Quotations
Used in the 'WMail' Newsletter
and the Dateline Chamesa blog

Page Three

poet & critic Vachel Lindsay [1879-1931]
“Edison is the new Gutenberg. He has invented the new printing.” (in 1915)  {blog 9/2009}

Walter Lippmann [1889-1974]
• • “There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and shame the devil.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “The health of society depends upon the quality of the information [that] it receives.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be
presented perfectly and instantly in any one account.”  {blog 12/2008}

Ken Livingston, Mayor of the City of London, U.K.
“I actually think [George W.] Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet.”  {Issue #39}

Raymond Loewy
“Simplicity is the deciding factor in the aesthetic equation.”  {Issue #39}

Vince Lombardi
“Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”  {Issue #7}

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-82]
“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.”  {blog 11/2007}

Barry Lopez
“The response to tyranny . . . must always be this: Dismantle it.”  {Issue #47}

Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times columnist
• • “Mumia Abu-Jamal is guiltier than O.J.”  {Issue #20}
• • “If 95% of the readers of the Wall Street Journal support a war [against Iraq],
then it's GOT to be a bad idea.”  {Issue #29}
• • “It's about time we admit [that] the Mexican border is now
somewhere near Oregon.”  {Issue #40}
• • “Faith, as defined in the year 2004 in America, is freedom from doubt, freedom
from science, freedom from reality.”  {Issue #50}

U.S. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi
“We can support the troops without supporting the President.” (in 1998)  {Issue #62}

boxer Joe Louis [1914-81]
“You only live once, but if you work it right, once is enough.”  {blog 6/2008}

Peter Lynch, Wall Street tycoon
“Never invest in any idea [that] you can't illustrate with a crayon.”  {blog 10/2008}

Peter Maass
“Like gravity, [the petroleum industry] influences everything that we do.”, in "Crude World" [2009]  {blog 2/2010}

Thomas Macaulay [1800-1859]
“[The Jesuits] appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried
without risk of intellectual emancipation.”  {blog 12/2008}

mystery author John D. MacDonald [1916-86]
• • “There is such a thing as evil which can exist without causation.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “The worst crimes ... are the ones done by people who are trying to punish themselves.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one's self. Some come
to realize this [only] after they are in the nursing home.”  {blog 9/2008}

Norman Maclean [1902-90]
“All good things – trout as well as eternal salvation – come by grace and grace comes by art
and art does not come easy.”  {blog 5/2009}

James A. Madison [1751-1836]
fourth President of the United States, 1809-17
• • “Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”
{in 'Letter to Edward Livingston', 10 July 1822}  {Issue #58}
• • “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”  {Issue #59}
• • “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” (in 1822)  {blog 8/2009}
• • “History shows that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain control over governments by controlling the money and the issuance of it.”  {blog 11/2009}

Maurice Maeterlinck [1862-1949]
“The discovery of a sign of true intellect outside ourselves procures us something of the emotion [that]
Robinson Crusoe felt when he saw the imprint of a human foot on the sandy beach of his island.”  {blog 10/2008}

Mr. Edward Magorium character, as written by Zach Helm
“37 seconds well used is a lifetime!”  {blog 11/2008}

Janet Maker of Los Angeles, CA
“True believers are always wrong, whether they are Christians, Muslims or Jews.”  {blog 9/2008}

radio talk show host Mike Malloy
“Taking no action at all is itself an immoral act.”  {Issue #69}

Horace Mann [1796-1859]
“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”  {Issue #38}

Thomas Mann [1875-1955]
• • “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”  {blog 11/2009}

Sándor Márai [1900-89]
“There are only two divine medicaments to help us bear the poison of reality and prevent it
from killing us prematurely and these are intelligence and indifference.”  {Issue #57}

Harry Margolis
“You've got to give up being a little son of a bitch.”  {blog 5/2008}

Jacques Maritain [1882-1973]
“Never take stupidity too much in earnest.” (a 'Chinese proverb' that he invented)  {blog 12/2008}

Christopher Marlowe [1564-93]
“Money can't buy love, but it improves your bargaining position.”  {Issue #71}

Don Marquis [1878-1937]
“An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.”  {blog 3/2008}

Dame Ngaio Marsh [1895-1982]
“No art should be fashionable.”  {Issue #43}

Thomas R. Marshall [1854-1925]
“What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.”  {blog 2/2009}

Trevor Marshall
“It's not ... how you play the game, but how you design the playing field.” (in 1988)  {blog 10/2009}

