11
Cicero
2
Epicurus
2
Hegel
1
Hesiod
1
Homer
4
Juvenal
4
Plato
1
Ayn Rand
1
Seneca
10
Seneca
10
Adam Smith
5
Socrates
2
Tacitus
3
Lao Tzu
1
Sun Tzu
4
Virgil
3
Voltaire
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.
+
Cicero
Everything is indefinite, misty, and transient; only virtue is clear, and it cannot be destroyed by any force.
+
William Blake
Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.
+
Arthur Schopenhauer
Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet's tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
+
John Maynard Keynes
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
+
Cicero
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.
+
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.
+
Katharine Hepburn
Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.
+
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.
+
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.
+
Epicurus
When we say . . . that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice or wilful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not by an unbroken succession of drinking bouts and of revelry, not by sexual lust, nor the enjoyment of fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul.
+
John Locke
In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity
+
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.
+
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.
+
Adam Smith
It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
+
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.
+
Napoleon Bonaparte
Courage isn't having the strength to go on - it is going on when you don't have strength.
+
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?
+
Montesquieu
If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.
+
Adam Smith
is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
+
Arthur Schopenhauer
The middle ages showed us the results of thinking without experimentation, our present century shows us what experimentation without thinking leads to.
+
Sophocles
All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.
+
Albert Einstein
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
+
Henry Hazlitt
Private loans will utilize existing resources and capital far better than government loans. Government loans will waste far more capital and resources than private loans. Government loans, in short, as compared with private loans, will reduce production, not increase it.
+
Ludwig von Mises
The thesis of etatism that the members of the government and its assistants are more intelligent than the people, and that they know better what is good for the individual than he himself knows, is pure nonsense.
+
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.
+
John F. Kennedy
The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
+
Aristotle
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
+
Juvenal
It is a poor thing to lean upon the fame of others, lest the pillars give way and the house fall down in ruin.
+
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
+
Sophocles
Do not believe that you alone can be right.
The man who thinks that,
The man who maintains that only he has the power
To reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul
A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.
+
H.L. Mencken
One man who minds his own business is more valuable to the world than 10,000 cocksure moralists.
+
William James
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood
+
Adam Smith
It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased;
+
William Shakespeare
Out, out brief candle, life is but a walking shadow...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
+