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Alphabetical by Author
on this page: A • B • C • Quotation Links
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Proverbs & Anonymous • Laws of Life
Working Minds Homepage
free monthly 'WMail' Philosophy Newsletter [2000-2007]
Index of All Issues
After WMail Issue #72 in October 2007, essays & quotations & news are being posted to the
Dateline Chamesa weblog
Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey [1927-89]
Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe [1930-2013]
Lord Acton [1834-1902]
columnist Cecil Adams
Douglas Adams [1952-2001]
Franklin P. Adams [1881-1960]
Henry Adams [1838-1918]
Joey Adams [1911-99]
John Adams [1735-1826] Samuel Adams [1722-1803]
cartoonist Scott Adams
activist Jane Addams [1860-1935]
Konrad Adenauer [1876-1967]
Alfred Adler [1870-1937]
Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]
Richard P. Adler
Aeschylus [c. 525-c. 456 B.C.E.]
Aesop [600 B.C.E.]
James Agee [1909-55]
artist Ai Weiwei
Howard Aiken [1900-73]
novelist Catherine Aird
playwright Edward Albee
Madeleine Albright
Muhammad Ali
Fred Allen [1894-1956]
comedian Marty Allen
entertainer Steve Allen [1921-2000]
Woody Allen
Eric Alterman
Italian journalist Corrado Alvaro [1895-1956]
Stephen E. Ambrose [1936-2002]
Baba Amte of India
New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya
baseball manager George 'Sparky' Anderson [1934-2010]
Glenn Anderson
minimalist sculptor Carl Andre
Dale Andreatti
racecar driver Mario Andretti
Dr. Maya Angelou
Jean Anouilh [1910-87]
Carol Anshaw
Thomas Aquinas [circa 1225-1274]
Joni Arends, anti-nuclear activist
Hannah Arendt [1906-75]
Italian satirist Pietro Aretino [1492-1556]
Aristides the Just [530-468 BCE]
Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
Raymond Aron
Robert G. Arthur of Kings Park, NY
Mary Kay Wagner Ash [1918-2001], founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics
Isaac Asimov [1920-92]
Gordon Atkinson
Margaret Atwood
W.H. Auden [1907-1973]
Michel Audiard [1920-85]
Berthold Auerbach [1812-82]
Augustine of Hippo [354-430 C.E.]
Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]
Jane Austen [1775-1817]
novelist Paul Auster
A.J. Ayer [1910-89]
Lauren Bacall
Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]
Hollywood columnist James Bacon [1914-2010]
singer-songwriter Joan Baez
journalist Walter Bagehot [1826-77]
attorney  F. Lee Bailey
Peter C. Baker
David Baldacci
James Baldwin [1924-87]
Natylie Baldwin
Lucille Ball [1911-89]
Bill Balsamico
David Baltimore, Nobel Prize winner & president of Cal Tech
Tallulah Bankhead [1902-68]
Dr. Judith M. Bardwick
Deanne Barkley
British author Julian Barnes
Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh
P.T. Barnum [1810-91]
comedian Roseanne Barr
J.M. Barrie [1860-1937]
Dave Barry
John Barrymore [1882-1942]
C. Barsotti
theologian Karl Barth [1886-1968]
financier Bernard Baruch [1870-1965]
poet Matsuo Basho [1644-94]
Frédéric Bastiat [1801-50]
economist Dr. Ravi Batra
Orlando A. Battista [1917-95]
Charles-Pierre Baudelaire [1821-67]
Ron Bauer of Northridge, California
L. Frank Baum [1856-1919]
Emily Bazelon
historian Charles Austin Beard [1874-1948]
Warren Beatty
Samuel Beckett [1906-89]
Henry Ward Beecher [1813-87]
Max Beerbohm [1872-1956]
Peter Beinart
Ted Bell
Hilaire Belloc [1870-1953]
Saul Bellow [1915-2005]
David Ben-Gurion [1886-1973]
Robert Benchley [1889-1945]
Texas Bix Bender Walter Benjamin [1892-1940]
William J. Bennett
Noah benShea
Sally Berger, Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Thomas Berger
Henri Bergson [1859-1941]
Shelley Berkley, running in 2012 for U.S. Senate from Nevada
Milton Berle [1908-2002]
composer  Irving Berlin  [1888-1989]
South African activist Hilda Bernstein [1915-2006]
William Bernstein
baseball great Yogi Berra [b. 1925]
Wendell Berry
Peter Berryman
Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune [1875-1955]
Yogi Bhajan [1929-2004]
Ambrose Bierce [1842-1914]
Earl Derr Biggers [1884-1933], creator of detective Charlie Chan
Josh Billings [1818-85]
Norman Birnbaum
journalist Jim Bishop [1907-87]
Chris Bittler
cowboy poet & columnist Baxter Black
Hugo Black [1886-1971] Terry Black
John Stuart Blackie [1809-95]
William Blackstone [1809–81]
U.K. politician Tony Blair
jazz musician Eubie Blake [1883-1983]
Wm. Blake [1757–1827]
author Robert Bloch [1917-94]
Adele Block-Bauer [1881-1925]
Allan Bloom [1930-92]
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
Judy Blume
Ivan Boesky, Wall Street arbitrageur
physicist David Bohm [1917-92]
physicist Niels Bohr [1885-1962]
Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University
Roberto Bolaño [1953-2003]
Simón Bolívar [1783-1830]
Erma Bombeck [1927-96]
Napoleon Bonaparte [1769-1821]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer [1906-45]
Daniel Boone [1734-1820]
comedian Elayne Boosler
James H. Boren [1925-2010]
entertainer Victor Borge [1909-2000]
Jorge Luis Borges [1899-1986]
Paul Bowles [1910-99]
U.S.A.F. LtCol. Robert Bowman
columnist L.M. Boyd [1927-2007]
movie director Danny Boyle
sci-fi author & poet Ray Bradbury [1920-2012]
football player & announcer Terry Bradshaw
British folksinger-activist Billy Bragg
John Bramhall [1594-1663]
David Brancaccio of P.B.S. News
Western author Max Brand [1892-1944]
Stewart Brand
Louis Brandeis [1856-1941] Joseph M. Branom of Oro Valley, Arizona
Cubist painter Georges Braque [1882-1963]
Judge Jacob Braude of Illinois
Robert Brault
poet Richard Brautigan [1935-84]
Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956]
activist Barbara A. Brenner
French filmmaker Robert Bresson [1901-99]
Ashleigh Brilliant
chef Sean Brock of Charleston, South Carolina
Tom Brokaw
Jacob Bronowski [1908-74]
Charlotte Brontë [1816-55]
David Brooks, New York Times columnist
James L. Brooks
Mel Brooks
historian Van Wyck Brooks [1886-1963]
Heywood Broun [1888-1939]
Edmund G. 'Pat' Brown [1905-96] Eryn Brown
Helen Gurley Brown [1922-2012]
English poet Robert Browning [1812-89]
Lenny Bruce [1925-66]
William Jennings Bryan [1860-1925]
John Bryant [1943-2009]
Martin Buber [1878-1965]
mystery author Edna Buchanan
Jerry Buck of Sherman Oaks, California
entertainer Lord Buckley [1906-60]
capitalist Warren E. Buffett
Vincent Bugliosi
writer Charles Bukowski [1920-94]
actress Sandra Bullock
Edward Bulwer-Lytton [1803-73]
blogger David Burge
Warren Burger [1907-95] Anthony Burgess [1917-93]
actress Billie Burke [1884-1970]
Edmund Burke [1729-97]
mystery author James Lee Burke
Frances Hodgson Burnett [1829-1924]
Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham [1846-1912]
George Burns [1896-1996]
William S. Burroughs [1914-97]
George H.W. Bush George Dubya Bush Samuel Butler [1835-1902]
Gen. Smedley D. Butler [1881-1940]
chess champion Robert Byrne
George Gordon, Lord Byron [1788-1824]
James Branch Cabell [1879-1958]
Julius Caesar [100-44 B.C.E.]