Al Martinez, Los Angeles Times columnist
• • “There's a people's war brewing against greed and excess, against the disparity between
the haves and the have nots, and we'd better start taking it seriously.” (Oct 2003)   {Issue #36}
• • “The Republican Party [parades] God thru town like a circus elephant,
shouting loudly that it is for Him that they are attempting to unite America
in a great crusade for family values.” (2004)  {Issue #41}
• • “We are a culture in freefall.”  {Issue #43}
• • “Our vice president, Dick Cheney ... is a man without either
wisdom or conscience.”  {Issue #47}
• • “There is no better way to make a bad thing worse than
to call out a government agency.”  {Issue #48}
• • “Love, by its very nature, is the sum of all emotions, from joy to despair.”  {Issue #48}

author Steve Martini
• • “Throughout history, truth has withered and died of loneliness.”  {Issue #33}
• • “Politicians in [California] don't accept reasoned argument, and they don't
take American Express.”  {Issue #36}
• • “... corporate management getting rich while their companies go broke is just part of the normal
business cycle... A lot of money in America is still made the old-fashioned way – by stealing it.”  {Issue #49}

Groucho Marx [1890-1977]
• • “I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on,
I go to the library and read a good book.”  {blog 4/2009}
• • “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then applying
the wrong remedies.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; and inside a dog, it's too dark to read.”  {blog 9/2009}

Karl Marx [1818-83]
• • “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point, however,
is to change it.”  {Issue #49}
• • “Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, [and] you ruin
a wonderful business opportunity.”  {blog 3/2010}

Alj Mary of Phoenix, AZ
“There are times when you just have to p*ss off everybody in order to get something
constructive done.”  {blog 11/2007}

don Juan Matus (as documented by Carlos Castañeda [1925-98])
• • “The purpose of life is to learn.”  {Issue #6}
• • “Death is always just over your left shoulder.”  {Issue #42}
• • “Nothing in the world is a gift. Whatever there is to learn
has to be learned the hard way.”  {Issue #48}

W. Somerset Maugham [1874-1965]
• • “Luck is a talent.”  {Issue #36}
• • “If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom.”  {Issue #47}
• • “It's a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best,
you very often get it.”  {Issue #49}
• • “It is not true that suffering ennobles the character. Happiness does that sometimes;
but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”  {blog 11/2008}

André Maurois [1885-1967]
“Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.”  {blog 9/2008}

U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona
“Global warming has to become a campaign issue, and it never has, either in congressional campaigns
or senatorial campaigns or presidential campaigns.”  {Issue #60}

Johnston McCulley [1883-1958], creator of 'El Zorro'
“Existence is a tough proposition, and a man has to possess fortitude to endure it.”  {Issue #46}

Brooke McEldowney
“The thing that truly sets people apart from other animals is not their thought process,
but their ability to congratulate themselves for having one.”  {Issue #51}

Rep. Louis Thomas McFadden [1876-1936]
“The Federal Reserve [Banks] are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen.
There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this Nation is run
by the International Bankers.” (circa 1933)  {blog 11/2009}

syndicated cartoonist Aaron McGruder
“Oppression reigns unchecked throughout most of the world.”  {Issue #24}

basketball announcer Al McGuire [1928-2001]
“The world is run by C students.”  {blog 12/2008}

Peter T. McIntyre
“Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.”  {blog 2/2009}

poet-songwriter Rod McKuen
“It doesn't matter who you love, or how you love, but that you love.”  {Issue #43}

Marshall McLuhan [1911-80]
“Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate
than by the content of the communication.”  {Issue #36}

actress Butterfly McQueen [1911-95]
“Beautiful young people are random acts of nature, but beautiful old people are
deliberate works of art.”  {blog 4/2009}

Margaret Mead [1901-78]
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”  {Issue #24}

Muffy Mead-Ferro of Salt Lake City, Utah
“We're dangerously close to becoming an entire nation of Howard Hugheses.”  {Issue #52}

George Meany [1894-1980], president AFL-CIO 1955-79
“You don't own it until it costs you something.”  {Issue #36}

Golda Meir [1898-1978]
“There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others
to kill. It's exactly the same thing.”  {blog 2/2008}

Allan H. Meltzer
“Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. It doesn't work.”  {blog 11/2009}

H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
H.L. Mencken Quotations Page at Working Minds
H.L. Mencken Page at Spirit of America Bookstore

D.R. Meredith
• • “The road to hell is not paved with good intentions, but with self-justification.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “Nothing in this life happens without a before and after.”  {blog 4/2009}

