Adam Smith Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. +
Michel de Montaigne There is no more expensive thing than a free gift. +
Charles Darwin It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. +
Hegel Man is an animal, but even in his animal functions, he is not confined to the implicit, as the animal is; he becomes conscious of them, recognizes them, and lifts them, as, for instance, the process of digestion, into self-conscious science. In this way man breaks the barrier of his implicit and immediate character, so that precisely because he knows that he is an animal, he ceases to be an animal and attains knowledge of himself as spirit. +
Aristotle Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. +
William Westmoreland When I took command in Vietnam, I gave great emphasis to food and medical care - and to the mail. William Westmoreland +
John Locke For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others. +
Cicero While there's life, there's hope. +
Ralph Waldo Emerson What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. +
Bias of Priene The naïve men are easily fooled +
Leo Tolstoy We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom +
Napoleon Bonaparte The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains. +
Albert Einstein Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Love does not dominate; it cultivates. +
Adam Smith The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice. +
Soren Kierkegaard There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. +
William Shakespeare A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. +
Cicero It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own. +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach. +
Seneca All cruelty springs from weakness. +
John F. Kennedy The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of our planet. +
Adam Smith It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; +
Napoleon Bonaparte Ability is of little account without opportunity. +
Tacitus There was more courage in bearing trouble than in escaping from it; the brave and the energetic cling to hope, even in spite of fortune; the cowardly and the indolent are hurried by their fears +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Few people are capable of concerning themselves with the most recent past. Either the present holds us violently captive, or we lose ourselves in the distant past and strive with might and main to recall and restore what is irrevocably lost. +
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. +
Oscar Wilde Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe One should not search for anything behind the phenomena. They themselves are the message. +
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. +
Groucho Marx Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself. +
Elbert Hubbart The friend is the person who knows all about you, and still likes you. +
Friedrich Nietzsche Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed. +
Anton Chekhov The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. +
John F. Kennedy To be courageous, these stories make clear, requires no exceptional qualifications, no magic formula, no special combination of time, place and circumstance. It is an opportunity that sooner or later is presented to us all. Politics merely furnishes one arena which imposes special tests of courage. In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follow his conscience - the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men - each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient - they can teach, they can offer hope, they provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul. +
Socrates Mankind is made of two kinds of people: wise people who know they're fools, and fools who think they are wise. +
Hegel It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value. +
Bias of Priene All men are wicked +
Ludwig Von Mises Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will +
Voltaire It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. +
Oliver Wendell Holmes The biggest tragedy in America is not the great waste of natural resources - though this is tragic; the biggest tragedy is the waste of human resources because the average person goes to his grave with his music still in him. +
Ayn Rand The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. +
Montesquieu Government is like everything else in this world: if it is to be preserved, it must first be loved. +
Bias of Priene It is difficult to bear a change of fortune for the worse with magnanimity. +
Golda Meir Don't be so humble - you are not that great. +
Arthur Schopenhauer We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor. +
H.L. Mencken One man who minds his own business is more valuable to the world than 10,000 cocksure moralists. +
François de La Rochefoucauld No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong. +
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. +
Arthur Conan Doyle When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. +