Marshall McLuhan A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. +
William Cullen Bryant Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil. +
Sun Tzu Those who are skilled in combat do not become angered, those who are skilled at winning do not become afraid. Thus the wise win before they fight, while the ignorant fight to win. +
Socrates Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. +
Friedrich A. Hayek planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition but not by planning against competition. +
Marlene Dietrich I do not think we have a "right" to happiness. If happiness happens, say thanks. +
Stephen Spielberg The past may dictate who we are, but we get to determine what we become. +
Henry James Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. +
Jacques-Yves Cousteau Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans. +
George Orwell War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. +
John Maynard Keynes The commonest virtues of the individual are often lacking in the spokesmen of nations; a statesman representing not himself but his country may prove, without incurring excessive blame—­as history often records—­vindictive, perfidious, and egotistic. +
Henry Hazlitt Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore. +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe One should not search for anything behind the phenomena. They themselves are the message. +
Socrates Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they're fools, and fools who think they are wise. +
Seneca And I hold that no man has treated mankind worse than he who has studied philosophy as if it were some marketable trade, who lives in a different manner from that which he advises. +
John Steinbeck And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good. +
Ralph Waldo Emerson The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. +
Arthur Schopenhauer What every one most aims at in ordinary contact with his fellows is to prove them inferior to himself. +
Bias of Priene Do not praise an undeserving man because of his riches. +
Kilroy J. Oldster Life is a crapshoot. It is also brief. No generation is invulnerable to the formidable and grave powers of creation and obliteration that time renders. All people are subject to the vagrancies of time’s steady pulse and subordinated to brute chance engendered when pulling the levers of fate found in our risk-filled environment. We can tilt the odds in our favor of living happily to a ripe old age by displaying a high degree of awareness and exercising self-control. We must rightfully display pride in our lives by claiming responsibility for ourselves and by taking on every challenge without mental equivocation. I seek to conquer personal fears and employ honest effort, energy, endurance, and enthusiasm supplemented with booster shots of intellectual integrity to become my personal master. Self-mastery, self-discipline, conscientious study, uncompromising integrity, and ethical awareness form the foundation stones of all religions and these qualities anchor every person of high character. While no personal medicine wheel is without faults and frailties, a person who exhibits an annealed temperament constantly searches inward to improve him or herself while maintaining a vigilant eye upon fulfilling their caregiver responsibilities. +
Tacitus The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. +
William James We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood +
Frederick S. Perls Don't push the river, it flows by itself. +
Hippocrates There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance. +
Seneca All cruelty springs from weakness. +
Arthur Schopenhauer Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard. It is in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others and denies nothing to itself. +
Elbert Hubbart The friend is the person who knows all about you, and still likes you. +
 Viktor E. Frankl When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. +
Voltaire Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. +
Samuel Adams The true object of loyalty is a good legal constitution, which, as it condemns every instance of oppression and lawless power, derives a certain remedy to the sufferer by allowing him to remonstrate his grievances, and pointing out methods of relief when the gentle arts of persuasion have lost their efficacy. +
Plato One which is the next best, and has the advantage of compelling the citizens to look to their characters:—Let there be a general rule that every one shall enter into voluntary contracts at his own risk, and there will be less of this scandalous money-making, and the evils of which we were speaking will be greatly lessened in the State. Yes, they will be greatly lessened. At present the governors, induced by the motives which I have named, treat their subjects badly; while they and their adherents, especially the young men of the governing class, are habituated to lead a life of luxury and idleness both of body and mind; they do nothing, and are incapable of resisting either pleasure or pain. Very true. They themselves care only for making money, and are as indifferent as the pauper to the cultivation of virtue. Yes, +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach. +
John Maynard Keynes By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. +
H.L. Mencken One man who minds his own business is more valuable to the world than 10,000 cocksure moralists. +
Stephen Hawking There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope. +
John Maynard Keynes When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir? +
John Locke men’s actions are the best guides to their thoughts +
John Steinbeck I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible. +
Hannah Arendt Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty. +
George S. Patton Anyone in any walk of life who is content with mediocrity is untrue to himself and to American tradition. +
Voltaire It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. +
Cicero The aim of a ship's captain is a successful voyage; a doctor's, health; a general's, victory. So the aim of our ideal statesman is the citizens' happy life--that is, a life secure in wealth, rich in resources, abundant in renown, and honorable in its moral character. That is the task which I wish him to accomplish--the greatest and best that any man can have. +
Confucious Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. +
John Locke In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity +
Baruch Spinoza Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace. +
Virgil But you, Roman, must remember that you have to guide the nations by your authority, for this is to be your skill, to graft tradition onto peace, to shew mercy to the conquered, and to wage war until the haughty are brought low. +
Charlotte Bront Take the matter as you find it ask no questions, utter no remonstrances; it is your best wisdom. You expected bread and you have got a stone: break your teeth on it, and don't shriek because the nerves are martyrised; do not doubt that your mental stomach - if you have such a thing - is strong as an ostrich's; the stone will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation; close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. +
Norman Bethune Medicine, as we are practicing it, is a luxury trade. We are selling bread at the price of jewels... Let us take the profit, the private economic profit, out of medicine, and purify our profession of rapacious individualism... Let us say to the people not, 'How much have you got, but how best can we serve you? +
Henry Kissinger Because information is so accessible and communication instantaneous, there is a diminution of focus on its significance, or even on the definition of what is significant. This dynamic may encourage policymakers to wait for an issue to arise rather than anticipate it, and to regard moments of decision as a series of isolated events rather than part of a historical continuum. When this happens, manipulation of information replaces reflection as the principal policy tool. +
Cicero Everything is indefinite, misty, and transient; only virtue is clear, and it cannot be destroyed by any force. +