Harold Meyerson
• • “When it comes to losing jobs and failing to balance a budget, George W. Bush is
the club champion; indeed, his stewardship of the American economy is beginning to rival
Herbert Hoover's for sheer perverse, long-term ineptitude.”  (Sept 2003)  {Issue #36}
• • “[George W.] Bush combines at the highest levels the qualities of plutocrat and philistine.”  {Issue #40}
• • “The president is only a liar; the vice president is a lunatic.” (2004)  {Issue #47}

pioneer Afro-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux [1884-1951]
“One of the greatest tasks of my life has been to teach that the colored man can be anything.”   {blog 1/2010}

author James A. Michener [1907-97]
• • “If our major parties do not know where the boundaries of decency
and acceptance are, then we are already lost.”  {Issue #47}
• • “I consider [work in politics] one of the most fruitful exercises of the human mind.”  {Issue #51}
• • “An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country
that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression.”  {blog 2/2010}
• • “Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.”  {blog 3/2010}

John Stuart Mill [1806-73]
“Over himself, over his own mind and body, the individual is sovereign.”
(in 'On Liberty' 1859, "Introductory")  {Issue #25}

Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892-1950]
“There isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going.”  {Issue #67}

playwright Arthur Miller [1915-2005]
• • “Tragedy arises when you are in the presence of a man who has missed
accomplishing his joy.” (in 1950)  {blog 1/2008}
• • “Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge
of embarrassing him, always.”  {blog 8/2008}
• • “The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.”  {blog 1/2010}

Dennis Miller
“Politics is a game of 'last man standing'.”  {Issue #48}

Henry Miller [1891-1980]
• • “How different war would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician.”  {Issue #66}
• • “The real leader has no need to lead, he is content to point the way.”  {blog 11/2007}

Henry Miller of San Fernando Valley Mensa
“Religions are merely the explanations of primitives for phenomena beyond their ability to comprehend,
codified and passed on thru generations, and defended as ordained absolutes of behavior.”  {Issue #51}

Jason Lee Miller
“The problem with the human condition is that it involves humans.”  {Issue #70}

Mark Crispin Miller
“The true cause of the enormous ills that now dismay so many Americans – the universal sleaze and 'dumbing down', the floodtide of corporate propaganda, the terminal insanity of United States politics – has risen not from any grand decline in the national character ... but from the inevitable toxic influence of those few corporations that have monopolized our culture.”  {Issue #23}

C. Wright Mills [1916-1962]
• • “The political calling of the intellectual [lies in] the unmasking of lies which sustain
irresponsible power.”  {Issue #9}
• • “In our time, what is at issue is the very nature of humankind, the image [that] we have
of our limits and possibilities. History is not yet done with its exploration of the limits
of what it means to be human.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning
than the man who inherited his father's store or farm.”  {blog 11/2009}

John Milton [1608-74]
“Let [truth] and falsehood grapple. Who ever knew truth put to the
worse in a free and open encounter?”  {Issue #47}

jazz musician Charles Mingus [1922-79]
“Anybody can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”  {Issue #39}

Newton Minow
“When television is bad, nothing is worse. You will observe a vast wasteland.”  {Issue #46}

silent movie cowboy star Tom Mix [1880-1940]
“The Old West is not a certain place in a certain time, it's a state of mind.
It's whatever you want it to be.”  {blog 8/2008}

Wilson Mizner [1876-1933]
“The most pitiful human ailment is a birdseed heart.”  {blog 9/2008}

Molière {real name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin} [1622-73]
“To honor all men is to honor none.”  (in "The Misanthrope")  {Issue #36}

jazz musician Thelonius Monk [1917-82]
“It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.”  {Issue #71}

Marilyn Monroe [1926-62]
• • “I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.”  {blog 6/2008}
• • “I've been on a calendar, but never on time.”  {blog 10/2009}

Thomas S. Monson
“Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything
that would damage his self-respect.”  {blog 4/2009}

(Michel Eyquem de) Montaigne [1533-92]
• • “The clearest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.”  {Issue #62}
• • “He who has learned to die has unlearned how to be a slave.”  {blog 11/2009}

(Charles de Secondat, baron de) Montesquieu [1689-1755]
“Republics end thru luxury, monarchies thru poverty.”  {Issue #43}

gadfly filmmaker Michael Moore
• • “Democracy is not a spectator sport, and being a citizen should imply
that [you're] active and caring.”  {Issue #43}
• • “Do something!” {the ending of his documentary film 'Fahrenheit 9/11' [2004]}  {Issue #45}
• • “More people voted for Kerry than for Reagan.”  {Issue #48}
• • “A better day is coming.”  {blog 10/2007}

