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

Page Three

Alphabetical by Author
A thru C • D thru F

here on Page Three: G • H • I • J

K thru N • O thru R • S thru Z

Proverbs & Anonymous • Laws of Life

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Working Minds Homepage
free monthly 'WMail' Philosophy Newsletter [2000-2007]
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After WMail Issue #72 in October 2007, essays & quotations & news are being posted to the
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Authors G thru J

Clark Gable [1901-60]
“Hell, if I'd jumped on all the dames [that] I'm supposed to have jumped on,
I'd have had no time to go fishing.”  {blog 4/2008}

Neal Gabler
“More often than not 'fair' and 'balanced' may be mutually exclusive.”
in Los Angeles Times op-ed  {blog 4/2010}

Dennis Gabor
“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”  {Issue #45}

Zsa Zsa Gabor
“A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.”  {blog 9/2008}

Serge Gainsbourg [1928-91]
“Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts.”  {blog 5/2012}

macro-economist James K. Galbraith
• • “It is a horror that taxes have fallen so much for the very wealthy
and risen so much for the working poor and the middle class.”  {Issue #47}
• • “Intelligent design cannot explain Darwinian evolution. Darwin's whole point is that variation
and change are random and without higher purpose. We cannot imagine that God designed
this disproof of His own existence.”  {Issue #57}
• • “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy:
that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”  {blog 5/2009}
• • “The United States has many problems at the moment: a high-and-stubborn unemployment rate,
a foreclosure catastrophe, a slowing economy that has not recovered and will not recover from the
Great Crisis, and the ongoing challenges of infrastructure, energy and climate change.”  {blog 8/2011}

economist John Kenneth Galbraith [1908-2006]
• • “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous
and the unpalatable.”   {blog 9/2009}
• • “Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists”
• • “It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out
on the troubled sea of thought.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “I spent my youth worrying about corporate power. Now I worry about
corporate incompetence.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “Meetings are indespensible when you don't want to do anything.”  {blog 5/2012}
• • “The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.”  {blog 11/2012}

Rivka Galchen
“In quantum mechanics, the Universe, at its most elemental level, is random, an idea
that tends to upset people.”   {blog 4/2011}

Galileo Galilei [1564-1642]
• • “We will laugh at the extraordinary stupidity of the crowd.” (in 1610)  {Issue #62}
• • “To understand the universe, you must know the language in which it is written.
And that language is mathematics.”  {Issue #62}
• • “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning
of a single individual.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Doubt is the father of invention.”  {blog 11/2010}
• • “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason,
and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”  {blog 4/2011}

John Galsworthy [1867-1933]
“Life calls the tune, we dance.”  {blog 4/2013}

Dr. Arun Gandhi
“As long as we pursue this materialistic kind of lifestyle where we make money, and possessions [are]
the only ambition in life, we are going to go downhill and eventually destroy ourselves.”  {Issue #14}

Mahatma Gandhi  [1869-1948]
• • “Even if you are a minority of one, a truth is a truth.”  {Issue #46}
• • “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”  {Issue #50}
• • “There is no path to peace: peace is the way.”  {Issue #52}
• • “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”  {Issue #60}
• • “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  {Issue #62}
• • “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won.
There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible,
but in the end they always fall, always.”  {Issue #64}
• • “Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “What you do is of little significance; but it is very important that you do it.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “You may think your [that] actions are meaningless and that they won't help, but that is no excuse,
you must still act.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “Earth provides for every man's need, but not for every man's greed.”  {blog 6/2011}
• • “If we are to reach real peace in this world, we shall have to begin with the children.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”  {blog 3/2012}
• • “The difference between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing would solve most
of the world's problems.”  {blog 3/2012}

Jerry Garcia [1942-95], member of the Grateful Dead band
“You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one.”  {blog 7/2012}

Jesus Garcia, Jr. of Lynwood, California
“What kind of man am I if I do not help make this world better?”  {Issue #56}

mystery author Erle Stanley Gardner [1889-1970]
• • “All that really counts is a man's ability to live, to get the most out of it as he goes thru it,
and he gets the most kick out of it by playing a no-limit game.”  {Issue #33}
• • “Life, like money, is meant to be spent.”  {Issue #63}

playwright Herb Gardner [1935-2003]
“My ambition consists entirely of being able to [write] well enough
that they let me do it again – and to avoid public disgrace.”  {Issue #36}

John W. Gardner [1912-2002]
“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”  {blog 8/2011}

