Peter Abelard
Bella Abzug
Dean Acheson
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Brooks Adams
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Franklin P. Adams
George M. Adams
Henry Brooks Adams
James Truslow Adams
Joey Adams
John Adams
John Quincy Adams
Scott Adams
William Adams
Joseph Addison
Geoge Ade
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Alfred Adler
Felix Adler
Aeschylus
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Louis Agassiz
Agathon
James Agee
Leo Aikman
Alain (Emile-Auguste Chartier)
Richard Aldington
Alexander II
Vittorio Alfieri
W. R. Alger
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay)
Noelie Alito
Charles Grant Allen
Fred Allen (John Florence Sullivan)
Gracie Allen
Steve Allen
Woody Allen (Allen Stewart Konigsberg)
Svetlana Alliluyeva
Gloria Allred
Robert Altman
St. Ambrose
Fisher Ames
Henri Federic Amiel
Anacharsis
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Sir Edward Appleton
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Archimedes
Hannah Arendt
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Neil Armstrong
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Chester Alan Arthur
Harry Ashmore
Isaac Asimov
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Nancy Astor
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Saint Athanasius
Brooks Atkinson
Clement Attlee
W. H. Auden
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God considered not action, but the spirit of the action. It is the intention, not the deed, wherein the merit or praise of the doer consists.
Women have been and are prejudiced, narrowminded, reactionary, even violent. Some women. They, of course, have a right to vote and a right to run for office. I will defend that right, but I will not support them or vote for them.
The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull. This is not always easy to achieve.
I will undoubtedly have to seek what is happily known as gainful employment, which I am glad to say does not describe holding public office.
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
Perhaps the best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.
The greatest mistake I made was not to die in office.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority.
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means.
Property is not a sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil.
Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race.
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
Everything secret degenerates; nothing is safe that does not bear discussion and publicity.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion.
Two forces which are the worst enemies of civil freedom are the absolute monarchy and the revolution.
I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and, like the grave, cries, "Give, give!"
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
The Answer to the Great Question Of....Life, the Universe and Everything....Is....Forty-two.
When the political columnists say "Every thinking man" they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to "Every intelligent voter" they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.
Years ago we discovered the exact point, the dead centre of middle age. It occurs when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net.
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.
I don't care how great, how famous or successful a man or woman may be, each hungers for applause.
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
A friend in power is a friend lost.
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world.
Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense; that which they will, is right, that which they reject, is wrong.
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for, if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts.
A science cannot be played with. If a hypothesis is advanced that obviously brings into direct sequence of cause and effect all the phenomena of human history, we must accept it, and if we accept it we must teach it. The mere fact that it overthrows social organizations cannot affect our attitude. The rest of society can accept or ignore, but we must follow the new light no matter where it leads.
Absolute liberty is the absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible only to himself. This principle is the philosophical foundation of anarchism, and, for anything that science has yet proved, may be the philosophical foundation of the universe; but it is fatal to all society and is especially hostile to the State.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.
Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
If it weren't for the fact that the TV and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all.
The Church of Rome has made it an article of faith that no man can be saved out of their church, and all other religious sects approach this dreadful opinion in proportion to their ignorance, and the influence of ignorant or wicked priests.
The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.
Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.
The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country.
The way to secure Liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them a power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, their duties and obligations.
Independence forever!
Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination.
There is a danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make good use of it! If you do not, I shall repent it in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it!
That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world.
I am persuaded there is among the mass of our people a fund of wisdom, integrity, and humanity which will preserve their happiness in a tolerable measure.
May our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.
Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.
Civil liberty can be established on no foundation of human reason which will not at the same time demonstrate the right to religious freedom.
The Dilbert Principle: People are idiots.
Faith is the continuation of reason.
Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.
For as it is the chief concern of wise men to retrench the evils of life by the reasonings of philosophy; it is the employment of fools to multiply them by the sentiments of superstition.
To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.
It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of others.
Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.
Arguments out of a petty mouth are unanswerable.
There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.
Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body.
What a pity is it that we can die but once to save our country!
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
A thick skin is a gift from God.
It is always easier to fight for one1s principles than to live up to them.
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, for the truth.
If ever we hear of a case of lying, we must look for a severe parent. A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.
To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development.
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
It is always in season for old men to learn.
He hears but half who hears one party only.
Wrong must not win by technicalities.
It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.
Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.
Better to die once than to live in continual terror.
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scales.
The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.
I cannot afford to waste my time making money.
Every great scientific truth goes through three states: First, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it.
Even the gods cannot change history.
In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again.
Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when a man has only one idea.
Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill.
Better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait till it begins to abolish itself from below.
Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.
Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
I'm the greatest.
Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.
The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
Conservatism, I believe, is mainly due to want of imagination. In saying this, I do not for a moment mean to deny the other and equally obvious truth that Conservatism, in a lump, is a euphemism for selfishness.