Edmund S. Morgan
“Patriotism is so often a disguise that the genuine article is always surprising.”  {Issue #51}

Robert Morley [1906-92]
“No man is lonely while eating spaghetti.”  {blog 9/2008}

William Morris
“Have nothing ... that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”  {blog 11/2008}

Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times columnist
“When the little guy wants help, he asks the government to write a check. When the big guy
wants help, he asks the government to write a law.”  {Issue #43}

author-activist Walter Mosley
• • “The only way to be free is to free yourself.”  {Issue #62}
• • “It is not the questing after wealth and prosperity that made [America] great
but the belief in the rights of all human beings.”  {Issue #66}

Dow Mossman
“Sometimes words are the longest things there are.”  {Issue #39}

journalist Bill Moyers
• • “Congress belongs to the highest bidder.” (2006)  {Issue #58}
• • “Democracy works when people claim it as their own.”  {Issue #68}
• • “The promise of America leaves no one out.”  {Issue #69}

John Muir [1838-1914]
• • “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in ... where nature may heal
and give strength to body and soul alike.”  {Issue #36}
• • “The clearest way into the universe is thru a forest wilderness.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”  {blog 11/2007}

Michael Mukasey, figurehead U.S Attorney General [2008]
“Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.”  {blog 9/2008}

Ty Murray
“The great cowboys are the ones with the biggest hearts.”  {blog 8/2008}

Varda Murrell
“Don't quit before the miracle.”  {Issue #32}

journalist Edward R. Murrow [1908-65]
Edward R. Murrow Quotations Page at Working Minds
Edward R. Murrow Page at Magic Lantern Video & Book Store

Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977]
• • “Genius is an African who dreams up snow.”  {Issue #71}
• • “Why not make the reader re-read a sentence now and then? It won't hurt him.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “Parody is a game; satire is a lesson.”  {blog 2/2009}
• • “A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than
in the ooze of the past.”  {blog 1/2010}

V.S. Naipaul
“Intellect and will, intellect and will.”  {Issue #28}

novelist R.K. Narayan [1906-2001]
“You become a writer by writing. It is a yoga.”  {blog 2/2009}

Ogden Nash [1902-71]
“Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.”  {blog 12/2007}

musician Willie Nelson
• • “Fortunately, we're not in control.”  {Issue #48}
• • “I like myself better when I'm writing regularly.”  {blog 6/2009}

Pablo Neruda [1904-73]
“Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread.”  {blog 2/2009}

Charles B. Newcomb
“Let us move on, and step out boldly, though it be into the night,
and we can scarcely see the way.”  {Issue #51}

John Newhouse
“The [Bush] administration is trying to create reality, not deal with it.”  {Issue #40}

Karol Newlin
“It often shows an excellent command of language to say nothing.”  {Issue #22}

Haing S. Ngor [1940-96]
“If you are unhappy before fame, you will probably be unhappy during fame.”  {blog 5/2009}

Pastor Martin Niemöller [1892-1984]
“When they came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I did not speak out; I was not a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.”  {Issue #57}

Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
• • “Every great philosophy [is] the personal confession of its originator,
a type of involuntary and unaware memoirs.”  {Issue #21}
• • “You must carry a chaos inside you to give birth to a dancing star.”  {Issue #28}
• • “Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages
it is the rule.”  {Issue #43}
• • “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”  {Issue #46}
• • “One repays a teacher poorly if one remains a disciple.”  {Issue #62}
• • “Every man has his price? That is not true. But for every man there exists a bait
which he cannot resist swallowing.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Two things are wanted by a true man, danger and play – therefore,
he seeks woman as the most dangerous play.”  {blog 12/2008}
• • “Life becomes harder and harder as it approaches the heights – the coldness
increases, the responsibility increases.”  {blog 2/2010}

Anaïs Nin [1903-77]
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”  {Issues #49 & #56}

Richard M. Nixon [1913-94]
37th President of the United States, 1969-74
• • “A man is not finished when he's defeated; he's finished when he quits.”  {Issue #64}
• • “I reject the cynical view that politics is inevitably, or even usually, dirty business.”  {blog 10/2008}

Mary G. Nocella of Wayne, NJ
“The torture of prisoners has stained the American character, and the naming of [Alberto] Gonzales
as Attorney General has made that stain indelible.” (in Letters Dept. of Time Magazine, Feb 2005]   {Issue #50}

author, philosopher & revolutionary G.E. Nordell
G.E. Nordell Quotations Page at Working Minds
G.E. Nordell's main website