Steven R. Garman
“Physics is the universe's operating system.”  {blog 11/2010}

William Lloyd Garrison [1805-79]
“With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but with tyrants I will
give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.”  {blog 8/2009}

cookbook author Ina Garten
“Simple is the most sophisticated thing of all.”  {blog 6/2012}

Bill Gates
• • “640K ought to be enough [memory] for anybody.” (in 1981)  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking [that] they can't lose.”  {blog 4/2013}

William Campbell Gault [1910-95]
“Your mother has to be there when you are born, but nobody has to be there when you die.”  {blog 12/2009}

Prof. Willard Gaylin
“Expressing anger is a form of public littering.”  {blog 1/2012}

Jean Genet [1910-86]
“Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth would be to have been young
and never dreamed at all.”   {blog 1/2011}

Chief Dan George [1899-1981]
“If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you
will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys.”  {blog 12/2010}

Henry George [1839-97]
“Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be,
the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.”  {Issue #43}

Native American leader Geronimo [1829-1909]
“I was no chief and never had been, but because I had been more deeply wronged than others,
this honor was conferred upon me, and I resolved to prove worthy of the trust.”  {blog 10/2010}

George Gershwin [1898-37]
“Rumors about highbrow music ridiculous. Am out to write hits.”
(telegram to his agent, circa 1935)  {blog 8/2008}

musician Stan Getz [1927-91]
“Music is my life at the expense of everything else in my life.”  {blog 1/2010}

C.E.R.N. physicist Fabiola Gianotti
“The Higgs boson [particle] has two functions: One is to give mass to the Universe. The other is
to prevent the standard model from going bananas.”  {blog 8/2012}

Robin Gibb [1949-2012], co-founder of the Bee Gees band
“An artist is an artist because he is not happy with the world, so he creates his own existence.”   {blog 6/2012}

Kahlil Gibran [1883-1931]
“Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.”  {blog 12/2010}

William Gibson
“The future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed.”  {blog 6/2009}

Nobel Laureate André Gide [1869-1951]
• • “People cannot discover new lands until they have the courage to
lose sight of the shore.”  {Issue #48}
• • “The color of truth is gray.”  {blog 12/2008}
• • “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening,
everything must be said again.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “Believe those who search for truth. Doubt those who claim to have found it.”   {blog 4/2012}

Dave Gilson
“The entire United States [is] a giant debtors colony, one nation in the red,
subject to compound interest, indentured to Citibank.”  {Issue #68}

beat poet Allen Ginsberg [1926-97]
“A secret is something [that] you can only tell one person – at a time.”   {blog 1/2013}

William Gladstone [1809-98]
“All the world over I'll back the masses against the classes.”  {blog 9/2009}

half-Jamaican author Malcolm Gladwell
“Somebody always has to be the n*gger.”  {blog 12/2009}

astronaut John Glenn
“Exploration and the pursuit of knowledge have always paid dividends in the long run.”
(testifying before Congress 26 February 1962)  {blog 2/2009}

Marc Gobé
“We live in a society where everybody feels guilty.”  {Issue #45}

cinema auteur Jean-Luc Godard of France
• • “I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema
because it has no ideas.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end ... but not necessarily in that order.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”  {blog 6/2009}

Joseph Goebbels [1897-1945], Nazi Propaganda Minister
• • “The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always
be essentially simple and repetitious.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne
in mind constantly . . . It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”  {blog 4/2011}

Goethe [1749-1832]
• • “What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has
genius, power and magic in it.”  {Issue #9}
• • “Nothing is more terrifying than ignorance in action.”  {Issue #26 & blog 8/2009}
• • “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe
that they are free.”  {Issue #43}
• • “Nothing is worth more than this day.”  {Issue #45}
• • “The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.”  {Issue #67 & blog 1/2008}
• • “First master the rules, then discard them.”  {Issue #68}
• • “Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “A useless life is an early death.”  {blog 5/2009}
• • “It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes,
one must also accomplish.”  {blog 6/2010}
• • “Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.”  {blog 1/2011}
• • “Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it
with our feet when it stops.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “Nothing is worse than active ignorance.”  {blog 11/2012}

anarchist Emma Goldman [1869-1940]
• • “If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution.”  {Issue #63}
• • “The most violent element in society is ignorance.”  {Issue #67}

William Goldman
“Life is not fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.”  {blog 6/2012}

