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
Working Minds Homepage
free monthly 'WMail' Philosophy Newsletter [2000-2007]
Index of All Issues
After WMail Issue #72 in October 2007, essays & quotations & news are being posted to the
Dateline Chamesa weblog
Authors G thru J
Clark Gable [1901-60]
Neal Gabler
Dennis Gabor
Zsa Zsa Gabor
macro-economist James K. Galbraith
economist John Kenneth Galbraith [1908-2006]
Rivka Galchen
Galileo Galilei [1564-1642]
Dr. Arun Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi  [1869-1948]
Jesus Garcia, Jr. of Lynwood, California
mystery author Erle Stanley Gardner [1889-1970]
playwright Herb Gardner [1935-2003]
John W. Gardner [1912-2002]
Steven R. Garman
William Lloyd Garrison [1805-79]
Bill Gates
William Campbell Gault [1910-95]
Prof. Willard Gaylin
Jean Genet [1910-86]
Chief Dan George [1899-1981]
Henry George [1839-97]
Native American leader Geronimo [1829-1909]
George Gershwin [1898-37]
musician Stan Getz [1927-91]
Kahlil Gibran [1883-1931]
William Gibson
André Gide [1869-1951]
Dave Gilson
William Gladstone [1809-98]
half-Jamaican author Malcolm Gladwell
astronaut John Glenn
Marc Gobé
cinema auteur Jean-Luc Godard of France
Joseph Goebbels [1897-1945], Nazi Propaganda Minister
Goethe [1749-1832]
anarchist Emma Goldman [1869-1940]
Oliver Goldsmith [1728-74]
writer David Goldstein
Richard Goldstein
movie producer Samuel Goldwyn [1879-1974]
Jane Goodall
Charles Goodnight [1836-1929]
Archie Goodwin character, written by Rex Stout [1886-1975]
Adam Gopnik
Nadine Gordimer
Al Gore, Jr.
Joe Gould
David Graber
mystery author Sue Grafton
Bette Nesmith Graham [1924-1980], inventor of Liquid Paper™
Grateful Dead band
poet Robert Graves [1895-1985]
Allan Mcleod Gray [1905-75]
Kevin Alexander Gray
Andrew M. Greeley
Graham Greene [1904-91]
Stephen Greenleaf
Ben Greenman
Alan Greenspan Wayne Gretzky
Western author Zane Grey [1872-1939]
David Ray Griffin
Lev Grossman
French writer Sacha Guitry [1885-1997]
A.B. Guthrie, Jr. [1901-91]
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
Wayne H.
G.O.P. Senator Chuck Hagel
Merle Haggard
Edward Hale
Alexander Hamilton [1755?-1804]
Dashiell Hammett [1894-1961]
Judge Learned Hand [1872-1961]
Micah S. Handler
Austrian film director Michael Haneke
Richard G. Harms of Issaquah, Washington
F.A. Harper
Sydney J. Harris [1917-86]
Jamie Harrison
William Henry Harrison [1773-1841] cartoonist Johnny Hart [1931-2007]
radio talk show host Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartnett
Paul Harvey [1918-2009]
Václav Havel
eco-activist Paul Hawken
Stephen W. Hawking
Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-64]
S.I. Hayakawa [1906-92]
actress Helen Hayes [1900-93]
Rutherford B. Hayes [1822-93] William Hazlitt [1778-1830]
mystery author Jeremiah Healy
radio commentator Gabriel Heatter [1890-1972]
Ben Hecht [1894-1964]
Martin Heidegger [1889-1976]
economist Robert L. Heilbroner [1919-2005]
Heinrich Heine [1797-1856]
Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]
Congressman Martin Heinrich [Dem NM-01]
playwright Lillian Hellman [1905-84]
author Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
David Hempy
rock legend Jimi Hendrix [1942-70]
Patrick Henry [1736-99]
Katharine Hepburn [1907-2003]
Anne Herbert
Frank Herbert [1920-86]
Oliver Herford [1863-1935]
Jeff Herman
Don Herold [1889-1966]
Mark Hertsgaard
French patriot Stéphane Hessel [b. 1917]
adventurer Thor Heyerdahl [1914-2002]
Carl Hiaasen
George V. Higgins [1939-99]
author Patricia Highsmith [1921-95]
W.F. Hightower, father of progressive activist Jim Hightower
Napoleon Hill [1883-1970]
mystery author Tony Hillerman [1925-2008]
Burton Hills
movie director Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]
Adolf Hitler [1889-1945]
counter-revolutionary philosopher Thomas Hobbes [1588-1679]
Tom Hodgkinson
longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer [1902-83]
activist Abbie Hoffman [1936-89]
Jackie Hoffman
Eric Holder
Max Holland
U.S. Senator Ernest Hollings
John Andrew Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-94]
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. [1841-1935] Sherlock Holmes character, as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [1859-1930]
Victoria Holt {real name Eleanor Hibbert} [1906-93]
Lou Holtz
President Herbert Hoover [1874-1964]
J. Edgar Hoover [1895-1972]
Grace Murray Hopper, U.S. Navy Captain [1906-92]
Lena Horne [1917-2010]
economist George Horwich
Robert E. Howard [1906-36], creator of Conan The Cimmerian
Sidney Howard [1891-1939]
Ed Howdershelt
William Dean Howells [1837-1920]
Chinese author & lecturer Tehyi Hsieh [1884-1972]
Elbert Hubbard [1859-1915]
French author Victor Hugo [1802-85]
Harold S. Hulbert
David Hume [1711-76]
Robert Hurley, of Stoddard Management
Robert Maynard Hutchins [1899-1977]
Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]
character Iago, as written by William Shakespeare [1564-1616]
playwright Henrik Ibsen [1828-1906]
Gary Indiana
theologian Wm. Ralph Inge [1860-1954]
Robert G. Ingersoll
Washington Irving [1783-1859]
journalist & biographer Walter Isaacson
columnist Molly Ivins [1944-2007]
Andrew Jackson [1767–1845] Rev. Jesse Jackson
Robert H. Jackson [1892-1954] Dresden James
Henry James [1843-1916]
mystery author P.D. James
Randy James
William James [1842-1910]
mystery author J.A. Jance
poet Robinson Jeffers [1887-1962]
Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826] Jesus of Nazareth
Steve Jobs [1955-2011] of Apple, Inc.
