 Augustus didn't pave the way for Nero and other tyrants. Instead, he built an empire that would endure their coming.
Orson Scott Card
Shadow of the Giant
It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon the book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah.
Robert Ingersoll
Individuality, 1873
There is no better way to cultivate taste in words, than by constantly reading the best English. None of the words and expressions which are taboo in good society will be found in books of proved literary standing. But it must not be forgotten that there can be a vast difference between literary standing and popularity, and that many of the “best sellers” have no literary merit whatsoever.
Emily Post
Etiquette (1922) - http://www.bartleby.com/95/8.html
Freedom isn't free and someone must do what they must to preserve it.
Sgt. Donald R. Walters
Fallen Iraq war hero. From a personal letter - now inscribed on his memorial.
No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.
Richard Feynman
The Meaning of It All
Of all enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. [...] In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect may be traced in the inequality of fortunes and the opportunities of fraud growing out of a state of war ... and in the degeneracy of manners and morals engendered by both. [...] No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
James Madison
So Many Right Wing Christians, So Few Lions.
Unknown Author
Seen on a t-shirt
I'm a free market nut.
Tom DeLay
My beloved nation is filled with flaws, errors and outright stupidities, and I will always strive against those. But Ed, there is no equivalency between the flawed West, and the primitive tyrannies; it's not close, it’s not even in the same fucking ballpark. Stop providing the moral sanction that the low life cowards and anti-Americans of LewRockwell and others use. They are beneath contempt, and to treat them with anything other than total contempt, is a betrayal of the good.
George Cordero
To a Saddamite, 'Who's Better Off?' thread, April 11, 2005
I love you when you're not masterminding my downfall.
Anonymous
Of all places, some guy's T-shirt in a bar.
You lot, you spend all your time thinking about dying, like you're going to get killed by eggs, or beef, or global warming, or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible. Maybe you survive.
The Doctor
The End of the World (Doctor Who, Season 27, Episode 2)
“I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good Scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are overrated self-indulgent crap, that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe that there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.”
Kevin Costner
Crash (Kevin Costner) from Bull Durham
When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.
Vincent Van Gogh
No man deserves his freedom or his life who does not daily win them anew
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust
I love iconoclastic thinking. I love to be intellectually provoked, to have to rethink my assumptions on almost anything. One either strengthens old convictions, by seeing them survive attack, or modifies old convictions and 'grows.'
Joseph H. Friedman, M.D.
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Taking authorial responsibility for your post is a basic courtesy, so please sign each of your postings.I discourage the use of pseudonyms. Such a practice greatly reduces the value of a posting, and lowers the quality of the list as well. Being responsible for the words that you post is a basic tenet of communication.
Barbara Branden
Another web site
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, conquer all mysteries by rule and line, empty the haunted air, the gnomed mine.
John Keats
Lamia
When we got engaged, she told her friends: 'We're getting married and he's going to buy me a big house with a white picket fence and he's going to work and I'm not.' Ha! Dream on, hooker.
Rodney Carrington
Morning Wood
"Your daily life is your temple and your religion."
Kahil Gibran
All change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.
A. J. P. Taylor
Frank, Leonard Roy. Freedom. New York: Random House, 2003.
How can a rational being be ennobled by anything that is not obtained by its own exertions?
Mary Wollstonecraft
Frank, Leonard Roy. Freedom. New York: Random House, 2003.
It is appallingly obvious that our technology exceeds our humanity.
Albert Einstein
http://www.loveisearned.com/html/quotations.htm
Fools multiply folly.
Benjamin Franklin
Poor Richard's Almanac
Experience holds a dear school, but a fool will learn in no other.
Benjamin Franklin
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
When reason preaches, if you won't hear her she'll box your ears.
Benjamin Franklin
Poor Richard's Almanac, 1753
I was never opposed to the draft
Noam Chomsky
http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/entry/the_draft/
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
Ansel Adams
Vice knows she's ugly, so puts on her mask.
Benjamin Franklin
Poor Richard's Almanac, 1746
As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
William Blake
Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it sublime? Isn't it simple? I have solved the problem. Now I can die happy. But I must live, I must return to work and build the motor so I can give it to the world. No more will men be slaves to hard tasks. My motor will set them free, it will do the work of the world.
Nikola Tesla
Upon inventing the AC induction motor, February 1882
"My party is demonstrating that they are for states' rights unless they don't like what states are doing."
Christopher Shays, Republican Congressman
N.Y. Times
The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
Dante Alighieri
You see you can't please ev'ryone so you got to please yourself.
Ricky Nelson
Garden Party
I am only resolved to act in that manner which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.
Jane Austen
Lizzy to Lady Catherine in _Pride and Prejudice_
If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
Confucius
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/14176.html
The mind cannot for long play the role of the heart.
La Rochefoucauld
Maxims
If we resist our passions, it is more through their weakness than through our strength
La Rochefoucauld
Maxims
When words lose their meaning, people lose their liberty.
Confucius
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
Johann Sebastian Bach
"Now I answer you, I answer you on behalf of myself, and my countrymen. I dont care what your news tells you, what your television and newspapers say, this is how we feel. Despite all that has happened. Despite all the hurt, the pain, blood, sweat and tears. These two years have given us hope we never had."
Husayn Uthman
http://www.coxandforkum.com/
Fortunately, Solo is not respectable.
Barbara Branden
On Writing forum thread - Post 7
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall."
Thomas Paine
Remember this: one can be a strict logician or grammarian and at the same time full of imagination and music.
Hermann Hesse
The Glass Bead Game
Truly this world is unfair, as it so obviously favors those who are well-groomed and of pleasant demeanor!
Kyle Baker
Plastic Man 15, May, 2005
If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.
Michelangelo
If you had the luck of the Irish, you'd be sorry and wish you were dead... If you had the luck of the Irish, you would wish you were English instead
John Lennon
Happy St. Patricks Day
Give me the storm and stress of thought and action rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you will but first let me eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
Robert Ingersoll
"The Lord works in mysterious ways."
Kallin
Waukesha (Wisconsin) County supervisor Andrew Kallin after a shooting rampage at a local church left seven dead.
I know that many will call this useless work; and they will be those of whom Demetrius declared that he took no more account of the wind that came out their mouth in words, than of that they expelled from their lower parts: men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that wisdom, which is the food and the only true riches of the mind. For so much more worthy as the soul is than the body, so much more noble are the possessions of the soul than those of the body. And often, when I see one of these men take this work in his hand, I wonder that he does not put it to his nose, like a monkey, or ask me if it something good to eat.
Da Vinci Leonardo
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