John C. Calhoun [1782-1850]
Carol Cail
movie producer John Calley
Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara [1909-99]
Julia Cameron
Joseph Campbell [1904-87]
Albert Camus [1913-1960]
sportswriter Jimmy Cannon [1909-73]
battlefield photographer Robert Capa [1913-54]
Al Capone [1899-1947]
Truman Capote [1924-84]
cartoonist Al Capp [1909-79]
Frank Capra [1897-1991]
George Carlin [1937-2008]
Thomas Carlyle [1795-1881]
Andrew Carnegie [1835-1919]
Dale Carnegie [1888-1965]
Robert Caro
independent filmmaker John Carpenter
John Dickson Carr [1906-77]
Johnny Carson [1925-2005]
Rachel Carson [1907-64]
David O. Carter
Graydon Carter
Matt Cartmill, PhD
George Washington Carver  [1864-1943]
James Carville
cellist Pablo Casals  [1876-1973]
economist Douglas Casey
Neal Cassady  [1926-68]
John Cassavetes [1929-89]
John Cassidy
Carlos Castañeda  [1925-98]
Willa Cather  [1873-1947]
Cato the Elder [234-149 B.C.E.]
Dick Cavett
Louis-Ferdinand Céline [1894-1961]
Nicolas Chamfort  [1741-94]
Charlie Chan character, written by Earl Derr Biggers [1884-1933]
Raymond Chandler  [1888-1959]
Coco Chanel [1883-1971]
Sir Charles Chaplin  [1889-1977]
Ralph Charell
labor leader Cesar E. Chavez  [1927-93]
John Cheever [1912-82]
Anton Chekhov [1860-1904]
traitor Dick Cheney, U.S. Vice President 2001-2009
G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
Laura Chick
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Tribe [1840-1904]
Julia Child [1912-2004]
Jerry Chin
Peter Chippindale
Shirley Chisolm [1924-2005]
Carina Chocano
Kamo-no Chomei [1155-1216]
philosopher-activist Noam Chomsky
Dame Agatha Christie  [1890-1976]
automaker Walter P. Chrysler  [1875-1940]
Chuang-Tzu [circa IVth Century B.C.E.]
Walston Chubb
Sir Winston Churchill  [1874-1965]
Michael Chute of the Second Maine Militia
Marcus Tullius Cicero [106 B.C.E. – 43 B.C.E.]
Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran [1911-95]
writer & cartoonist Frank A. Clark [1911-91]
Keri Clark
author-visionary Arthur C. Clarke [1917-2008]
Frank Clarke
Eldridge Cleaver [1935-98]
Grover Cleveland [1837-1908] Catherine Clinch
Bill Clinton Kate Clinton
Irvin S. Cobb [1896-1944]
William Cobbett
mystery author Margaret Coel
Brasilian author Paulo Coelho
singer-songwriter  Leonard Cohen
filmmaker [Ms] Maxi Cohen of Venice, California
Hollywood mogul Harry Cohn [1891-1958]
Sir Edward Coke [1552-1634]
Jean Baptiste Colbert [1619-83]
Samuel T. Coleridge [1772-1834]
Colette [1873-1954]
John Churton Collins [1848-1908]
Michael Collins
Henry Steele Commager [1902-98]
Chinese philosopher Confucius [551-479 B.C.E.]
Darby Conley (draws the "Get Fuzzy" comic strip)
mystery author Michael Connelly
Ruth Conniff
Cyril Connolly [1903-74]
Richard Connolly
Joseph Conrad [1857-1924]
editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad [1924-2010]
mystery author K.C. Constantine
Dave Contarino, manager of Bill Richardson's 2008 presidential campaign
sports announcer Dan Cook {not Yogi Berra}
(John) Calvin Coolidge [1872-1933] columnist Marc Cooper
Francis Ford Coppola
Richard Corliss, film critic at Time Magazine
beat poet Gregory Corso [1930-2001]
entertainer Bill Cosby
Kevin Costner
Ann 'The Man' Coulter
Jeffrey Courion
writer-activist Norman Cousins [1915-90]
Jacques Cousteau [1910-97]
Noël Coward [1899-1973]
Robert Crais
cartoonist Brian Crane
William Crawford
Lakota Sioux war leader Crazy Horse [c. 1840-1877]
Rudy Crew
Michael Crichton [1942-2008]
Francis H.C. Crick [1916-2004]
Quentin Crisp [1908-99]
A.J. Cronin [1896-1981]
Walter Cronkite [1916-2009]
Aleister Crowley [1875-1947]
James Crumley [1939-2008]
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
American poet e.e. cummings [1894-1962]
Will Cuppy [1884-1949]
physicist Marie Curie [1867-1934]
movie director Michael Curtiz [1886-1962]
actress Charlotte Cushman
Edward Abbey Quotations Page at Working Minds
Edward Abbey Page at 'Readers of The Purple Sage' Western Bookstore
“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the
human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.”  {blog 5/2013}
• • “And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters
get control. History has proven that. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are
almost always bad men.”  – full text of the famous 'Dictum of Lord Acton'  [blog 10/2007}
• • “The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is
the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “Liberty is not the means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”  {blog 8/2009}
“The second law of thermodynamics, simply put, is as follows: left to themselves, things tend
to go to hell in a handbasket.”  {blog 6/2012}
“If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.”  {blog 4/2013}
• • “The best you get is an even break.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Nothing is more responsible for 'the good old days' than a bad memory.”  {blog 4/2012}
“Chaos is the law of nature. Order is the dream of man.”  {blog 3/2013}
“A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.”  {blog 1/2008}
second President of the United States, 1797-1801
• • “The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance
to the public than all the property of the rich men in the country.”  {Issue #36}
• • “This is a revolution, dammit, we're going to have to offend somebody.”
(during debates on the Declaration of Independence, 1776)  {Issues #48 & #58}
• • “Power always thinks [that] it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak,
and that it is doing God’s will when it is violating all His laws.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.”  {blog 8/2009}
• • “All the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arise, not from defects in the
Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright
ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless
minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds.”  {Issue #39}
• • “It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority,
who keep on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”  {Issue #71}
• • “Experience is just another word for losing hope.” (in "Dilbert" Sunday strip, 2009)  {blog 11/2009}
• • “They can't break you if you don't have a spine.”  {blog 6/2012}
“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good [that] we often might win,
by fearing to attempt.”  {blog 10/2011}
“History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided.”  {blog 9/2012}
“It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.”  {blog 2/2011}
“In the case of good books, the point is not how many you can get thru, but rather how many can get thru to you.”  {blog 10/2012}
“All television is children's television.”  {blog 6/2012}
“It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.”  {blog 12/2008}
“We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office.”  {Issue #36}
“The elementary beginning of true reason . . . resides in the ability to recognize oneself, and others, primarily
as human beings, and to recognize the ultimate absoluteness of responsibility of each human being.”  {Issue #62}
“To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is a reason.”  {blog 7/2012}
“Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”   {blog 5/2010}
“If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back
a short distance correctly.” (in "Zoo Story", 1958)  {blog 9/2011}
• • “Our reality is determined by our usefulness.” in 1978  {blog 4/2012}
• • “All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist.