Richard Nordell
“Always get it in writing. If they say don't worry, then I do.”  {Issue #53}

Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe [1865-1922]
“News is what someone, somewhere, doesn't want you to know. Everything else is advertising.”  {blog 5/2009}

historian Doyce B. Nunis, Jr.
“Los Angeles is fast-paced. We kind of live in the future. We tear things down quickly.”  {Issue #52}

J.M.K. Nyks
“Nothing is so detrimental to quality as success.”  {blog 9/2008}

Authors O thru R

President Barack Obama
44th President of the United States, 2009-?
• • “Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is
just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.” as President-elect  {blog 2/2009}
• • “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small,
but whether government works.”, Inaugural Address 20 January 2009  {blog 2/2009}
• • “I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay.” (on 23 February 2009)  {blog 4/2009}
• • “I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way
they are. . . . Not this time. Not now.” (speech to Joint Session of Congress, 9 September 2009)  {blog 9/2009}

Frank Ogden
“Any law, rule, regulation or sanction conceived with industrial age thinking
reverses itself in a communications age environment.”  {Issue #28}

Keith Olberman
“Success is overrated.”  {Issue #55}

Flannery O'Connor [1925-64]
“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers.
My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.”  {blog 12/2008}

playwright Eugene O'Neill [1888-1953]
• • “Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door
and a lost kingdom of peace.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself –
ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity – before he can learn the truth behind
the facts. And the truth is never ugly.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”  {blog 6/2009}

U.S. Congressman Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O'Neill [1912-94] of Massachusetts
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1977-87
“All politics is local.”  {Issue #60}

physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer [1904-67]
• • “Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge
of mystery, surrounded by it.”  {Issue #57}
• • “There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science.
The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion,
to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.”  {blog 9/2009}

Simon O'Riordan
• • “The only thing ... that Objectivism should not tolerate is any political threat
to the freedom necessary to make choices in living.”  {Issue #36}
• • “I would define Freedom as the complete absence of coercion.”  {Issue #38}

P.J. O'Rourke
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”  {Issue #43}

José Ortega y Gassett [1883-1955]
“We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness, it is always urgent, here and now without any possibility for postponement. Life is fired at us point blank.”  {Issue #11}

George Orwell [1903-50]
• • “Who controls the present controls the past. Who controls the past controls the future.”
(in the novel "1984")  {Issue #41}
• • “War is peace.” (in the novel "1984")
George W. Bush, 2003: “This war is really about peace.”  {Issue #43}
• • “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”  {Issue #57}
• • “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”  {Issue #65}
• • “In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality ... sooner or later
a false belief bumps up against the solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “There are some things [that] only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.”  {blog 2/2008}
• • “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”  {blog 2/2009}

author Ouida [1839-1908]
“To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.”  {Issue #68}

Dutch composer George Overmeire
“The map is not the territory / the menu is not the meal / the score is not the music.”  {blog 12/2009}

Satchel Paige [1906-82]
“Ain't no man can avoid being born average, but there ain't no man got to be common.”  {blog 6/2009}

Thomas Paine [1737-1809]
• • “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”  {Issue #56}
• • “Ye that dare oppose not only tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth!”  {Issue #69}
• • “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”  {blog 11/2007}
• • “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance
of being right.”  {blog 4/2008}

Paracelsus [1493-1541]
“I am different. Let this not upset you.”  {Issue #70}

mystery author Sara Paretsky
• • “[It is] hard to remember who is more dangerous: the people who are attacking
our liberties overseas, or those who are suppressing them at home.”   {Issue #67}
• • “Nothing kinder than strangers. Nothing stranger than kindness.”  {blog 5/2008}

Paul Park
“This Christmas, every Christmas, Santa Claus is everywhere and
Jesus is nowhere to be found.”  {Issue #48}

Dorothy Parker [1893-1967]
“I require only three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.”  {blog 9/2008}

author Robert B. Parker [1932-2010]
• • “Coincidence exists, but believing in it never did me any good.”  {Issue #36}
• • “Martinis taste like John Coltrane sounds.”  {Issue #50}
• • “If you are going to live life on your own terms, there need to be terms,
and somehow you need to live up to them.”  {Issue #64}

Blaise Pascal [1623-62]
• • “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it
from religious conviction.”  (in "Pensees")  {Issue #65 & blog 4/2009}
• • “It is force, not opinion, that queens its way over the world, but it is opinion
that looses the force.”  {blog 10/2009}

author Richard North Patterson
“Politics, like rust, never sleeps.”  {Issue #32}

Gen. George S. Patton [1885-1945]
“You don't win wars by giving up your life for your country,
you win by making the other s.o.b. give up his.”  {Issue #64}