Oliver Goldsmith [1728-74]
“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.”  {blog 2/2011}

writer David Goldstein
“Yes, our regulatory agencies are incompetent. But they are incompetent by design.”   {blog 4/2010}

Richard Goldstein
“Sadism is the hallmark of conservative culture.”  {Issue #67}

movie producer Samuel Goldwyn [1879-1974]
“I was always an independent, even when I had partners.”  {blog 10/2008}

labor leader Samuel Gompers [1850-1924]
“What does labor want? We want more school houses and less jails. More books and less guns. More learning and
less vice. More leisure and less greed. More justice and less revenge. We want more . . . opportunities to cultivate
our better natures.”  {blog 1/2013}

Dame Jane Goodall
• • “The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” (Time Magazine, August 2002)  {Issue #29}
• • “Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something
[that] you don't believe is right.”  {blog 4/2013}

columnist Ellen Goodman
“The things [that] we hate about ourselves aren't more real than the things
[that] we like about ourselves.”   {blog 7/2012}

Charles Goodnight [1836-1929]
“Cowards never lasted long enough to become real cowboys.”  {blog 8/2008}

Archie Goodwin character, written by Rex Stout [1886-1975]
• • “I love to do a good job more than anything else [that] I can think of.”  {Issue #62}
• • “All's fair in love and business.”  {blog 11/2007}

Adam Gopnik
• • “There is a constant struggle between the spirit of free inquiry and the spirit
of fundamentalist dogma.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader
and condition: Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher In The Rye.”,
in The New Yorker, February 2010  {blog 2/2010}
• • “For [Adam] Smith, the market moves toward monopoly; it is the job of the philosopher to define,
and of the sovereign state to restore, fair play.”, in 2010  {blog 11/2010}
• • “The strongest argument for religion is not that it is in touch with God but that it puts us in touch
with one another.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country
today – perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850.”  {blog 2/2012}

Nadine Gordimer
“Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.”  {blog 4/2011}

Al Gore, Jr.
• • “[The Bush] administration has taken a wrecking ball to the very foundations
of our democracy.” (August 2007)  {blog 10/2007}
• • “The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton.
We have to ask ourselves 'What is going on here?'.”  {blog 12/2007}

Russian writer Maxim Gorky [1868-1936]
“Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.”  {blog 4/2013}

Joe Gould
“Only the artist is free because he is of single purpose. He knows what he wants
and wants only that and that frightens people.”  {Issue #24}

David Graber
“The yawning chasm between the very rich and everybody else
is making [America] a plutocratic caricature of democracy.”  {Issue #67}

mystery author Sue Grafton
“Let's be optimistic. It doesn't cost anything.”  {Issue #42}

Bette Nesmith Graham [1924-1980], inventor of Liquid Paper™
“Anyone who is making progress faces fear. Overcoming fear is all there is to success.”  {Issue #36}

newpaper publisher Katharine Graham [1917-2001]
“A mistake is simply another way of doing things.”  {blog 8/2012}

Grateful Dead band
“It's even worse than it appears / But . . . that's all ri-i-ight.” (song lyric)  {Issue #53}

poet Robert Graves [1895-1985]
“There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money.”  {blog 11/2008}

Allan Mcleod Gray [1905-75]
“Whatever you do, you'll regret it.”  {blog 12/2007}

John Gray
“The luxury of doing good surpasses every personal enjoyment.”  {blog 7/2012}

Kevin Alexander Gray
“If this is a recession in the general economy, then it is a depression
in the black community.” (2007)  {blog 2/2008}

Thomas Gray [1716-71]
“Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.”  {blog 3/2012}

Andrew M. Greeley
“Trivial people . . . lack an overriding hunger to do that which they do best.
Their ambitions are stylistic rather than substantial.”  {Issue #43}

Horace Greeley [1811-72]
“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures,
and that is character.”  {blog 3/2012}

'green elephant' of Canada
“How can [our] society that is so undemocratic claim to be a model of democracy for others?”
in a comment on IMDb   {blog 2/2012}

Graham Greene [1904-91]
• • “One must take a stand. If one is to remain human.”  {Issue #48}
• • “Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “It is impossible to go thru life without trust. That is to be imprisoned in
the worst cell of all, oneself.”  {blog 1/2012}

Vivian Greene
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”  {blog 5/2012}

Stephen Greenleaf
“These days you don't run into all that many people who make use of a moral compass.”  {blog 12/2009}