I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time.”  {blog 5/2013}
“Anyone who thinks [that] the world would be a better place if it were run by women doesn't remember high school.”  {blog 12/2012}
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing,
but together can decide that nothing can be done.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Man has made his bedlam; let him lie in it.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “She used to be a schoolteacher, but she has no class now.”  {blog 6/2012}
“A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything was last year.”  {blog 5/2012}
“In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society
we insist [that] they be cheerleaders.”  {blog 8/2011}
• • “If my films don't show a profit, I know I'm doing something right.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “If my films make one more person miserable, I'll feel I have done my job.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “Confidence is what you have until you understand the problem.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “Show business is not so much 'dog eat dog' as 'dog doesn't return other dogs' phone calls'.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “The people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can't.”  {blog 11/2012}
• • “If it weren't for problems, the work day would be over by 10 a.m.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “With [George W.] Bush, we're left with the perennial unanswerable question:
dishonest, moronic, or both?”  {Issue #47}
• • “The real opposition to this administration is normative reality and the U.S. Constitution.”  {Issue #61}
• • “The problem with Fox [News] is not that it's conservative. It's that it lies.”  {blog 7/2011}
“The blackest despair that can take hold of any society is the fear that
living honestly is futile.”  {blog 10/2011}
“God created man with a penis and a brain, but only gave him enough blood to run
one at a time.”   {blog 7/2011}
“Victory is his who even in defeat never surrenders, and so victory will be the people's.”  {Issue #62}
• • “The battle of good and evil is always for the soul.”  {Issue #21}
• • “Man does not live on enchiladas alone.” (in "Zia Summer")  {blog 11/2007}
• • “I've got my faults, but living in the past isn't one of them. There's no future in it.”  {blog 11/2010}
• • “Losing hurts twice as bad as winning feels good.”  {blog 12/2010}
“The actor first feels, then thinks, then responds.”  {Issue #70}
• • “Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “Capitalism must be holy because religion is a business.”  {blog 12/2011}
“The optimist thinks [that] the glass is half full. The pessimist thinks [that] the glass is half empty.
The engineer knows the real truth: that the glass is twice as large as it should be for optimum
utilization of resources.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “If everything's under control, you're going too slow.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Everything comes to those who wait . . . except a cat.”  {blog 4/2013}
• • “A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because
it has a song.”  {Issue #43}
• • “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage
doesn't need to be lived again.”  {blog 6/2011}
• • “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”  {blog 10/2011}
• • “You want me to do something? Tell me [that] I can't do it.”  {blog 4/2012}
• • “I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.”  {blog 10/2012}
• • “Don't underestimate your vote. Voting is the great equalizer.”  {blog 11/2012}
• • “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination, full of hope.”  {blog 1/2013}
“One cannot weep for the entire world. It is beyond human strength. One must choose.”
in the stageplay "Cecile" (1954)  {blog 9/2009}
“Taking on a pet is a contract with sorrow.”  {blog 5/2013}
“There can be no joy of life without joy of work.”  {Issue #19}
“The devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was catastrophic. But we have to realize that
the United States bombed New Mexico first.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “Few girls are as well-shaped as a good horse.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them.”  {blog 4/2013}
“Temples are to be dedicated to the gods, and books to good men.”  {Issue #55 & blog 1/2013}
• • “The poet should prefer probable impossibilities to
improbable possibilities.”  {Issue #42}
• • “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind are convinced
that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”  {Issue #48}
• • “The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”  {blog 6/2008}
• • “All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “The gods too are fond of a joke.”  {blog 3/2010}
• • “Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae (To know what to ask is already to know half)”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Melancholy men are of all others most witty.”  {blog 7/2010}
• • “We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”  {blog 8/2011}
• • “Virtue is necessary for the good life but not sufficient for the good life.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “Money is necessary for the good life but not sufficient for the good life.”
{mis-attributed to Aristotle}  {blog 12/2011}
• • “There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man.”  {blog 6/2012}
“[Politics] is never a struggle between good and evil, but between the preferable
and the detestable.”  {Issue #56}
“As a high school English teacher, I can testify that ,,, [television] is so poisonous and hypnotic
that the disease of illiteracy is rampant.” (circa 1984)  {blog 9/2008}
“Stop spending dollar time on penny jobs.”  {Issue #51}
• • “Ignorance must be battled.”  {Issue #33}
• • “The creationists' ... case is so weak that the only way [that] they can feel sure of maintaining it
is to make sure their victims never hear of anything else.”  {Issue #53}
• • “Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed
and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”  {Issue #62}
• • “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' (I found it) - but 'That's funny . . .'.”  {Issue #66}
• • “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”  {blog 7/2008}
• • “Every stick points in two directions, one opposed to the other.” {attributed}  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “There is an art to science, and science in art; the two are not enemies,
but different aspects of the whole.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul,
if not quite inventions of the devil - but there is no way around them.”  {blog 2/2012}
• • “Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket.”  {blog 6/2012}
“Love is something you do, not something you feel.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Wanting to meet an author because you like his books is like wanting to meet a duck
because you like pâté.”   {blog 12/2011}
• • “A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there is less of you.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “Knowledge may have its purposes, but guessing is always more fun than knowing.”  {blog 8/2012}
“An idiot will try anything. That is how you know [that] he is an idiot.”  {blog 5/2012}
“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”  {blog 4/2012}
“Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would.
The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.”  {Issue #46}
• • “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself
in the ranks of the insane.”  {Issue #65}
• • “The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.”  {blog 11/2007}
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness.”  {blog 11/2008}
“The real is always way ahead of what we can imagine.”  {blog 1/2013}
“All utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical.”  {blog 9/2008}
“Time flies even when you're not having fun.”  {Issue #59}
• • “Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, a sense of humor
to console him for what he is.”   {blog 7/2010}
• • “Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, adversity not without many
comforts and hopes.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.”  {blog 12/2012}
“I don't believe in the tooth fairy, although I once had a dentist [that] I wasn't too sure of.”  {blog 9/2012}
“Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” (in 1853)  {blog 2/2008}
• • “One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.”  {blog 5/2013}
“Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today?
It wouldn't even get out of committee.”  {blog 4/2010}
“Corrupt political thought creates and is furthered by sloppy language.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “Without risk there is no possibility for glory.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Every soldier who ever died was innocent.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  {Issue #62}
• • “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy [that] justice can have.”  {blog 4/2013}
• • “The word 'capitalism' does not appear at all in Adam Smith's 1776 ground-breaking
900-page Wealth of Nations.”  {Issue #62}
• • “Marketing – the process by which capitalists constantly work to convince people of the need or desire for [the glut of pointless items made
available and sold to the public every day] – accounts for the majority of waste in terms of labor, materials and money.”  {Issue #62}
“The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”   {blog 4/2009}
“At the current rate of legal and illegal aliens entering this country, August 2013 will be
designated White History Month.”  {Issue #60}
“We need a revolution in this country when it comes to parenting around education.”  {Issue #53}
• • “Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.”  {Issue #59}
• • “It is the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time.”  {blog 9/2008}
“Even when people are more successful than they had imagined, nothing is ever achieved
without giving something up.”   {blog 5/2010}
“Writing is the only job [that] you don't have to be hired to do.”  {Issue #70}
• • “History isn't what happened. History is just what historians tell us.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “The more [that] you learn, the less [that] you fear.”  {blog 6/2012}
“The balance of power has shifted in recent years from territorially-bound governments to
companies that can roam the world.” in the book "Global Dreams" (1994)  {blog 11/2009}
“Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
{ see also H.L. Mencken [1880-1956] }  {blog 1/2010}
“It's okay to be fat. So you're fat. Just be fat and shut up about it.”  {blog 4/2009}
“God gave us memories that we might have roses in December.”  {blog 11/2011}
• • “Congress, after years of stalling, finally got around to clearing the way for informal discussions
that might lead to possible formal talks that could potentially produce some kind of
tentative agreements . . .”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share
yours with them.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “Hobbies of any kind are boring, except to people who have the same hobby.”  {blog 9/2012}
“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”  {Issue #45}
“I have everything tied up in making ends meet.”