Dr. Linus Pauling [1901-94]
“How do you have a good idea? Have a lot of ideas and keep the good ones.”  {Issue #48}

Cesare Pavese [1908-50]
“One ceases to be a child when one realizes that telling one's troubles
does not make it any better.”  {blog 12/2008}

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov [1849-1936]
“Possibilities are like the wings of birds; they allow man to soar and to climb to the heavens.
And facts are like the atmosphere against which those wings must beat, and without which
the soaring bird will surely plummet back to earth.”  {blog 12/2008}

movie director Sam Peckinpah [1925-84]
“Life is awful. Ain't it fun to watch?”  {Issue #57}

William Penn [1644-1718]
“Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone
is for it.”  {blog 12/2007}

Pericles [495–429 B.C.E.]
• • “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take
an interest in you.” (430 B.C.E.)  {Issue #43}
• • “The worst thing is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly debated.”  {blog 2/2008}

Stephanie Pero
“Behind every successful woman ... is a substantial amount of coffee.”  {blog 12/2007}

H. Ross Perot
“People cannot be managed. Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.”  {Issue #43}

mystery author Ellis Peters [1913-95]
“The mountains of today are the molehills of tomorrow.”  {Issue #21}

Denne Bart Petitclerc [1929-2006]
“The best part of anything is working to get it.”  {Issue #65}

Julia Phillips [1944-2002]
“Reagan and Bush . . . made the world safe for hypocrisy.”  {Issue #33}

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune writer
“2002 will not enter history's ledger as a good year for civil liberties.”  {Issue #27}

Eden Philpotts [1862-1960]
“The Universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for your wits to grow sharper.”  {Issue #66}

Jean Piaget [1896-1980]
• • “The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable
of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse,
whether violent, or gradual.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Scientific thought, then, is not momentary; it is not a static instance; it is a process.”  {blog 9/2008}

Tom Piazza
“Some things are still, at this late hour, not for sale and never will be.”
(Oxford American Magazine Nov-Dec 2000)  {Issue #16}

Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]
• • “Everything you can imagine is real.”  {Issue #35}
• • “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”  {Issue #57}
• • “To be young, really young, takes a long time.”  {blog 2/2008}
• • “Love is the greatest refreshment in life.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized. People just
don't have that much vision.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “I don't seek, I find.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”  {blog 12/2009}

Mary Pickford [1892-1979]
“This thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.”  {Issue #48}

Joseph H. Pilates [1880-1967]
“Fitness is the first requisite to happiness.”  {Issue #36}

British journalist John Pilger
“It is time we recognized that the real terrorism is poverty.”  {Issues #21 & 36} full text of article

Plato [428?-327? B.C.E.]
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being
governed by your inferiors.”  {Issue #50}

Plutarch [46?–127 C.E.]
“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”  {Issue #68}

Hercule Poirot character, written by Agatha Christie [1890-1976]
• • “The world is becoming a difficult place to live in – except for the strong.”  (1948)  {Issue #68}
• • “Unless you are good at guessing, it is not much use being a detective.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “[Stupidity] is the sin that is never forgiven and always punished.”  {blog 8/2008}

Katha Pollitt
“Old, in America, is not a good thing to be.”  {blog 8/2009}

James Poniewozik, Time Magazine columnist
• • “Politics has always been a mud fight – better that citizens jump in the trough
than lose interest.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “In the reality-TV era, unstable behavior [has] become a valid career choice.”  {blog 12/2009}

Ferdinand Porsche [1875-1951]
“In the beginning I looked around and, not finding the automobile of my dreams,
decided to build it.”  {Issue #37}

L. Aldin Porter
“Leave no question in anyone's mind as to where you stand.”  {Issue #65}

Neil Postman
“What's the problem to which this is a solution?”  {Issue #36}

Wendell Potter
“We should be worrying about Wall Street-run health care.”  {blog 11/2009}

Roscoe Pound [1870-1964]
“Civilization involves subjection of force to reason, and the agency of this
subjection is law.”  {blog 10/2008}

Anthony Powell [1905-2000]
“There is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing.”  {blog 12/2008}

writer Dawn Powell [1896-1965]
“For a genius to be a genius, he must have a selfless slave between himself and the world.”   {blog 4/2009}

radio talk show host Bill Press
• • “The Justice Dept. is the new F.E.M.A.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Lobbying is the world's second-oldest profession.”  {blog 12/2007}