Ben Greenman
“Hopelessness springs eternal.”  {blog 5/2010}

Alan Greenspan
former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, 1987-2006
• • “Capital doesn't pay any taxes, only people pay taxes. What happens is, you impose taxes on
organizations which then deflect them elsewhere. But at the end of the day,
all taxes are paid by people.” (testimony before Congress 21 May 2003)  {Issues #42 & #54}
• • “I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably
misunderstood what I've said.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way
of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights." (in 1966)  {blog 10/2009}

Wayne Gretzky
“You miss 100 percent of the shots [that] you don't take.”  {Issue #57}

Western author Zane Grey [1872-1939]
• • “Life ain't no fiesta.”  {Issue #23}
• • “It's a hell of a life, if you don't weaken.”  {Issue #33}
• • “Progress is great, but nature undespoiled is greater.”  {Issue #36}

David Ray Griffin
“We have each other and we have the truth.”  {blog 1/2010}

Lev Grossman
“Trashy books are as hard to write as good ones.”  {blog 7/2008}

French writer Sacha Guitry [1885-1997]
“Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness.”  {blog 10/2010}

A.B. Guthrie, Jr. [1901-91]
“If literature is to have any dignity, it must enlighten life.”  {Issue #34}

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
“The best relationship is one where your love for each other exceeds
your need for each other.”  {blog 6/2008}

Wayne H.
“The shortest distance between two points is usually under construction.”  {Issue #62}

G.O.P. Senator Chuck Hagel
“The President says [that] he is not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true.
You can impeach him.” (2007)  {Issue #71}

Merle Haggard
“Where's all the freedom / that we're fighting for?” (song lyric)  {Issue #68}

Edward Hale
“I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do
interfere with what I can do.”  {blog 4/2008}

employment baron Robert Half [1919?-2001]
“Talent does you no good unless it's recognized by someone else.”  {blog 8/2012}

Alexander Hamilton [1755?-1804]
“In the general course of human nature, a power over a man's subsistence amounts to
a power over his will."  (in 'Federalist Paper 79')  {blog 10/2009}

syndicated comedian Argus Hamilton
“Class is very simple in America. You're in the upper class if your name is on the building; you're in the middle class
if your name is on your desk; and you're in the working class if your name is on your shirt.”  {blog 4/2013}

Dashiell Hammett [1894-1961]
“Nothing lasts. You can't count on anything but yourself.”  {Issue #36}

Judge Learned Hand [1872-1961]
“The only country which any man has a right to love is one where there is balanced judgment,
justice founded on wisdom, a free spirit, and a temperate mind.”  {blog 2/2008}

Micah S. Handler
“Education is only half the battle against poverty. The other half is opportunity.”  {Issue #48}

Austrian film director Michael Haneke
“If you look at the suffering around you, you can't be happy.”  {blog 12/2009}

Richard G. Harms of Issaquah, Washington
“The basic problem in the world today is that there is too much religion
and not enough common sense.”  {Issue #46}

F.A. Harper
“The man who knows what freedom means will find a way to be free.”  {Issue #25}

Sydney J. Harris [1917-86]
“Regret for the things [that] we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for
the things [that] we did not do that is inconsolable.”  {Issue #40}

Jamie Harrison
“Mental illness takes so many forms.”  {Issue #50}

British actor Rex Harrison [1908-90]
“Exhilaration is that feeling [that] you get just after a great idea hits you,
and just before you realize what's wrong with it.”  {blog 4/2012}

William Henry Harrison [1773-1841]
9th President of the United States, March-April 1841
“I believe . . . that all the measures of the Government are directed to the purpose of making
the rich richer and the poor poorer.” on 10 October 1840  {blog 3/2010}

cartoonist Johnny Hart [1931-2007]
“It takes brains to understand a smart remark, but none to be offended by it.”  {Issue #71}

radio talk show host Thom Hartmann
• • “America is melting down.”  {Issue #70}
• • “Voluntary simplicity is a high value.”  {blog 11/2007}
• • “John Edwards is the candidate that corporate America is most afraid of.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “Occupy something!”  {blog 9/2012}

Thom Hartnett
“One person speaking up makes more noise than a thousand people who remain silent.”  {blog 12/2011}

Paul Harvey [1918-2009]
“In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these.”  {blog 10/2009}

Václav Havel
“Work unswervingly to do something [that] you want in your local sphere.”  {Issue #62}

eco-activist Paul Hawken
“We are moving from a world created by privilege to a world created by community . . . Global themes
are emerging in response to cascading ecological crises and human suffering.”  {blog 12/2011}