(cartoon in The New Yorker Magazine)  {Issue #37}
“Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.”  {blog 10/2011}
“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old;
seek what they sought.”  {Issue #42}
• • “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors
to live at the expense of everybody else.”  {Issue #43}
• • “The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked,
but to be ineptly defended.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society,
they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a
moral code that glorifies it.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense
of everybody else.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “Supply-side economics is a bogus system.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “Courage is the main quality of the Warrior Mind.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “The bigger the goal, the bigger the obstacle. The bigger the obstacle, the bigger the achievement.
So blame the failure not on obstacles but on the absence of relentless effort.”  {blog 5/2010}
“An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “Always be a poet, even in prose.”  {Issue #52}
• • “Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will.”  {Issue #66}
• • “What's irritating about love is [that] it's a crime that requires an accomplice.”  {blog 3/2013}
“Whether it's the war in Iraq, the environment, or the economy, the Bush
administration never lets truth get in its way.” (2004)  {Issue #47}
“It's no fun being a century ahead of the times.”  {blog 6/2009}
“The world is too big for effective governance.”  {Issue #50}
“One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.”  {Issue #67}
“I was friends with President Ronald Reagan and he once said to me, 'I don't know how
anybody can serve in public office without being an actor'.”   {blog 1/2012}
• • “All writing is a sin against speechlesssness.”  {blog 8/2011}
• • “What is that unforgettable line?”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone
expects of you. Never excuse yourself.”  {Issue #37}
• • “The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts,
and would devour one another but for this protection.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will and the other
from a strong won't.”  {blog 10/2012}
• • “A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble in the road.”  {blog 11/2012}
“Most women are not so young as they are painted.”  {blog 9/2008}
“We live in the world as it is and dream of the world that might one day be and consider ourselves
fortunate to have reduced, even modestly, the distance between the two.”  {blog 8/2009}
“The only difference between science and science fiction is timing.”  {blog 5/2012}
• • “When I am dead I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet but his books were read.'”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of
Slavery; there is no third course.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “To be a writer one learns to live like one.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “For writers the most important question is simply, What is interesting?”  {blog 6/2010}
• • “The name of the game is not Social Security. What an error! Social Security is an entirely different
game. The name of the game is Give All.”  {blog 1/2011}
• • “Public virtue is a kind of ghost town into which anyone can move and declare himself sheriff.”  {blog 4/2013}
“In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.”  {blog 2/2008}
“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing.
But I couldn’t give it up because by then I was too famous.”  {blog 9/2008}
author of the book "Don't Squat With Yer Spurs On"
• • “Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “Don't let so much reality into your life that there's no room left for dreamin'.”  {blog 4/2010}
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception
but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly
realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the
struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents
treat it as a historical norm.”  (in 'On The Context of History' 1939)  {blog 10/2007}
“America's support for human rights and democracy
is our noblest export to the world.”  {Issue #27}
“The fist starves the hand.”  {blog 6/2012}
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”  {Issue #61}
“Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “There is no perception that is not full of memories.”  {blog 4/2012}
“We have something to fight for in this [election]: the future of the American middle class.”  {blog 8/2012}
“If evolution really works, how come mothers have only two hands?”  {blog 5/2012}
“Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it.”  {blog 6/2012}
“The meaning of life is a choice you make about the way [that] you live.”  {Issue #63}
“The stock broker services his clients in the same way that Bonnie & Clyde serviced banks.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “If you don't go to somebody's funeral, they won't come to yours.”  {Issue #55}
• • “The future ain't what it used to be.”  {blog 8/2009}
• • “Baseball is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical.”  {blog 8/2009}
• • “If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up someplace else.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Some things are just too coincidental to be a coincidence.”  {blog 5/2013}
• • “The gullibility of the public [has become] an economic resource.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “The human species . . . has outlived the name homo sapiens.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “This strange economy produces, in the ordinary course of business, products that are
destructive or fraudulent or unnecessary or useless, or all four at once.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “The most political act you can do is raise a child well.”  {blog 12/2012}
“The main quality that sets humans apart from other animals is the human desire to set itself apart
from other animals.”   {blog 6/2012}
“'Love thy neighbor' is a precept which could transform the world if it were universally practiced.”
{blog 5/2012}
“If you can't see God in all, you can't see God at all.”  {Issue #48}
• • “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “Finance is the art or science of managing revenues or resources for the best
advantage of the manager.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “Patience is a minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.”  {blog 11/2011}
• • “If one cannot do great work, it is worthwhile to do good work and think it great.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “In California, the subdivider, like the poor, is always with us.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “Persistence. That's the secret of a good detective.”  {blog 7/2008}
• • “Do not put off until tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.”  {Issue #51 & blog 3/2011}
• • “As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of demand.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.”  {blog 10/2011}
• • “Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadfully uneasy to take.”  {blog 12/2011}
“[Sociologist C. Wright] Mills is half forgotten – perhaps because much of what he said
is now taken for granted.”  {blog 5/2009}
“A good writer is not per se a good book critic, no more than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.”
in the New York Journal, 1957  {blog 8/2012}
“It's not enough to be right.”  {Issue #39}
“When the chips are down and life hangs in the balance, someone has to be responsible.”  {Issue #52}
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1937-71
• • “Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part
of the government from deceiving the people.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”  {blog 11/2007}
“Idiots are everywhere. Many have degrees.”  {blog 12/2008}
“Wine is the drink of the gods, milk the drink of babies, tea the drink of women, and water
the drink of beasts.”   {blog 2/2011}
“The community should guard the rights of each individual member, and (in return for this protection)
each individual should submit to the laws of the community, without which submission of all it is impossible
that protection can be extended to any.”  {blog 10/2010}
“A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many people want in . . .
and how many people want out.”   {blog 1/2012}
“If I'd known I was going to live this long,
I'd have taken better care of myself.”  {Issue #37}
• • “What is now proved was once only imagined.”  {Issue #37}
• • “Execution is the chariot of genius.”  {Issue #46}
• • “Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement
are roads of genius.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night.”  {blog 5/2010}
“The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone else [that] he can blame it on.”   {blog 7/2011}
“You have to learn to see. If you can appreciate what has quality
and what is worthless in art, you will appreciate it in people.”  {Issue #19}
• • “True liberal education requires that the student's whole life is
radically changed by it.”  {Issue #48}
• • “Indignation is the soul's defense against the wound of doubt."
“The cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people.”  {blog 10/2012}
“Fear is often disguised as moral outrage.”  {blog 3/2013}
“Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and
still feel good about yourself.” (in a speech given at the commencement ceremony at University of California
Berkeley in 1986; he later spent two years in federal prison for insider trading crimes)  {blog 1/2010}
“Intelligence requires that you don't defend an assumption.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “Nothing exists until it is measured.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “An expert is [someone] who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a narrow field.”  {blog 11/2011}
“If you think education is costly, try ignorance.”  {Issue #65}
“We . . . tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another,
and we don't realize [that] that's a lie.”  {Issue #60}
“The United States seems destined to plague us with all manner of evil in the name of liberty.”
