Quotes

"Each place has its own advantages - heaven for the climate, and hell for the society."

"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."

“Nothing has been done so long as anything remains to be done.” – as quoted by Robespierre

"For myself I am an optimist—it does not seem to be much use being anything else."

“My glory is not to have won forty battles; for Waterloo’s defeat will destroy the memory of as many victories. But what nothing will destroy, what will live eternally, is my Civil Code.”

"Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night."

"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun."

"I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."

"Stability is only maintained by constant and conscious change."

"We must become the change we want to see in the world."

"The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises — it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them."

"If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a 'Liberal.'"

"That (society) which separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."

"The purpose of all wars, is peace."

"Only after disaster can we be resurrected."

"Its not until you lose everything that you are free to do anything."

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

"Those who say it cannot be done should get out of the way of those doing it."

"In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway."

"Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing."

"We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra."

"All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers."

“If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.”

"I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, 'Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.'"

”If you look after truth and goodness, beauty looks after herself.”

"In reaction to a war that is ill-conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and wait for a White House scandal."

"If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are -- if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time."

"Dealing with a government with whom mendacity is a science is an extremely difficult matter."

"I do not represent public opinion. I represent the public."

"Thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."

"When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious."

"Only a thoughtless observer can deny that correspondences come into play between the world of modern technology and the archaic symbol-world of mythology."

"To realize the relative validity of one's convictions, and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian."

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

"When we dream alone it is only a dream, but when many dream together it is the beginning of a new reality."

Let the artist give a great example. He worships his work; the joy of doing it right is a divine reward. Nowadays the workers are unfortunately being told that they ought to hate their work and do it shoddily. Mankind will not be happy until all men have the souls of artists, that is, until every man’s work gives him pleasure. And art sets a superb example of honesty.

The true artist always expresses what he thinks, at the risk of flying in the face of all ingrained prejudice. This is how he teaches others courage and condor. Now, just imagine what a miraculous step forward we would suddenly take if absolute truthfulness prevailed among men! O how rapidly society would liberate itself from ingrained error and ugliness, and how quickly our earth would become a paradise.

"The Italians have a saying, Lemon: 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.' And although they've never won a war or mass produced a decent car, in this area they are correct."

In Zen... even the most mundane objects are things of wonder, if we stop to look at them, and the fact that we are alive is the biggest wonder of all.