Stephen W. Hawking
• • “There would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time . . . The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE . . . What place, then, for a creator?”  {Issue #26}
• • “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers.
That is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”  {blog 6/2011}

Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-64]
• • “You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.”  {blog 1/2012}
• • “A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.”  {blog 2/2012}
• • “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”  {blog 3/2012}
• • “Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.”  {blog 5/2012}
• • “Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will
sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”  {blog 9/2012}

S.I. Hayakawa [1906-92]
“If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be
so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.”  {Issue #36}

Chris Hayes
“We now operate in a world in which we can assume neither competence nor good faith from the authorities.
The consequences of this simple, devastating realization define American life.”  {blog 7/2012}

actress Helen Hayes [1900-93]
“We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.”  {blog 7/2011}

Rutherford B. Hayes [1822-93]
19th President of the United States, 1877–81
“This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people no longer. It is a government
of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.” in his diary, March 1888  {blog 11/2009 & 10/2012}

William Hazlitt [1778-1830]
• • “The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.”  {Issue #43}
• • “It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes the edge off admiration.”  {blog 5/2012}

mystery author Jeremiah Healy
“Nobody’s civil to anybody anymore.”  {Issue #63}

radio commentator Gabriel Heatter [1890-1972]
“Life is never so bad at its worst that it is impossible to love;
life is never so good at its best that it is easy to live.”  {Issue #43}

Ben Hecht [1894-1964]
• • “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to
tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”  {blog 11/2011}
• • “Prejudice is the raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.”  {blog 12/2012}

comedian Mitch Hedberg [1968-2005]
“The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be
as good as a wall.”  {blog 8/2012}

Martin Heidegger [1889-1976]
• • “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that
we are still not thinking.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “Language is the house of the truth of Being.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “The possible ranks higher than the actual.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety
of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact
language remains the master of Man.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?”  {blog 2/2010}
• • “Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries,
is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.”  {blog 3/2010}

economist Robert L. Heilbroner [1919-2005]
“The cure for capitalism's failing would require that a government . . . rise
above the interests of one class alone.”  {Issue #49 & blog 2/2011}

Heinrich Heine [1797-1856]
• • “There are more fools in the world than there are people.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.”  {blog 10/2012}

Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]
• • “The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.”  {Issue #36}
• • “Love is a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person
are essential to one's own happiness.”  {Issue #51}
• • “The best things in history are accomplished by people who got tired of being shoved around.”  {Issue #59}
• • “The majority is never right.”  {Issue #64}
• • “Nothing gives life more zest than running for your life.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “Paradoxes are verbal, they do not exist in the real world.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Vice has this defeat: It cannot be truly intelligent. It's very motives are its weakness.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “A generation which ignores history has no past – and no future.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “Progress in physics is achieved by denying the obvious and accepting the impossible.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Military policy is like cancer: Nobody knows where it comes from but it can't be ignored.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “Disturbing the ecological balance is the worst mistake [that] any government can make.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “As courage is bravery in the face of fear, virtue is right conduct in the face of temptation.”  {blog 12/2010}
• • “Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways
to do something.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”  {blog 6/2012}

Martin Heinrich
U.S. Congressman [Dem NM-01, 2009-2012], U.S Senator from New Mexico [since 2013; Dem]
• • “The time has come for us to stand up for the American people and to hold
the insurance companies accountable.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “I will keep working until every [American] who wants to work has a job.” (on Labor Day 2011)  {blog 9/2011}

Joseph Heller [1923-99]
“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”  {blog 4/2013}

playwright Lillian Hellman [1905-84]
“It is best to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.”  {blog 6/2011}

author Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
• • “All stories, if continued far enough, end in death. And he is no true storyteller
who would keep that from you.”  {Issue #46}
• • “Never mistake motion for action.”  {Issue #49}
• • “It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think [that]
you were born that way.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be
the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Courage is grace under pressure.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings
worse things than any that can ever happen in war.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is
known as The Artist's Reward.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, sh*t detector.
This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “Sometimes [writing] comes easily and perfectly. Sometimes it is like drilling rock
and then blasting it out with charges.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “When writing a novel, a writer should create living people; people not characters.
A character is a caricature.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place, then come down and
shoot the survivors.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “All good books have one thing in common: They are truer than if they had really happened.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
in "Farewell To Arms", 1929  {blog 8/2012}
• • “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”  {blog 1/2013}