{blog 12/2007}
• • “Laughter rises out of tragedy, when you need it the most, and rewards you
for your courage.”  {Issue #42}
• • “Worry is like a rocking chair: It gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.”  {blog 3/2012}
• • “He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”  {Issue #46}
• • “Reality has limits, stupidity has not.”  {Issue #47}
• • “Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self-interest.”  {Issue #68}
• • “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”  {blog 6/2011}
• • “The best way to keep your word is not to give it.”  {blog 11/2012}
“We have at times to be willing to be guilty.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “I can't say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.”  {Issue #36}
• • “It is never too late to do good.”  {Issue #36}
“When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.”   {Issue #64}
“When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble.”   {blog 4/2012}
“A smile is the shortest distance between two people.”  {blog 3/2012}
“My father showed me his library, which was very large, and told me to read whatever I wanted,
but that if something bored me, I should immediately put it down.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “Life, of course, is without meaning, and if you find something that gives it meaning,
you're very fortunate.”  {blog 4/2009}
• • “Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction,
those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded.”  {blog 4/2009}
“If the government has nothing to hide, why is it hiding everything?”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “The old Greeks coined a noun for the man who took no part in
public matters, and from it we got our word 'idiot'.”  {Issue #35}
• • “Less money is spent annually on medical research than on hairdos.”  {Issue #36}
Reader & cartoonist Carol Lay made use of this quotation in her syndicated cartoon panel #504,
published in early November 2003; to view the cartoon click here.
• • “Sea species are disappearing even faster than land dwellers.”  {Issue #41}
“The texture of a film is affected very much by the honor with which you make it.”  {blog 11/2010}
• • “Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.”  {Issue #35}
• • “If you're not in love with what you're doing, don't do it; find what you love.”  {Issue #51}
• • “I can't name a writer who's had a more perfect life. My books are all in print, I'm in all the school
libraries, and when I go places I get the applause at the start of my speech.”  {blog 11/2007}
• • “The thing is to be madly, madly in love all the time.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “People on a jet have only been on a trip; people on a train have been on a journey.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip
ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”  {blog 2/2009}
• • “Those who don't build must burn.” (in "Fahrenheit 451", 1953)
  {blog 2/2009}
• • “A book is a loaded gun.” (in "Fahrenheit 451", 1953)
  {blog 1/2010}
• • “I'm not trying to predict the future. I'm just trying to prevent it.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in a cage.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “I do not like what is going on in our society. Our education system . . . is a total disaster.”
— interview in Salon 8/2001  {blog 9/2012}
“I may be dumb but I'm not stupid.” ~~ wrongly attributed to Bradshaw, but predates him by fifty-odd years  {blog 4/2013}
“Our real enemy is cynicism.”  {blog 12/2010}
“Where there is no consideration nor use of reason, there is no Liberty at all.”  {blog 10/2009}
“The country has moved so far to the right [that] you can invoke
Barry Goldwater as sort of a centrist figure.”  {Issue #48}
• • “All the crookedness ain't outside the law . . . the real fine work
begins on the inside and stays there.”  {Issue #34}
• • “Cowboys are all right, but they need a good laundering, most of the time.”  {Issue #65}
“Information wants to be free.” (in 1984)  {blog 1/2011}
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1916-39
• • “We can have a democratic society or we can have a concentration of great wealth
in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.” (as quoted by Ralph Nader)  {Issue #26}
• • “The only title in our democracy that is superior to that of President is that of citizen.”  {blog 11/2007}
“George W. Bush is not a Texan. [He] was born in Connecticut, so
I suppose
that makes him a Conn man. Second, Bush does not wear 'cowboy boots'.
Cowboy boots have the manure on the outside.”  {Issue #38}
“Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented.”  {Issue #43 & blog 12/2010}
“Always behave like a duck: Keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle
like the devil underneath.”   {blog 6/2012}
“There is a purpose to our lives that each day tugs at our sleeve as an annoying distraction.”  {blog 5/2009}
“A long time ago this was our future.”  {Issue #31}
• • “Art is not a mirror to reflect reality [but] a hammer with which to shape it.”   {Issue #64}
• • “Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “What is robbing a bank compared to the founding of a bank?”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “He who laughs has not yet heard the terrible news.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “People cannot remain good unless good is expected of them.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but to see quickly how to make them good.”  {blog 4/2013}
“If people actually knew what was happening, they would be really p*ssed off. They should be.”  {blog 12/2011}
“Painting taught me to make not beautiful images but necessary ones.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “I want either less corruption or more opportunity to participate in it.”  {Issue #46}
• • “Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules.” {Issue #48}
• • “My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating.”  {blog 6/2012}
“Make cornbread, not war.”  {blog 12/2011}
“It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot harder to make a difference.”  {blog 8/2012}
“Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.”  {blog 1/2013}
“When conservatism was a movement of ideas, it attracted oddballs; now that it is a movement
with power, it attracts sleazeballs.”  {Issue #56}
“Screenwriting is no more complicated than old French torture chambers, I think. It’s about
as simple as that.”   {blog 6/2011}
“Tragedy is when I get a paper cut on my finger. Comedy is when you fall into a sewer and die.”  {blog 4/2013}
“Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.”  {blog 4/2013}
“God is always on the side which has the best football coach.”  {blog 2/2011}
California Governor, 1959-67
“I have nothing but contempt for those who say that no new taxes are necessary.”  {Issue #50}
“Today, more than 80% of married households have two wages coming in.”
(Los Angeles Times Magazine)  {Issue #37}
• • “If you're not a sex object, you're in trouble.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “What you have to do is work with the raw material [that] you have, namely you, and never let up.”  {blog 3/2013}
“What comes to perfection perishes.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Life is a four-letter word.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum
of once every fifteen seconds.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “Pain plus time equals humor.”  {blog 6/2012}
“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing
to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”  {Issue #10 & blog 4/2012}
“If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave.”  {Issue #36}
• • “The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable.”  {blog 2/2009}
• • “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”  {blog 8/2011}
“Books are like your children. They take nine months to write; the manuscript weighs six pounds and . . .
