objects become known, man is able to reduce them to more general relations, to express them more simply, and to present them in such a way that it is possible to grasp a greater number of them with the same degree of intellectual ability and the same amount of application; since as the mind learns to understand more complicated combinations of ideas, simpler formulae soon reduce their complexity; so truths that were discovered only by great effort, that could at first only be understood by men capable of profound thought, are soon developed and proved by methods that are not beyond the reach of common intelligence.
— Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794)
there is no remedy but love for the great superiority of others
— Goethe
Good sense, which once ruled far and wide
Now in our schools to rest is laid
Science, its once beloved child,
Killed it to see how it was made.
— Giuseppe Giusti (1808-1850)
To face calamity with a mind as unclouded as may be, and quickly to react against it—that in a city and in an individual—is real strength.
— Pericles, quoted by Thucydides
A man who has the knowledge but lacks the power clearly to express it is no better off than if he never had any ideas at all.
— Pericles, quoted by Thucydides
If it come to prohibiting, there is not aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself.
— John Milton
Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects; and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms. I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.
— Elizabeth I of England, 1588
Yesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win.
— Bernadette Devlin
Never give in. Never. Never. Never. Never.
— Winston Churchill
We must dare to think unthinkable thoughts.
— James W. Fulbright
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
— Charles DuBois
True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.
— Alfred North Whitehead
I would define true courage to be a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
— William Tecumseh Sherman
It is to the interest of the commonwealth of mankind that there should be someone who is unconquered, someone against whom fortune has no power.
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The bitter part of discretion is valor.
— Henry W. Nevinson
Courage is like love, it must have hope for nourishment.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.
— Martin Luther King, Jr
One man with courage makes a majority.
— Andrew Jackson
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
— Maya Angelou
Definition of courage: 'Grace under pressure.'
— Ernest Hemingway
Great men, great nations, have not been boasters or buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, 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 short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
— Theodore Roosevelt
To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
— Theodore H. White
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
— Susan B. Anthony
Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another. The former would seem most necessary for the camp; the latter for the council; but to constitute a great man both are necessary.
— Charles Caleb Colton
The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of the final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all morality.
— John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The obstacles you face are mental barriers, which can be broken by adopting a more positive approach.
— Clarence Blasier
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do no pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks.
— Phillips Brooks
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.
— E F Schumacker
This country was not built by men who relied on somebody else to take care of them. It was built by men who relied on themselves, who dared to shape their own lives, who had enough courage to blaze new trails -- enough confidence themselves to take the necessary risks.
— J. Ollie Edmunds
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, the best of circumstances.
— Aristotle
Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
— Karl von Clausewitz
The man who is just and resolute will not be moved from his settled purpose, either by the misdirected rage of his fellow citizens, or by the threats of an imperious tryant.
— Horace
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles / At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
— Joseph Addison
Fiat justitia, ruat coelum. — "Let right be done, though the heavens should fall."
Audaces fortuna juvat. — "Fortune favors the bold."
In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.
— Louis Pasteur
It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.
— Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 311 (1932)
It is marriage, perhaps, which had given man the best of his freedom, given him his little kingdom of his own within the big kingdom of the state.… It is a true freedom because it is a true fulfilment, for man, woman and children. Do we then want to break marriage? If we do break it, it means we all fall to a far greater extent under the direct sway of the State.
— DH Lawrence
We in this country, in this generation, are—by destiny rather than choice—the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility—that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restrain—and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of "peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal—and the righteousness of our case must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."
— From the speech to be given by John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
— John F. Kennedy
The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power.
— Paul Wellstone
Politics is not about big money or power games, it's about the improvement of people's lives.
— Paul Wellstone
The Idea of Anti-imperialism is… to be considered on several grounds. First, it is traditionally pervasive in the United States, though given its most extreme form in anti-Western academe. Second, it is used as a negative label for any effort by the United States, or the West, to encourage liberties, to block fanaticisms, and to make aid dependent on positive economic policies. Those concerned with the future development of their countries, and of the world, cannot afford to let obsolete resentments distort their aims.
— Robert Conquest
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson
We set ourselves to achieve a society that would be maximally tolerant. But that resolve not only gives maximum scope to the activities of those who have set themselves to achieve the maximally intolerant society. It also… paralyses our powers of resistance to them.
— David Stove
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.
— Samuel Adams
There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.
— Lord Acton
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
— Lord Acton
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 but I didn't speak up because I was not 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 nobody was left to speak up.
— Martin Niemöller
If you're going through hell, keep going.
— Winston Churchill
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
— Benjamin Franklin
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.
— Theodore Roosevelt
My non-violence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice.
— Mohandas Gandhi
I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.
— Mohandas Gandhi
The bureaucratic manager, the consuming aesthete, the therapist, the protester and their numerous kindred occupy almost all the available culturally recognizable roles, the notions of the expertise of the few and of the moral agency of everyone are the presuppositions of the dramas which those characters enact. To cry out that the emperor had no clothes on was at least to pick on one man only to the amusement of everyone else; to declare that almost everyone is dressed in rags is much less likely to be popular.
— Alasdair MacIntyre
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries.
— George Orwell
When we are dealing with concepts like freedom and equality, it is essential to use words accurately and in good faith. . . beware of those who seek to win an argument at the expense of the language. For the fact that they do is proof positive that their argument is false, and proof presumptive that they know it is. A man who deliberately inflicts violence on the language will almost certainly inflict violence on human beings if he acquires the power. Those who treasure the meaning of words will treasure truth, and those who bend words to their purposes are very likely in pursuit of anti-social ones. The correct and honorable use of words is the first and natural credential of civilized status.
— Paul Johnson
Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, "What should be the reward of such sacrifices?" Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!
— Samuel Adams
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms; by truth when it is attacked by lies; by democratic faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma. Always and in the final act, by determination and faith.
— Archibald MacLeish
Electronic brains may help us to use our heads but will not excuse us from that duty, and as to our hearts—cardiograms cannot diagnose what may be most ill about them, or confirm what may be best. The faithful woman and the versatile brave man, the wakeful intelligence open to inspiration or grace—these are still exemplary for our kind, as they always were and always will be.
— Robert Fitzgerald
If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion.
— Joseph Brodsky
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
— John Maynard Keynes
Born, Sir, in a land of liberty; having early learned its value; having engaged in a perilous conflict to defend it; having, in a word, devoted the best years of my life to secure its permanent establishment in my own country; my anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited, whenever, in any country, I see an oppressed people unfurl the banner of freedom.
— George Washington, as quoted by Thomas Paine
In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity; in peace, good will.
— Edward Marsh
That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.
— Marcus Aurelius
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
— John Stuart Mill
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
— Winston Churchill
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or 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
Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.
— Author Unknown
These are quotations. Sometimes quotations are called "quotes," but "quotes" actually refers to quotation marks, not the quotation itself. "Quote" is also a verb. The negative form of "quotation" is "misquotation."
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