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� 2000 E-mail me
It's the orders you disobey that make you famous.
There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity.
In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory.
A warlike spirit, which alone can create and civilize a state, is absolutely essential to national defense and to national perpetuity.
Even death itself may become a boon when a man dies that a nation may live and fulfill its destiny.
No war ought ever to be undertaken but under circumstances which render all interchange of courtesy between the combatants impossible.
The gallery in which the reporters sit has become the Fourth Estate of the realm.
What are the laws but the expressions of the opinion of some class which has power over the rest of the community? By what was the world ever governed but by the opinion of some person or persons? By what else can it ever be governed?
The business of government is not directly to make the people rich, but to protect them in making themselves rich; and a government which attempts more than this is precisely the government which is likely to perform less. Governments do not and cannot support the people.
We hear war called murder. It is not: it is suicide.
Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
The fact is that a man who wants to act virtously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.
War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute.
It is much more safe to be feared than to be loved, when you have to choose between the two.
And, above all things, refrain from taking people's property, for men will sooner forget the death of their fathers than the loss of their patrimony.
Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have a mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities.
Politics has no relation to morals.
When men are well governed, they neither seek nor desire any other liberty.
The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they're too old to do it.
There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.
Human freedom can never be achieved because human freedom is a continuously evolving condition.
After a long experience of politics I have never found that there is any inhibition caused by ignorance as regards criticism.
Inequality is the inevitable consequence of liberty.
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential in political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.
If I were God, I would have mercy on men.
The fear of death is the source of all religions.
The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore.
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.
There is no place in communism for anyone who first of all wants to be himself, in short, to exist separately from the rest.
Putting your best foot forward at least keeps it out of your mouth.
Deliver more than you are getting paid to do. The victory of success will be half won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected in all that you do. Make yourself so valuable in your work that eventually you will become indispensable.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
Education, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men.
A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own.
Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.
Every communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.
Many people are afraid of freedom. They are conditioned to be afraid of it.
The liberation of man depends neither on God nor on the nonexistence of God. It is not the idea of God which has been an obstacle to human liberation, but the use that has been made of the idea of God.
Let the revolting distinction of rich and poor disappear, once and for all, the distinction of great and small, of masters and valets, of governors and governed. Let there be no difference between human beings other than those of age and sex. Since all have the same needs and the same faculties, let there be one education for all, one food for all.
Christianity taught men that love is worth more than intelligence.
Accurst be he that first invented war.
I count religion but a childish toy, and hold that there is no sin but ignorance.
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?
An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe it.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
Ours is world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.
The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws and not of men.
The power to tax involves the power to destroy.
The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.
What this country needs is a really good 5-cent cigar.
Too late is tomorrow's life; live for today.
Men have no special right because they belong to one race or another: the word man defines all rights.
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
My favorite poem is the one that starts "Thirty days hath September" because it actually tells you something.
All I know is that I am not a Marxist.
The essence of the free press is the reliable, reasonable and moral nature of freedom. The character of the censored press is the nondescript confusion of tyranny.
A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of Communism.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
The ruling idea of each age have been the ideas of its ruling class.
In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar.
Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!
Government is, or ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration.
"Be yourself" is about the worst advice you can give some people.
That there is a Devil is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influence of the Devil.
Rules have no existence outside of individuals.
In England, justice is open to all--like the Ritz Hotel.
From the earliest times the old have rubbed it in to the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacraficed to expediency.
I forget who it was that recommended every men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.
It is not true that suffering enobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
The great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.
I cannot believe in a God that has neither honor nor common sense.
There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.
Since Christendom comprehends only a small part of the globe, should not everyone who believes in God be saved by his own religion?
Do you know what makes a man a genius? The ability to see the obvious.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important.
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.
There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing. A truth is something that everyone can be shown to know and to have known, as people say, all along.
Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.
Frustration is when the same snow that covers the ski slopes makes the roads to them impossible.
Integrity is one of several paths. It distinguishes itself from the others because it is the right path, and the only one upon which you will never get lost.
The ideals of yesterday are the truths of today.
Be aware that a halo has to fall only a few inches to be a noose.
Forget about civil rights. I'm talking about Black Power.
No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you will see why.
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.
The historians and archeologists will one day discover that the ads of our times are the richest and most faithful daily reflection that any society ever made of its entire range of activities.
America is the only country ever founded on the printed word.
If you wait all that happens is that you get older.
Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to be as mediocre as possible.
Don't be so humble--you are not that great.
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.
He who wishes to be benevolent will not be rich.
Men are the only animals that devote themselves day in and day out to make one another unhappy.
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
There are two kinds of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
It's hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.
No man ever quite believes in any other man.
If we assume that man actually resembles God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot, and a blunderer.
I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.
The whole Christian system, like every other similar system, goes to pieces upon the problem of evil. Its most adept theologians, attempting to reconcile the Heavenly Father of their theory with the dreadful agonies of man in His world, men can only retreat behind Chrysostom's despairing maxim, that "a comprehended God is no God."
Certainly religion must be granted to be one of the greatest inventions ever made on earth.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit, it is also opposed to all attempts at rational thinking.
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
It is only doubt that creates. It is only the minority that counts.
Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always toward permanence and against change. The progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face of its constant and bitter opposition.
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act even when it has worked.
I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask: "Mother, what was war?"
No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.
It is absurd to call him a God of justice and goodness, who inflicts evil indiscriminately on the good and the wicked, upon the innocent and the guilty.
I look to a time when brotherhood needs no publicity; to a time when a brotherhood award would be as ridiculous as an award for getting up in the morning.