you send them out into the world and hope that some day they'll send back money.”  {blog 6/2012}
“Politics seems to be the only place where a draft dodger from Wyoming and an AWOL guardsman from Texas
can question the loyalty of an authentic war hero from Massachusetts.” [L.A. Times Letter 3/2004]  {Issue #42}
“Fate takes its cut.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”  {Issue #67}
• • “He who knows [that] he has enough is rich.”  {Issue #67}
• • “By any common-sense definition, we are in a recession.” (in March 2008)  {blog 4/2008}
• • “There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war,
and we're winning.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “I find the argument that we need lower taxes to create jobs mystifying, because we've had
the lowest taxes in this decade and about the worst job creation ever.”  {blog 1/2012}
“Plain incompetence . . . from the highest levels on down, is endemic in our society.” (2007)  {Issue #71}
• • “The only thing that matters is how you walk thru the fire.”  {Issue #49}
• • “My advice to young writers is to stop looking for advice from old writers.”  {Issue #52}
• • “Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”  {Issue #60}
• • “If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be
alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to
perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”  {Issue #63}
• • “I don’t hate people. I just feel better when they are not around.”  {blog 5/2012}
“Whoever established the high road, and how high it should be, should be fired.”  {blog 12/2010}
“The pen is mightier than the sword.” in the stageplay "Richelieu", 1839  {blog 12/2008}
“The value of an industry is inversely proportional to the number of awards [that] it gives itself.”   {blog 6/2012}
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1969-86
“[The NRA's interpretation of the Second Amendment] is one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat
the word 'fraud' – on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
(on PBS-TV's "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" 16 December 1991)  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Art and morality have little to say to each other.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “All art preserves mysteries which aesthetic philosophers tackle in vain.”  {blog 4/2013}
“To survive [in Hollywood] you need the ambition of a Latin American revolutionary,
the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony.”  {blog 4/2009}
• • “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “[Mankind is] a herd of beings that must be governed by fraud, effigy, and show.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “A nation without the means of reform is without means of survival.”  {blog 3/2010}
• • “Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.”  {blog 1/2013}
• • “Man is more a clown than a satan.”  {Issue #36}
• • “No matter what the war advocates of our time tell us, no violent excursion ends well.”  {Issue #64}
• • “If everybody agrees on it, it's wrong.”  {Issue #64}
• • “Capitalists are hanged by the rope [that] they sell their enemies.” (after V. Lenin)  {Issue #68}
• • “No vice flourishes without sanction.”  {Issue #68}
• • “New Orleans isn't a city, it's an outdoor mental asylum located on top of a giant sponge.”  {blog 9/2009}
“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done.
Then they begin to hope [that] it can be done.
Then they see [that] it can be done.
Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.”
{blog 10/2007}
“Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood; think big.”  {Issue #17 & blog 11/2007}
• • “The most important thing in acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”  {blog 12/2008}
• • “I honestly think that it is better to be a failure at something [that] you love than to be a success
at something [that] you hate.”  {blog 1/2012}
• • “It's too bad [that] the people who really know how to run the country are so busy cutting hair
and driving taxis.”  {blog 3/2012}
• • “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what is going on.”  {Issue #32}
• • “The only real thing about a writer is what he's written, and not his life.”  {Issue #46}
• • “In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme boredom. Make no mistake,
all intellectuals are deviants in the U.S.”  {blog 2/2008}
41st President of the United States, 1898-93
          “Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. There was no viable 'exit strategy'
[that] we could see, violating another of our principles.
          “Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”
          —  {explaining why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War, in his memoirs "A World Transformed" 1999}  {Issue #47}
• • “I have strong opinions of my own, but I don't always agree with them.”  {Issue #55}
43rd President of the United States, 2001-2009
• • “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones
you want to concentrate on.” (2001)  {Issues #45 & #47}
• • “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop
thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we.”
(at White House bill-signing ceremony 6 August 2004)  {Issue #47}
• • “I just want you to know that when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.”
(18 June 2002)  {Issue #52}
• • “Money trumps peace.”  (press conference 14 February 2007)  {Issue #68}
• • “If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as
I'm the dictator. Heh, heh, heh.” (speech on 18 December 2000)  {blog 11/2007}
• • “Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror ... States like these and
their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”
("State of The Union", 29 January 2002)  {blog 12/2007}
• • “I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”
(C.N.N. interview 16 December 2008, after the meltdown-recession-depression)  {blog 12/2008}
• • “All animals, except man, know that the principal business of
life is to enjoy it.”  {Issue #41}
• • “Life is one long process of getting tired.”  {blog 12/2008}
• • “Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.”  {blog 11/2010}
• • “The better part of valor is indiscretion.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Invention is the mother of necessity.”  {blog 3/2011}
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest,
easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.”  {Issue #65}
“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”  {Issue #58}
• • “Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools,
and those who dare not, are slaves.”  {Issue #36}
• • “But words are things, and a small drop of ink, / Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces /
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.”  {Issue #62}
• • 'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.  {blog 11/2008}
• • “To have joy one must share it.”  {blog 10/2011}
“The optimist proclaims that this is the best of all possible worlds,
and the pessimist fears that this is true.”  {Issue #51}
“Experience is the teacher of all things.”  {blog 1/2011}
“It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.” (in Senate speech, 1848)  {blog 10/2007}
“If you hear any sinister background music, run like hell.”  {blog 6/2012}
“WaterGate was nothing to what we have now.”  {Issue #47}
“When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry,
they called me a communist.”  {blog 4/2011}
“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.”  {blog 11/2011}
• • “Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what is going on without bothering anybody with
a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.”  {Issue #50}
• • “The god [that] you worship is the god [that] you deserve.”  {Issue #52}
• • “The cave [that] you fear to enter holds the treasure [that] you seek.”  {Issue #62}
• • “I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for
the experience of being alive.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “All we want is to be completely human and in each other's company.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”  {Issue #2}
• • “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.”
("Myth of Sisyphus")  {Issue #13}
• • “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”  {Issue #18}
• • “There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is
misfortune in not loving.” ("Return To Tipasa")  {Issue #27}
• • “Liberty is your right not to lie.”  {Issue #31}
• • “The only progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.”  {Issue #52}
• • “Where there is no hope, one must invent hope.”  {Issue #57}
• • “It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”  {Issue #71}
• • “Integrity needs no rules.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”  {blog 2/2010}
• • “Integrity has no need of rules.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your
very existence is an act of rebellion.”  {blog 1/2012}
• • “Every act of rebelling expresses a nostalgia for innocence.”  {blog 5/2012}
• • “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”  {blog 10/2012}
“Sports is the toy department of life.”  {blog 7/2011}
“If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.”  {blog 1/2011}
“You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.”  {Issue #63}
“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.”  {blog 4/2013}
“I've learned one thing – people who know the least anyways seem to know it the loudest.”  {blog 11/2012}
• • “A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.”  {blog 8/2011}
• • “There are no rules in filmmaking, only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “I thought drama was when the actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “I worry about my judgment when anything I believe in or do regularly begins to be
accepted by the American public.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “The only thing high-definition television will do is provide sharper pictures of the garbage.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Some people see things that are and ask Why? Some people dream of things that never were and
ask Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “They call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”  {blog 2/2012}
• • “Speech is of time, silence is of eternity.”  {blog 1/2011}
• • “I don't pretend to understand the universe, it is a great deal bigger than I am.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “The man who dies . . . rich dies disgraced.”  {blog 1/2012}
“When dealing with people, remember [that] you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures
of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice, and motivated by pride and vanity.”  {blog 11/2011}
“Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.”  {blog 1/2013}
“The head of my fan club lives under the Hollywood Freeway in a cardboard box.”  {blog 6/2012}
“This is business. It's the best game in the world.”  {blog 1/2011}
“Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up
can be vice president.”  {blog 10/2012}
“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the Earth are never alone or weary of life.”  {blog 8/2009}
“A politician worries about the next election; a statesman about the next generation.”
{quoting James Freeman Clarke [1810-88])  {Issue #38}
“The [Bush] administration is well on its way to being the first since Herbert Hoover's to preside over
an overall loss of jobs during its complete term in office.”
(Editor's Letter in Jan 2004 Vanity Fair Magazine)  {Issue #41}
“As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life –
so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.”  {blog 5/2010}
“Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.”  {blog 2/2008}
• • “You know back in 2000 a Republican friend of mine warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won,
the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what?