David Hempy
“A firm grip on reality is not a critical component of happiness.”  {blog 6/2009}

John R. Henderson
“When in doubt, doubt.”  {blog 6/2012}

rock legend Jimi Hendrix [1942-70]
• • “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.”  {Issue #58}
• • “Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.”  {blog 4/2011 & 11/2011}

Patrick Henry [1736-99]
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.
Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force,
you are inevitably ruined.”  {blog 8/2009}

Audrey Hepburn [1929-93]
• • “Paris is always a good idea.”  {blog 1/2013}
• • “The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.”  {blog 3/2013}

Katharine Hepburn [1907-2003]
• • “If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “If you survive long enough, you are revered, rather like an old building.”  {blog 3/2012}

Anne Herbert
• • “Practice random acts of kindness, and senseless acts of beauty.”  {Issues #1 & #39}
• • “Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through
times of no libraries.”  {blog 1/2011}

sci-fi author Frank Herbert [1920-86]
• • “The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives
but have only one course of action.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “The greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved. They can only be outgrown.”  {blog 4/2012}

Oliver Herford [1863-1935]
“Jehovah has always seemed to me the most fascinating character in all fiction.”  {blog 2/2011}

Jeff Herman
“To lay blame is an abdication of power.”  {blog 9/2008}

Don Herold [1889-1966]
• • “Be kind to dumb people.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “Man is the only animal that plays poker.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “I had, out of my sixty teachers, a scant half dozen who couldn't have been
supplanted by phonographs.”  {blog 2/2012}
• • “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to concieve.”  {blog 4/2012}
• • “Jesus was a bachelor.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “Thought itself is probably a superstition.”  {blog 10/2012}

Mark Hertsgaard
“The battle to prevent global warming has been lost. Now the race to survive it has begun.”
(in The Nation Magazine, in 2006)  {Issue #68}

Herman Hesse [1877-1962]
• • “World history is nothing but an endless, dreary account of the rape of the weak by the strong . . . (It is) a
race with time, a scramble for profit, for power, for treasures.” in "The Glass Bead Game", 1943  {blog 4/2012}
• • “The truth is lived, not taught.”  {blog 9/2012}

French patriot Stéphane Hessel [b. 1917]
• • “The worst possible outlook is indifference . . . Behaving like that deprives you of one of the essentials
of being human: the capacity and the freedom to be outraged.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “To create is to resist. To resist is to create.”  {blog 4/2011}

adventurer Thor Heyerdahl [1914-2002]
“Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.”  {blog 11/2011}

Carl Hiaasen
• • “Somebody's got to be angry or nothing gets fixed.”  {Issue #29}
• • “The American penal system functions essentially as a social septic tank,
and . . . nothing more lofty should be expected of it.”  {Issue #40}

George V. Higgins [1939-99]
“This life's hard, man, but it's harder if you're stupid.”  {blog 4/2009}

author Patricia Highsmith [1921-95]
“There is no moral to my life – I have none – except: 'Stand up and take it'.
The rest is sentiment.”  {Issue #36}

Cullen Hightower [1923-2008]
“We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic.”  {blog 5/2012}

W.F. Hightower, father of progressive activist Jim Hightower
“Everyone does better when everyone does better.”  {blog 7/2011}

Napoleon Hill [1883-1970]
• • “Both poverty and riches are the offspring of thought.”  {Issue #46}
• • “The man who does more than he is paid [for] will soon be paid for more than he does.”  {blog 12/2011}

mystery author Tony Hillerman [1925-2008]
“It takes a million dollars to beat the system, to pay your own ransom, to buy back your own life.”
in "Blessing Way", 1970  {blog 7/2010}

Burton Hills
“Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.”  {blog 12/2007}

movie director Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]
• • “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”  {blog 2/2009}
• • “Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love scenes like murders.”  {blog 1/2011}
• • “Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.”  {blog 12/2011}

Adolf Hitler [1889-1945]
• • “What luck for rulers that men do not think.”  {blog 2/2008}
• • “If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, then you must tell them the crudest
and most stupid things.” (in "Mein Kampf", 1925-26)  {blog 4/2011}

counter-revolutionary philosopher Thomas Hobbes [1588-1679]
“Consequent to a time of War . . . the life of Man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
(in 'Leviathan', 1651)  {blog 10/2007}