I am prepared to sacrifice every so-called privilege I possess in order to have a few rights.
There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.
In political speculations "the tyranny of the majority" is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard.
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
It can do truth no service to blink the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teachings has been the work, not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected the Christian faith.
In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.
One single well-established fact, clearly irreconcilable with a doctrine, is sufficient to prove that it is false.
Was it for this I uttered prayers, and sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, that now, domestic as a plate, I should retire at half past eight?
My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--It gives a lovely light!
There is no God. But it does not matter. Man is enough.
We don't have to make the earth a paradise--it is one--we have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it.
The greatest miracle is the discovery that all is miraculous. And the nature of the miraculous is--utter simplicity.
That man who lives for self alone lives for the meanest mortal known.
I just broke up with someone and the last thing she said to me was, "You'll never find anyone like me again!" I'm thinking, "I should hope not! If I don't want you, why would I want someone like you?"
If we believe a thing to be bad, and if we have a right to prevent it, it is our duty to try to prevent it and to damn the consequences.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all liberties.
Democracy is hypocrisy without limitation.
Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.
A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.
Man's greatest weakness is his love for life.
Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one, and war is a part of God's world order. In it are developed the noblest virtues of man, courage and abnegation, dutifulness and self-sacrifice at the risk of life. Without war the world would sink to materialism.
The scientific attitude implies the postulate of objectivity--that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan; that there is no intention in the universe.
Evil is not inherent in nature, it is learned.
The evidence indicates that woman is, on the whole, biologically superior to man.
Nothing can be said in favor of tobacco.
The majority of people believe in incredible things which are absolutely false. The majority of people daily act in a manner prejudicial to their general well-being.
We find our energies are actually cramped when we are overanxious to succeed.
He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozen.
Even on the highest throne in the world, we are still sitting on our ass.
Anyone who does not feel sufficiently strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
That which I fear most is fear.
He who would teach men to die would at the same time teach them how to live.
The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.
Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in.
The greatest thing in the world for a man is to know how to be himself.
What kind of truth is this, which is true on one side of the mountain and false on the other?
O belief! How much you hinder us.
The most desirable laws are those that are rarest, simplest, and most general; and I even think that it would be better to have none at all than to have them in such numbers as we have.
Reason does nothing but go astray especially when it meddles with divine things.
There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
Women are not altogether in the wrong when they refuse the rules of life prescribed in the world, forsomuch as men have established them without their consent.
An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.
We are born to inquire into truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it.
Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry its progress, ignorance its end.
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.
He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear.
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
If triangles made a God, they would give him three sides.
As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit.
Commerce is the cure for the most destructive prejudices.
Peace is the natural effect of trade.
Men are extremely inclined to the passions of hope and fear; a religion, therefore, that has neither a heaven nor a hell could hardly please them.
Whatever alms may be given to a beggar in the street, this does not fulfill the state's obligation, which owes to every citizen an assured subsistence proper nourishment, suitable clothing, and a mode of life not incompatible with health.
It was because he was unhappy that God created the world.
The story of humanity, ever since Eve, is the story of the efforts made by woman to diminish man and make him suffer, so that he may become her equal.
Women are too infirmed to bear reality.
The best car safety device is a rearview mirror with a cop in it.
All reformers are bachelors.
A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.
I don't care how the poor live, my only regret is that they live at all.
A man always has two reasons for what he does--a good one, and the real one.
Centralize property in the hands of a few and the millions are under bondage to property--a bondage as absolute and deplorable as if their limbs were covered with manacles.
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
Those who would treat politics and morality apart will never understand the one or the other.
The most frightful idea that has ever corroded human nature--the idea of eternal punishment.
The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.
It is enough political economy for me to know that the idle rich class is rich and the working class is poor, and that the rich are rich because they rob the poor.
It has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labor is good in itself--a convenient belief to those who live on the labor of others.
If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There's far less competition.
Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.
The former (present) system will be abolished in the most rapid and thorough manner when the bases of its support - the beasts of property and their horde of adherents - are annihilated. The case stands thus: If the people do not crush them, they will crush people, drown the revolution in the blood of the noblest men, and rivet the chains of slavery more firmly than ever. The alternative is to kill or be killed. Therefore massacres of the people's enemies must be instituted. All free communities will enter into an offensive and defensive alliance while combat continues... The war cannot terminate until the enemy has been pursued to its last lurking place and totally destroyed.
The nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons. Their existence only adds to our perils because of the illusions which they have generated.
Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.
Power is evil; and everything that belongs to power belongs to the devil.
The orgasm has replaced the cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment.
Religion is always degraded or corrupted by worldly success.
The way to eliminate the unfit is to keep them from being born.
We should not only check degeneration--negatively--but further evolution, positively, by artificial insemination and work for the production of a nobler and nobler race of beings.
There was never a false God, nor was there ever really false religion, unless you call a child a false man.
He who knows only one religion knows none.
Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.
Man alone has created out of the constant threat of death a will-to-endure, and out of the desire for continuity and immortality in all their conceivable forms, a more meaningful kind of life, in which Man redeems the littleness of of individual men.
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.
I will not do that which my conscience tells me is wrong to gain the huzzahs of thousands or the daily praise of all the papers which come from the press; I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery that falsehood and malice can invent, or the credulity a deluded population can swallow.
Let justice be done, though the sky falls.
You have the God-given right to kick the government around. Don't hesitate to do so.
The masses have little time to think. And how incredible is the willingness of modern man to believe.
We become strong, I feel, when we have no friends upon whom to lean, or to look to for moral guidance.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