Clearly to realise the condition of the unfortunate is the beginning of philanthropy. Clearly to realise the rights of others is the beginning of justice. "Put yourself in his place" strikes the keynote of ethics. Stupid people can only see their own side to a question: they cannot even imagine any other side possible. So, as a rule, stupid people are Conservative.
California is a fine place to live--if you happen to be an orange.
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.
Committee--a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.
A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half.
Men will take almost any kind of criticism except the observation that they have no sense of humor.
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.
Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on the weekends.
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.
More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.
I don1t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
All men are mortals. Socrates was a mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates.
It is human nature that rules the world, not governments and regimes.
The more I know about men, the more I like dogs.
After all, what's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.
Let a woman show deference, not being a slave to her husband; let her show she is ready to be guided, not coerced.
Adam was deceived by Eve, not Eve by Adam. It is right that he whom that woman induced to sin should assume the role of guide lest he fall again through feminine instability.
If you are at Rome live in the Roman style; if you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.
A government by the passions of the multitude, or, no less correctly, according to the vices and ambitions of their leaders, is a democracy. We have heard so long of the indefeasible sovereignty of the people, and have admitted so many specious theories of the rights of man, which are contradicted by his nature and experience, that few will dread at all, and fewer still will dread as they ought, the evils of an American democracy.
Liberty has never yet lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism. With the change of our government, our manners and sentiments will change.
A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.
Man defends himself as much as he can against truth, as a child does against a medicine, as the man of the Platonic cave did against the light. He does not willingly follow his path, but has to be dragged along backward.
A lively, disinterested, persistent liking for truth is extraordinarily rare. Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism and doubt.
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be outraged by silence.
A belief is not true because it is useful.
Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious, if it injures the conscience it is criminal.
Wise men argue causes, and fools decide them.
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will like them only entangle and hold the poor and the weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
It is good to die before one has done anything deserving of death.
What's wrong with this egotism? If a man doesn't delight in himself and the force in him and feel that he and it are wonders, how is all life to become important to him?
One of the things a man has to learn to fight most bitterly is the influence of those who love him.
It may be life is only worthwhile at moments. Perhaps that is all we ought to expect.
If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough.
The nearer the church, the further from God.
God is on everyone's side. And, in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies.
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this too I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand.
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.
Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.
Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work.
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation.
Woman must not depend on the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.
I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason.
The light of faith makes us see what we believe.
Give me a place to stand and I will move the world.
Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
It is well known that the most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.
Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival.
Absence of thought is indeed a powerful factor in human affairs--statistically speaking the most powerful.
No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.
We soon believe the things we would believe.
Thou shouldst not decide until thou hast heard what both have to say.
It is the mark of an educated man to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
A true friend is one soul in two bodies.
There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.
Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unalterable.
Good laws if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government.
The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class.
When quarrels and complaints arise, it is when people who are equal have not got equal shares, or vice versa.
Anybody can cut prices, but it takes brains to produce a better article.
That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
The worst bankrupt is the person who has lost his enthusiasm.
Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man, taken by himself.
The free thinking on one age is the common sense of the next.
Aristocracy as a predominant element in a government, whether it be aristocracy of skin, of race, of wealth, of nobility, or of priesthood, has been to my mind the greatest source of evil throughout the world, because it has been the most enduring.
If we heed the teachings of history we shall not forget that in the life of every nation emergencies may arise when a resort to arms can alone save it from dishonor.
We are going to have to decide what kind of people we are--whether we obey the law only when we approve of it or whether we obey it no matter how distateful we may find it.
Whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be worse.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
In public politics as in private life, character is better than brains, and loyalty more valuable than either; but I shall have to work with the material that has been given to me.
One reason why I don't drink is because I wish to know when I'm having a good time.
I married beneath me, all women do.
The penalty of success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you.
I can conceive of nothing worse than a man-governed world--except a woman-governed world.
A nation which makes the final sacrifice for life and freedom does not get beaten.
If the world goes against truth, then Athanasius goes against the world.
After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
In every age "the good old days" were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age seems to have consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital and labour. As matters stand, their only common interest is that of cutting each other's throat.
We need supermen to rule us--the job is so vast and the need for wise judgment is so urgent. But, alas, there are no supermen.
Bureacracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureacracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy.
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
I should be a sad subject for any publicity expert. I have none of the qualities which create publicity.
I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.
Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.
I believe that the foundation of democratic liberty is a willingness to believe that other people may perhaps be wiser than oneself.
Since people will never cease trying to interfere with the liberties of others in pursuing their own, the State can never wither away.
No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing.
We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
What will people say--in these words lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. These four words hold sway everywhere.
There is no salvation outside the church.
Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.
Justice is that virtue that assigns to every man his due.
Whenever you fall, pick up something.
If you are flattering a woman, it pays to be a little more subtle. You don't have to bother with men, they believe any compliment automatically.
No moral system can rest solely on authority.
It seems that I have spent my entire time trying to make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort.
Every man has it in his power to make one woman happy by remaining a bachelor.