Tom Hodgkinson
“The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together.”  {Issue #56}

longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer [1902-83]
• • “It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.”  {Issue #36}
• • “It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise.”  {Issue #51}
• • “You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.”  {Issue #61}
• • “It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.”  {Issue #61}
• • “The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst
over the heads of the majority in the middle.”   {Issue #61}
• • “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”  {Issue #61}
• • “Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing
when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self; the passionate state of mind is an expression
of inner dissatisfaction.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.”   {blog 11/2010}
• • “The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land
than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves.
Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of
secondary importance.”   {blog 11/2010}
• • “An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing
anything into an empty head.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “A man by himself is in bad company.”  {blog 10/2012}
• • “Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.”  {blog 11/2012}

activist Abbie Hoffman [1936-89]
“Democracy is not something [that] you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something
[that] you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles.”  {blog 12/2007}

Jackie Hoffman
“Everything in this world is an opportunity for pain and failure.”  {blog 12/2007}

Eric Holder
“Waterboarding is torture.” (testifying before Congress as U.S. Attorney General-designate
on 15 January 2009)  {blog 2/2009}

Max Holland
“The only thing more astounding than the [Bush] administration's staggering hubris
is the smugness of its ignorance.” (in The Washington Spectator)  {Issue #66}

U.S. Senator Ernest Hollings
“If {the U.S. Marines in Lebanon} have been put there to fight, there are far too few.
If they've been put there to be killed, there are far too many.” (1983)  {blog 2/2008}

John Andrew Holmes
“It is well remembered that the entire universe, with one trifling exception,
is composed of others.” circa 1927  {blog 6/2010}

Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-94]
• • “A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.”  {blog 12/2008}
• • “Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make
critics of the chips that were left.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Pretty much all the honest truthtelling there is in the world is done by children.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exception.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “The greatest thing in the world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.”  {blog 4/2012}
• • “The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.”  {blog 9/2012}

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. [1841-1935]
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1902-1932
• • “Man's mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension.”  {Issue #38}
• • “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.”  {blog 7/2010}

Sherlock Holmes character, as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1859-1930]
• • “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains,
no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”  {Issues #43 & #70}
• • “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed
into condoning your offences.”  {blog 9/2008}

Victoria Holt {real name Eleanor Hibbert} [1906-93]
“Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.”  {blog 10/2010}

football coach Lou Holtz
• • “Don't tell your problems to people: eighty percent don't care; and the other twenty percent
are glad [that] you have them.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “The man who complains about the way [that] the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it.”  {blog 1/2013}
• • “Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “When all is said and done, more is said than done.”  {blog 3/2013}

President Herbert Hoover [1874-1964]
“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”  {blog 11/2011}

J. Edgar Hoover [1895-1972]
“No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government
is actually doing is worse than you imagine.”  {Issue #69}

Bob Hope [1903-2003]
“You know [that] you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.”  {blog 7/2012}

Grace Murray Hopper, U.S. Navy Captain [1906-92]
“A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.”  {Issue #59}

Lena Horne [1917-2010]
“It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way [that] you carry it."

economist George Horwich
“The true engines of economic growth [are] human ingenuity and productivity.”  {blog 4/2011}

Robert E. Howard [1906-36], creator of Conan The Cimmerian
“Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance.
And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.” (in "Beyond The Black River")  {blog 3/2010}

Sidney Howard [1891-1939]
“Half of knowing what you want is knowing what you have to give up to get it.”
{not Calvin Coolidge}  {blog 9/2009}

Ed Howdershelt
“There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo.
Use in that order.”  {blog 5/2010}

William Dean Howells [1837-1920]
“What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.”  {blog 9/2011}

Chinese author & lecturer Tehyi Hsieh [1884-1972]
• • “The key to success isn't much good until one discovers the right lock to insert it [into].”  {blog 11/2011}
• • “Action will remove the doubts that theory cannot solve.”  {blog 12/2011}

Elbert Hubbard [1859-1915]
• • “We find what we expect to find, and we receive what we ask for.”  {Issue #46}
• • “This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books
than we do for chewing gum.”  {Issue #47}
• • “To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”  {Issue #48}
• • “One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work
of one extraordinary man.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in on the experience.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.”  {blog 10/2012}
• • “Everyone is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day. Wisdom consists in not exceeding that limit.”  {blog 3/2013}

Frank McKinney 'Kin' Hubbard [1868-1930]
• • “A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Fun is like life insurance. The older you get the more it costs.”  {blog 11/2012}