Marcel Proust [1871-1922]
• • “Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”   {blog 8/2009}

comedian Richard Pryor [1940-2005]
“A lie is profanity . . . A lie is the worst thing in the world. Art is the ability to tell the truth.”
{blog 10/2007}

Joseph Pulitzer [1847-1911]
“A newspaper that is true to its purpose concerns itself not only with the way things are
but with the way [that] they ought to be.”  {blog 11/2007}

author Philip Pullman
“We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence.
'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.”   {blog 4/2009}

Thomas Pynchon
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.”
(in "Gravity's Rainbow" 1973)  {Issue #58}

cartoon character Jessica Rabbit
“I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.”  {Issue #42}

actor George Raft [1895-1980]
“Part of the loot went for gambling and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly.”  {blog 5/2009}

Ayn Rand [1905-82]
Ayn Rand Quotations Page at Working Minds
Ayn Rand Pages at Working Minds

U.S. Congressman Charles B. Rangel of New York
“Well, I really think that [George W. Bush] shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all.”  {Issue #58}

Dan Rather
“Courage.” (at the end of his last CBS Evening News broadcast)  {Issue #51}

actor Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
40th President of the United States, 1981-89
“Church and state are, and must remain, separate.”  {Issue #57}

Lou Reed
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the price of a song?”  {blog 5/2009}

Wilhelm Reich
“It is the basic evasion of the essential which is the problem of man.”  {Issue #13}

Chuck Reid
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is.”  {blog 12/2007}

Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times reviewer
“It must be death-defying to write a novel.”  {Issue #36}

radio talk show host Randi Rhodes
• • “Fight global warming! Be cool.”  {Issue #60}
• • “Vote like your nation's survival depends on it... because it does.”  {Issue #60}
• • “The emperor has no clue.”  {blog 12/2007}

Branch Rickey [1881-1965]
“Luck is the residue of design.”  {blog 1/2010}

Phil Rizzo of Valencia, California
“Every attempt in history to help labor's cause has been objected to. It seems to me that the object
of capitalism needs to be to bring prosperity to people on all levels. Otherwise, it simply becomes
a system based on greed that would be most enhanced by slavery.”  {Issue #48}

Les Roberts
“You gotta have heart in this world, and compassion,
or else you're a piece of crap just taking up space.”  {Issue #37}

Paul Craig Roberts
• • “Justice is no longer a concern of the justice system.”  {Issue #20}
• • “There are enough fools in Washington to destroy the country
without any help from Muslim terrorists.”  {Issue #27}

Kent Allan Robertson of Hillsborough, NC
“Staying the course in Iraq is tearing the military, the Iraqi people, and our hearts apart.”  {Issue #63}

Kelly Robinson
“Things are always darkest before they go pitch black.”  {Issue #42}

Arthur Rock
#244 of the 2003 Forbes 400 Richest Americans list
“This country's going to have a revolution if something doesn't happen
[about] the haves and have-nots.”  {Issue #37}

actor-comedian Chris Rock
“I see [illegal immigration] as white people finding loopholes in the slavery laws.”
(interview in Time Magazine, March 2007)  {Issue #69}

David Rockefeller, Jr.
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis
and the nations will accept the New World Order.”  {Issue #69}

sculptor Auguste Rodin [1840-1917]
“Patience is also a form of action.”  {blog 3/2008}

Carl Rogers [1902-1987]
“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn – and [to] change.”  {blog 12/2007}

American humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]
• • “I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”  {Issue #43}
• • “A company is known by the people it keeps.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “There's nothing as stupid as an educated man, if you get him off the thing that he is educated in.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “Let Wall Street have a nightmare and the whole country has to help them back to bed again.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation.
The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “The business of government is to keep government out of business – that is,
unless business needs government aid.”  {blog 11/2009}

Sax Rohmer [1853-1959], author of the Dr. Fu Manchu novels
• • “Quality rather than quantity distinguishes the master.”  {Issue #32}
• • “There is no merit in a special talent unless its exercise is of use to others.”  {Issue #36}

Benjamine A. Rooge
“Give me control over a man's economic actions, and hence over his means of survival, and except
for a few occasional heroes, I'll promise to deliver to you men who think and write and behave
as I want them to.”  {blog 11/2009}

Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]
• • “You must do the thing [that] you think you cannot do.”  {Issue #42}
• • “The giving of love is an education in itself.”  {Issue #71}
• • “Small people talk of other people, average people talk of things, great people talk of ideas.”
{blog 10/2007}
• • “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather
than avenge it.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”  {blog 9/2009}

Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]
32nd President of the United States, 1933-45
• • “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point
where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership
of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”  {Issue #46}
• • “In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed, it must be achieved.”  {Issue #48}
• • “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point
where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership
of the government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.”  {Issue #58}
• • “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned
to walk forward.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “It's a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead,
and find no one there.”  {blog 2/2010}

Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]
Republican 26th President of the United States, 1901-09
• • “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right
or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”  {Issue #34}
• • “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”  {Issue #36}
• • “No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.”  {Issue #47}
• • “In any moment of decision, the best thing [that] you can do is the right thing, the next best thing
[that] you can do is the wrong thing, and the worst thing [that] you can do is nothing.”  {Issue #66}
• • “Great as the provocation has been in dealing with the foes who habitually resort to treachery, murder
and torture against our men, nothing can justify . . . the use of torture or inhumane conduct . . .
on the part of the American Army.” (1902)  {blog 12/2007}
• • “All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be
forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders' money for such purposes;
and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping
the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts.”, in 1905  {blog 2/2010}
• • “Ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes
for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.”
in August 1910 speech  {blog 3/2010}

Elihu Root [1845-1937]
“About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients
that they are damned fools and should stop.”  {blog 3/2010}

Roger Rosenblatt
“The God worth worshipping is the one who pays us the compliment of self-regulation, and we might
return it by minding our own business.” (Time Magazine essay 12/2001)  {blog 9/2009}

author Philip Roth
“Old age isn't a battle, old age is a massacre.”  {Issue #59}

movie exhibitor Samuel 'Roxy' Rothafel [1882-1936]
“Don't give the people what they want, give them something better.”  {Issue #49}

Rothschild Brothers of London
“The few who can understand the [Federal Reserve] system will be so interested in its profits, or so
dependent on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that class; while on the other hand,
the great body of the people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage
that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps
without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.”  {blog 11/2009}

Mayer Amschel Rothschild [1744-1812]
“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes the laws.”  {blog 11/2009}

Matthew Rothschild
“At bottom, the 9/11 conspiracy theories are profoundly irrational and unscientific.”
(in The Progressive, October 2006)  {Issue #66}

Prof. Nouriel Roubini, N.Y.U. Stern School of Business
“We are going to have a recession in 2007.”  {Issue #66}

Rousseau
“Man is born free but is everywhere in chains.”  {Issue #25}

Robert Ruark [1915-65]
“Nothing works and nobody cares.”  {Issue #57}

Donald H. Rumsfeld
U.S. Defense Secretary, 2001-2006
• • “I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past – I think the past
was not predictable when it started.” (DoD press briefing 3 April 2003)  {Issue #40}
• • “There are known knowns. These are things [that] we know we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things [that] we don't know we don't know.”  (DoD press briefing 2003)  {Issue #41}

Damon Runyon [1880-1946]
“It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong
– but that is the way to bet.”  {blog 3/2010}
{ “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill;
but time and chance happen to them all.” ~~ Judeo-Christian Bible, Ecclesiastes 9:11  {blog 3/2010} }

John Ruskin [1819-1900]
• • “That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble
and happy human beings.”  {Issue #66}
• • “The primary reward for human toil is not what you get by it, but what you become by it.”  {blog 12/2008}

radio propagandist & ugly male Limp Rushbaugh
• • “They have no constitution over there [in England].”  {Issue #54}
• • “The feminist movement is just something for ugly women to do.”  {blog 10/2008}

Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
• • “The resistance to a new idea increases as the square of its importance.”  {Issue #11}
• • “So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.”  {Issue #36}
• • “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”  {Issue #36}
• • “There is a motive which is stronger than self-preservation: It is the desire to get the better
of the other fellow.”  {Issue #45}
• • “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search
for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “Most people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise
of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “I think our own hearts can teach us no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts to make the world a place to live in instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.”   {quoted by Felix De Cola on his deathbed}  {blog 9/2008}
• • “The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.”  {blog 4/2009}
• • “The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”  {blog 2/2010}
• • “The best life is one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possesive impulses the smallest.”  {blog 2/2010}
• • “The next step [in a Fascist movement] is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent,
by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.”  {blog 3/2010}

Tom Russell
“Something significant has been lost.”  {Issue #52}

Bayard Rustin [1912-87]
“God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue.
What the gods require of us is that we not stop trying.”  {Issue #36}

Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio
“There's going to be a revolution here before the American people agree to a draft.”   {Issue #64}