Vladimir Nabokov
Ogden Nash
Gamel Abdul Nasser
George Jean Nathan
Martina Navratilova
Scott Nearing
Sergei Genadyevich Nechayev
Jawaharlal Nehru
John Henry Newman
Isaac Newton
Griff Niblack
Pierre Nicole
Reinhold Niebuhr
Martin Niemoeller
Friedrich Nietzsche
Leonard Nimoy
Aaron Nimzovich
Anais Nin
Richard Nixon
Kwame Nkrumah
Alfred Nobel
Max Nordau
Frank Norris
William Norris
� 1997 E-mail me
No free man needs a God.
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, and that's what parents were created for.
The genius of you Americans is that you never make any clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves that leave us scratching our heads wondering if we might have missed something.
A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as an ample reward.
To be thoroughly religious, one must, I believe, be sorely disappointed. One's faith in God increases as one's faith in the world decreases. The happier the man, the farther he is from God.
Patriotism, as I see it, is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.
Athletic sports, save in the case of young boys, are designed for idiots.
The moment of victory is much to short to live for that and nothing else.
During the whole period of written history, it is not the workers but the robbers who have been in control of the world.
The revolutionist despises and abhors the existing social ethic in all its manifestations and expressions. For him everything is moral which assists the triumph of revolution. Immoral and criminal is everything which stands in its way.
Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
Long experience has taught us that it is dangerous in the interest of truth to suppress opinions and ideas; it has further taught us that it is foolish to imagine that we can do so. It is far easier to meet an evil in the open and defeat it in fair combat in people's minds, than to drive it underground and have no hold on it or proper approach to it. Evil flourishes far more in the shadows than in the light of day.
I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized on this earth, capable of becoming true man, master of his fate and captain of his soul. To attain this I would put priests to work, also, and turn the temples into schools.
To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
There are but two ways, the way of Rome and the way of atheism.
I do not see the difference between avowing that there is no God, and implying that nothing definite can be known about Him.
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
If I have seen father it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
If you're yearning for the good old days, just turn off the air conditioning.
We need a reason for speaking. We need none for keeping silent.
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.
It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author--and that he did not learn it better.
He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.
Is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's blunders?
I preach not contentedness, but more power; not peace, but war; not virtue, but efficiency. The weak and defective shall perish; and they shall be given assistance.
Sympathy thwarts the law of development, of evolution, of the survival of the fittest. It preserves what is ripe for extinction.
Faith is not wanting to know what is true.
Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.
Woman was God's second mistake.
There are questions whose truth or untruth cannot be decided by men; all the supreme problems of value are beyond human reason.
There is no wrong in unequal rights: it lies in vain pretension to equal rights.
When a woman turns to scholarship there is usually something wrong with her sexually.
In individuals insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
To regard the rights of others as being inherent in them, and not as mere compromises for the benefit of the mass-unit, would be to enunciate a principle hostile to life itself.
There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.
Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of Man.
Whatever does not destroy me makes me stronger.
The miracle is this--the more we share, the more we have.
How can I lose to such an idiot?
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
What are our schools for if not indoctrination against communism?
If there is another war there will be no victors, only losers.
When a president does it then it's not illegal.
We prefer self-government with danger to servitude with tranquility.
I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea, but I am sceptical as to its results. The savants will write excellent volumes. There will be laureates. But wars will continue until the force of circumstances renders them impossible.
Perhaps my dynamite plants will put an end to war sooner than your congresses. On the day two army corps can annihilate each other in one second all civilized nations will recoil from war in horror.
Morality will conquer war, even as it has conquered human sacrifices, slavery, feuds, head-hunting and cannibalism.
The Jews are not hated because they have evil qualities; evil qualities are sought for them because they are hated.
The People have a right to truth as they have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We talk a lot about human rights, but I don't know of any human right that is more important than a job.
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