Langston Hughes [1902-67]
“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.”  {blog 3/2012}

art historian Robert Hughes [1938-2012]
“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented
as a consolation prize.”  {blog 9/2012}

French author Victor Hugo [1802-85]
• • “The best religion is tolerance.”  {Issue #27}
• • “There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”  {Issue #46}
• • “He who opens a school door closes a prison.”  {blog 10/2008}
• • “Nothing in the world is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “Enthusiasm is the fever of reason.”  {blog 6/2010}
• • “If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”  {blog 8/2011}
• • “Nothing makes a man so adventurous as an empty pocket.”  {blog 4/2013}

Harold S. Hulbert
“Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it.”  {blog 3/2008}

David Hume [1711-76]
“Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken.”  {blog 8/2011}

Robert Hurley, of Stoddard Management
“Hedge funds are the sophisticated way to lose money, as opposed to the more mundane way[s].”
{blog 6/2008}

Robert Maynard Hutchins [1899-1977]
“Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.”  {blog 2/2011}

Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]
• • “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”  {Issue #27}
• • “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.”  {Issues #43 & #54}
• • “The world is illusion, but an illusion which we must take seriously, because it is real as far
as it goes, and [real] in those aspects of the reality which we are capable
of comprehending. Our business is to wake up.”  {blog 4/2009}
• • “The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain
other sets of people are human.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “At any given moment, life is completely senseless. But viewed over a period, it seems to reveal itself
as an organism existing in time, having a purpose, trending in a certain direction.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “Chastity [is] the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions.”  {blog 3/2012}
• • “The trouble with fiction . . . is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.”  {blog 4/2013}

character Iago, as written by William Shakespeare [1564-1616]
“Pleasure and action make the hours seem shorter.”  {blog 10/2010}

playwright Henrik Ibsen [1828-1906]
• • “The strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone.”
(from the 1882 play ‘An Enemy of The People’)  {Issues #63 & #67}
• • “You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.”
in "An Enemy of The People" (1882)  {blog 3/2010}
• • “It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments
on journalists and politicians.”  {blog 2/2011}

Gary Indiana
“[Jean-Paul] Sartre preferred reading serie noir crime novels to Marleau-Ponty,
and who could blame him?” (in Los Angeles Times Times Book Review)  {blog 4/2010}

theologian Wm. Ralph Inge [1860-1954]
• • “It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism
while wolves remain of a different opinion.”  {Issue #45}
• • “A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common
hatred of its neighbors.”   {blog 6/2011}
• • “The proper time to influence the character of a child is about 100 years before he is born.”  {blog 10/2011}

Robert G. Ingersoll [1833-99]
“In nature, there are no rewards or punishment, only consequences.”  {Issue #51 & blog 7/2012}

novelist John Irving
“Our memory is a monster; you forget it – it does not.”  {blog 7/2012}

Washington Irving [1783-1859]
“Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.”  {blog 5/2009}

journalist & biographer Walter Isaacson
• • “The free flow of information is the oxygen of democracy.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “[Steve Jobs] revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music,
phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.”   {blog 10/2011}

columnist Molly Ivins [1944-2007]
• • “Don't let anyone ever tell you that it isn't enough just to tell the truth.”  {Issue #68}
• • “Alcohol may lead nowhere, but it sure is the scenic route.”  {blog 3/2012}

Andrew Jackson [1767–1845]
seventh President of The United States, 1829-37
“It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways
to spell any word.” (in 1833)  {blog 6/2010}

Rev. Jesse Jackson
• • “Keep hope alive; let nothing break your spirit.”  {Issue #64}
• • “Don't you walk away from that vote! People died for the right to vote!” in 1984 speech  {blog 2/2012}

Robert H. Jackson [1892-1954]
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1941-54
• • “There is no such thing as an achieved liberty; like electricity, there can be no substantial storage
and it must be generated as it is enjoyed, or the lights go out.” (in 1953)  {blog 8/2009}
• • “It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen
to keep the government from falling into error.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money.”  {blog 3/2012}

Vineet Jain, managing director of Times of India
“We are not in the newspaper business, we are in the advertising business.”  {blog 12/2012}

Dresden James
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations,
[then] the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”   {blog 4/2010}

Henry James [1843-1916]
• • “The province of art is . . . all experience.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “One has to buy [immortality] with the blood of one's heart.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Live all [that] you can; it is a mistake not to.”  {blog 9/2008}