Leo Tolstoy We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom +
René Descartes Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power. +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe It is much easier to recognise error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to every one. +
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. +
Edmund Burke But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths. +
Voltaire It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. +
Arthur Conan Doyle When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. +
Napoleon Bonaparte Ability is of little account without opportunity. +
Arthur Conan Doyle There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. +
Frederick S. Perls Don't push the river, it flows by itself. +
Golda Meir Don't be so humble - you are not that great. +
Arthur Conan Doyle Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. +
Voltaire Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. +
Thomas Jefferson Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another? +
Eleanor Roosevelt America is not a pile of goods, more luxury, more comforts, a better telephone system, a greater number of cars. America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our other achievements amount to nothing. +
Cicero Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty. +
John Maynard Keynes It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. +
Benjamin Franklin Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame. +
Friedrich A. Hayek The chief difference [between totalitarian and free countries] is that only the totalitarians appear clearly to know how they want to achieve that result, while the free world has only its past achievements to show, being by its very nature unable to offer any detailed "plan" for further growth. +
Ralph Waldo Emerson What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. +
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. +
Jean-Paul Sartre Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk. +
Thomas Jefferson Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs. +
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. +
Cicero What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes. +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Divide and rule, the politician cries; Unite and lead, is watchword of the wise. +
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean. +
George Bernard Shaw Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. +
Arthur Schopenhauer In short, a large part of the powers of the human race is taken away from the production of what is necessary, in order to bring what is superfluous and unnecessary within the reach of a few. +
Carl von Clausewitz If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle with the unforeseen, two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead. +
Virgil Evil is nourished and grows by concealment. +
Elbert Hubbart The friend is the person who knows all about you, and still likes you. +
Friedrich August von Hayek It is because every individual knows little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it. +
Socrates Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul? +
Jack Layton My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world. +
Stephen Spielberg The past may dictate who we are, but we get to determine what we become. +
William Pitt the Younger Necessity is the plea for every infringement on human rights. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. +
Bias of Priene It is difficult to bear a change of fortune for the worse with magnanimity. +
Alvin Toffler Society needs people who take care of the elderly and who know how to be compassionate and honest," he said. "Society needs people who work in hospitals. Society needs all kinds of skills that are not just cognitive; they're emotional, they're affectional. You can't run the society on data and computers alone. +
Friedrich Nietzsche The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. +
John Locke But what if he neglect the care of his soul? I answer: What if he neglect the care of his health or of his estate, which things are nearlier related to the government of the magistrate than the other? Will the magistrate provide by an express law that such a one shall not become poor or sick? Laws provide, as much as is possible, that the goods and health of subjects be not injured by the fraud and violence of others; they do not guard them from the negligence or ill-husbandry of the possessors themselves. No man can be forced to be rich or healthful whether he will or no. Nay, God Himself will not save men against their wills. +
Cicero Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do. +
W.B. Yeats I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. +
Salvador Dali Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it. +
Abraham Lincoln When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. +
Marlene Dietrich I do not think we have a "right" to happiness. If happiness happens, say thanks. +
Arthur Schopenhauer All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. +
Ambrose Bierce Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. +
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. +
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. +