I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true.”  {Issue #62}
• • “Washington [DC] is a dirty diaper that needs a change.”  {Issue #63}
• • “You must work – we must all work – to make the world worthy of its children.”  {Issue #36}
• • “The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?”  {blog 3/2008}
“Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people
in poor countries.”   {blog 4/2011}
“Art is good when it springs from necessity.”  {Issue #50}
“Life is a series of suicides, divorces, promises broken, children smashed, whatever.”
line from movie "Love Streams" [1984]  {blog 11/2010}
“History happens only once.”  {blog 4/2010}
“All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out from time to time.
The difference between an average person and a warrior is awareness of this, and one of the tasks is to be alert, deliberately
waiting, so that when the cubic centimeter pops out [the warrior] has the necessary speed and prowess to pick it up.”  {Issue #58}
• • “There are some things [that] you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”  {Issue #68}
• • “That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “Happy people do a great deal for their friends.”  {blog 7/2012}
“We cannot control the evil tongues of others, but a good life enables us to disregard them.”  {blog 2/2012}
“If your parents never had children, chances are [that] you won't either.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “No art is possible without a dance with death.”  {Issue #34}
• • “Almost every desire [that] a poor man has is a punishable offense.”  {blog 6/2010}
• • “All great innovation is built on rejection.”  {blog 8/2011}
• • “Pleasure can be based on illusion, but happiness rests on reality.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Life is plenty good.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “Golf, golf, golf. It's ruined more good men than whiskey.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art,
and precious little of that.”  {Issue #18}
• • “Funny thing, civilization. It promises so much and what it delivers
is mass production of shoddy merchandise and shoddy people.”  {Issue #25}
• • “The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount [of art], it has merely increased
the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.”  {Issue #50}
• • “All men must escape at times from the deadly rhythm of their private thoughts.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “A good story cannot be devised, it has to be distilled.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed,
must seem to be inevitable.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “There is a time for work and a time for love. That leaves no other time.”  {blog 6/2011}
• • “Some people think [that] luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “Life isn't a meaning but a desire.”  {Issue #71}
• • “All [that] I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl.”  {blog 12/2012}
“Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be a chess player, not the chess piece.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “You are never strong enough that you don't need help.”  {blog 7/2008}
• • “It is not enough to teach our young people to be successful . . . so they can realize their ambitions, so they can earn good
livings, so they can accumulate the material things that this society bestows. Those are worthwhile goals. But it is not
enough to progress as individuals while our friends and neighbors are left behind.”  {blog 7/2008}
• • “The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.”  {blog 7/2008}
• • “Being of service is not enough. You must become a servant of the people. When you do,
you can demand their commitment in return.”  {blog 7/2008}
• • “You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.” (in 1984)  {blog 4/2010}
“Trust your editor, and you'll sleep on straw.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “Everything is beautiful in this world – except what we think or do ourselves when we forget
our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.”  {Issue #36}
• • “The knowledge that the aristocrats take for granted, we must pay for with our youth.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “Don't tell me [that] the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”  {blog 5/2009}
• • “Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “You will not become a saint thru other people's sins.”  {blog 10/2011}
• • “Man will become better when we have shown him to himself as he is.”  {blog 5/2013}
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has
weapons of mass destruction.”   (on 20 August 2002)  {Issue #47}
• • “It is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment.”
in "The Ballad of The White Horse" (1911)  {blog 3/2010}
• • “There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a
tired man who wants a book to read.”  {blog 6/2011}
• • “If someone thinks that he does not live by a philosophy, then what he really lives by are the scraps
and tail-ends of other people's broken and discarded philosophies.”  {blog 10/2011}
• • “We must learn to love life without ever trusting it.”  {blog 3/2012}
• • “Silence is the unbearable repartee.”  {blog 4/2012}
• • “Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “There are no rationalists. We all believe in fairy tales, and live in them.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”  {blog 10/2012}
• • “The only way of catching a train [that] I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.”  {blog 11/2012}
• • “The problem with capitalism is not too many capitalists, but not enough capitalists.”  {blog 11/2012}
• • “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.”  {blog 1/2013}
“If you're not indignant, you're not paying attention.”  {Issue #47}
“It does not require many words to speak the truth.”  {blog 3/2008}
“The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook.”  {blog 4/2013}
“And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain,
there would be no rainbow.”  {blog 1/2010}
“A good police force is one which catches more criminals than it employs.”  {Issue #28}
“When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.”  {blog 12/2011}
“Life is ruled by chaos and chance, but made meaningful and worthwhile by love.”   {Issue #62}
“The flowing river never ceases, yet the water is never the same.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Where society is ruled by . . . a privileged elite, barriers must be created to prevent those outside
from understanding reality and acting on it in their own interests.” (1991)  {Issue #24}
• • “Truisms are best.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”  {blog 2/2012}
• • “There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man
does of his own free will.” (in "The Moving Finger")  {Issue #27}
• • “Money's queer. It goes where it's wanted.”  {Issue #36}
• • “What is required is a passion for the truth.”  {Issue #66}
• • “Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's not reason not to give it.”  {Issue #68}
• • “Life, you know, is inclined to make a fellow cynical.”  {Issue #68}
• • “Fiction is founded on fact – but is rather superior to it.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “Life is a difficult business... It needs infinite courage and a lot of endurance. And in the end
one wonders, Was it worth while?”  {blog 8/2008}
• • “They is a very vague term.”  {blog 9/2009}
“Give the public something better and the public will buy.”  {blog 12/2007}
“The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so [that] I can have a word with him?”  {blog 9/2008}
“An educated person is one who has attained a rational understanding of the pros and cons of
the major problems facing society during his[/her] lifetime.” (in 1978)  {blog 12/2010}
Member of Parliament, 1924-64
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1940-45 & 1951-55
Winston Churchill Quotations Page at Working Minds
Winston Churchill Page at Spirit of America Bookstore
“The problem isn't left versus right, it's up versus down.” (in 2009)  {blog 11/2009}
• • “Reason should direct and appetite obey.”  {blog 6/2010}
• • “A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”  {blog 10/2012}
“One doesn't live in a country, one lives in a language.”  {blog 7/2010}
• • “The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.”  {blog 5/2009}
• • “The most miserable possession [that] a man can have is the thing [that] he hurt somebody to get.”  {blog 1/2012}
• • “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.”  {blog 2/2012}
“Everyone can find the time to write; not everyone can find the courage.”  {Issue #33}
• • “All explorers are seeking something [that] they have lost. It is seldom
that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them
more happiness than the quest.”  {Issue #38}
• • “One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion.”
(in Free Inquiry, Spring 1999)  {Issue #65}
“There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who can deal in binary
and those who can't.”  {Issue #30}
• • “You are either part of the solution, or you are part of the problem.”  {Issues #28 & #62}
• • “The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.”  {blog 3/2012}
22nd and 24th President of the United States, 1885-89 & 1893-97
“At times like the present, when the evils of unsound finance threaten us, the speculator may anticipate
a harvest gathered from the misfortune of others, the capitalist may protect himself by hoarding or
may even find profit from the fluctuations of values, but the wage earner – the first to be injured
by a depreciated currency – is practically defenseless.”  {blog 10/2009}
“Battery life has to improve.”  {blog 10/2012}
42nd President of the United States, 1993-2001
• • “A slight majority seem to have decided [that] they would like a new
president. Kerry just has to close the deal.”  (July 2004)  {Issue #47}
• • “Pessimism is an excuse for not trying and a guarantee to a personal failure.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change.”  {blog 8/2012}
“Republicans are worried about voter fraud – [it] seems [that] there is not enough of it.”  {blog 9/2009}
“Learn all the rules, every one of them, so that you will know how to break them.”  {blog 2/2011}
“It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery
is caused in the world.”  {blog 7/2008}
• • “Baseball teaches some useful lessons: play by the rules, be part of the team, do your best,
learn from errors, enjoy the rewards.”
• • “Life is a series of adjustments to plans that didn't work out.”  {blog 12/2010}
“Do something instead of killing time, because time is killing you.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “When you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a certain sense of repose overtakes you.”  {blog 12/2012}
“Television is the glue that keeps us apart.”  {Issue #43}
“I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad. If my fanny squirms,
it's bad. If my fanny doesn't squirm, it's good.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “A man's home is his castle. {The house of an Englishman is to him as his castle.}”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “They [corporations] cannot commit treason . . . for they have no souls.”  {blog 1/2013}
“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers
with the least amount of hissing.”  {blog 2/2011}
“Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason
or imagination, rarely or never.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “Who said you should be happy? Do your work.”  {Issue #21}
• • “Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author
is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”  {blog 6/2008}
• • “A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.”  {blog 4/2009}
“Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always of philosophers.”  {blog 2/2011}
“Only people destroy beauty.”  {blog 12/2008}
“Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of
the past, while we silence the rebels of the present.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.” (in "Analects of Confucius")  {blog 11/2007}
• • “The superior man is distressed by his want of ability.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “Cogito ergo consume.”  {Issue #35}
• • “I think, therefore I am annoyed.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “There are too many people in the world who believe everything
they see on television.”  {Issue #41}
• • “Live by the media, die by the media.”  {Issue #43}
• • “Civil unrest occurs when the feelings of overwhelming powerlessness hit critical mass . . . It has to do with
society not addressing the essential needs of overlooked people.” (in "Angels Flight")  {Issue #66}
“Free market ideology [has] evolved from simple, old-fashioned greed into the sociopathic
culture of looting [that] we see on Wall Street today.”  {blog 7/2010}
• • “We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it
with passion, if we want to be happy.”   {blog 5/2009}
• • “Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities
whom we do not control.”  {blog 8/2012}
“In numbers there is quantity.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Give me the right words and the right actions, and I will move the world.”  {Issue #46}
• • “A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite
capable of every wickedness.”  {blog 2/2010}
• • “I must live until I die – mustn't I?”  {blog 12/2012}
“Beware of the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry, [who] infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How will I know? For this I have done. And I am Julius Caesar.”
{Issue #29}  { often falsely attributed to Julius Caesar [100-44 B.C.E.] }
• • “How'd it get like this? It's like the Depression all over again.”  {Issue #38}
• • “Fiction is damn near the only way to tell the truth in America.”  {Issue #39}
“If Job #1 for the next American president is getting us out of Iraq, Job #2 is leading
the world's response to global climate change.”  {blog 7/2008}
“It ain't over till the fat lady sings.”  {Issue #38}
30th President of the United States, 1923-29
• • “[T]he accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence . . . So long as
wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it.”  {blog 6/2008}
• • “There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important,
as living within your means.”   {blog 12/2009}
• • “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”  {blog 5/2012}
• • “The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attack on John Kerry is the lowest, filthiest campaign maneuver
I've seen in my adult life. It is deeply offensive and intellectually insulting.”  {Issue #47}
• • “The Big Three Unresolved Issues that neither party has much to say about [are]
jobs, education, and health care.”  {Issue #54}
“Time is the lens through which dreams are captured.”  {Issue #37}
“Familiarity breeds contempt only among [movie] critics.”  {blog 9/2009}
“You have to hurry. Death is chasing you and it's closer than you think.
There's a lot to do in a short time.”  {Issue #46}
• • “The revolution is in your neighborhood, it's in your house, it's in your mind.”  {Issue #53}
• • “I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
{after Herbert Bayard Swope [1882-1958]}  {Issue #59}
• • “There is no labor [that] a person does that is undignified, if they do it right.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “Parents are not interested in justice. They're interested in peace and quiet.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come home.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids.”  {blog 3/2013}
“Being a celebrity is probably the closest to being a beautiful woman as you can get.”  {blog 12/2011}
“Democrats would never win if we took away women's right to vote.”  {blog 2/2012}
“Story is the shortest distance between people.”  {blog 11/2011}
• • “The wild dream is the first step to reality.”  {Issue #36}
• • “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live.”  {Issue #62}
• • “In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries
the ultimate responsibility.”  {blog 11/2007}
“Population growth is the primary cause of environmental damage.”  {Issue #43}
• • “Time has convinced me of one thing: Television is for appearing on – not for looking at.”  {blog 10/2008}
• • “Why must the show go on?”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “Work is much more fun than fun.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”  {blog 1/2012}
“There isn't so much love in the world that you can turn it away
when it's offered.”  {Issue #33}
“The Buddhist approach is 'Don't just do something, sit there'.”  {blog 3/2010}
“The best way to rob a bank is to own one.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “One day I will leave this world and dream myself to reality.” (in 1874)  {Issue #24}
• • “Hóka-héy, today is a good day to die!”  {blog 10/2011}
“Education is about the distribution of knowledge . . . and to whom we actually distribute
this particular commodity is a major question in this country.”  {Issue #43}
“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know [that] it is part of a tree.”  {blog 1/2013}
“Consciousness is the product of millions of years of evolution.”  {Issue #30}
• • “Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands
of some other person.”  {blog 3/2012}
“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but only saps today of its strength.”  {blog 10/2012}
“Most of the people say [that] they . . . get their news from television. That means they're inadequately
informed, too poorly informed to exercise their rights in a democracy. You cannot give people enough
information on the nightly news.”  (Writers' Digest Sept 2001)  {Issue #14}
“Every act of love is a change in the universe.”  {blog 1/2012}
“Not everything in California is a bad idea.”  {Issue #42}
“I have a naive trust in the universe . . . that at some level it all makes sense,
and we can get glimpses of that sense if we try.”  {blog 9/2008}
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”  {Issue #41}
“All modern men are descended from wormlike creatures, but it shows more on some people.”  {blog 2/2011}
“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”  {blog 1/2010}
“The next time I want some dumb son of a bitch to do something, I'll do it myself.”  {blog 2/2010}
“To try to be better is to be better.”  {blog 4/2012}
jump to Page Two of WM Quotes [D thru F]
Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826] Quotations Page
Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82] Quotations Page
Abraham Lincoln [1809-65] Quotations Page
Mark Twain [1835-1910] Quotations Page
Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900] Quotations Page
George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950] Quotations Page
Bertrand Russell [1872-1970] Quotations Page
Winston Churchill [1874-1965] Quotations Page
Albert Einstein [1879-1955] Quotations Page
H.L. Mencken [1880-1956] Quotations Page
Wm. Faulkner [1897-1962] Quotations Page
John Steinbeck [1902-68] Quotations Page
Ayn Rand [1905-82] Quotations Page
Edward R. Murrow [1908-65] Quotations Page
Edward Abbey [1927-89] Quotations Page
Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68] Quotations Page
G.E. Nordell Quotations Page
Magic Lantern's Great Movie Quotes Page
Samuel Johnson [1709-84] Quotations website
Official Yogi Berra Quotes Page
Elbert Hubbard / Roycrofters Epigrams
Said What? quotation website
quotations page at antiwar.com
Heart Quotes website
Brainy Quote website
House of Quotes
Quotesland / Quotation Playground
Independent Institute: Quotes on Power
Famous Quotes Interactive Database
American Film Institute Top 100 Movie Quotes
Dan's Inspirational Quotes website
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Proverbs & Anonymous • Laws of Life
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