Dave Johnson, Campaign For America's Future blogger
former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, trailing presidential candidate
C.I.A. analyst Larry Johnson (a registered Republican)
Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]
David Cay Johnston
Terry C. Johnston [1947-2001]
Erica Jong
rock legend Janis Joplin [1943-1970]
Joseph Joubert [1754-1824]
author James Joyce [1882-1941]
Walter H. Judd
Carl G. Jung [1875-1961]
jump to Page Four of WM Quotes [K thru N]
back to Page One of WM Quotes [A thru C]
Proverbs & Anonymous • Laws of Life
Magic Lantern's Great Movie Quotes Page
Index of All 'WMail' ezine Issues
“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}
“More often than not 'fair' and 'balanced' may be mutually exclusive.”
in Los Angeles Times op-ed  {blog 4/2010}
“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”  {Issue #45}
“A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “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}
• • “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}
“In quantum mechanics, the Universe, at its most elemental level, is random, an idea
that tends to upset people.”   {blog 4/2011}
• • “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}
“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}
• • “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 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}
“What kind of man am I if I do not help make this world better?”  {Issue #56}
• • “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}
“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}
“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”  {blog 8/2011}
“Physics is the universe's operating system.”  {blog 11/2010}
“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}
“640K ought to be enough {memory} for anybody.” (in 1981)  {blog 5/2010}
“Your mother has to be there when you are born, but nobody has to be there when you die.”  {blog 12/2009}
“Expressing anger is a form of public littering.”  {blog 1/2012}
“Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth would be to have been young
and never dreamed at all.”   {blog 1/2011}
“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}
“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}
“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}
“Rumors about highbrow music ridiculous. Am out to write hits.”
(telegram to his agent, circa 1935)  {blog 8/2008}
“Music is my life at the expense of everything else in my life.”  {blog 1/2010}
“Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.”  {blog 12/2010}
“The future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “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}
“The entire United States [is] a giant debtors colony, one nation in the red,
subject to compound interest, indentured to Citibank.”  {Issue #68}
“All the world over I'll back the masses against the classes.”  {blog 9/2009}
“Somebody always has to be the n*gger.”  {blog 12/2009}
“Exploration and the pursuit of knowledge have always paid dividends in the long run.”
(testifying before Congress 26 February 1962)  {blog 2/2009}
“We live in a society where everybody feels guilty.”  {Issue #45}
• • “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}
• • “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}
• • “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}
• • “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}
“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.”  {blog 2/2011}
“Yes, our regulatory agencies are incompetent. But they are incompetent by design.”   {blog 4/2010}
“Sadism is the hallmark of conservative culture.”  {Issue #67}
“I was always an independent, even when I had partners.”  {blog 10/2008}
“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
(Time Magazine, August 2002)  {Issue #29}
“Cowards never lasted long enough to become real cowboys.”  {blog 8/2008}
• • “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}
• • “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}
“Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “[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}
“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}
“The yawning chasm between the very rich and everybody else
is making [America] a plutocratic caricature of democracy.”  {Issue #67}
“Let's be optimistic. It doesn't cost anything.”  {Issue #42}
“Anyone who is making progress faces fear. Overcoming fear is all there is to success.”  {Issue #36}
“It's even worse than it appears / But ... that's all ri-i-ight.” (song lyric)  {Issue #53}
“There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money.”  {blog 11/2008}
“Whatever you do, you'll regret it.”  {blog 12/2007}
“If this is a recession in the general economy, then it is a depression
in the black community.” (2007)  {blog 2/2008}
“Trivial people . . . lack an overriding hunger to do that which they do best.
Their ambitions are stylistic rather than substantial.”  {Issue #43}
• • “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}
“These days you don't run into all that many people who make use of a moral compass.”  {blog 12/2009}
“Hopelessness springs eternal.”  {blog 5/2010}
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}
“You miss 100 percent of the shots [that] you don't take.”  {Issue #57}
• • “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}
“We have each other and we have the truth.”  {blog 1/2010}
“Trashy books are as hard to write as good ones.”  {blog 7/2008}
“Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness.”  {blog 10/2010}
“If literature is to have any dignity, it must enlighten life.”  {Issue #34}
“The best relationship is one where your love for each other exceeds
your need for each other.”  {blog 6/2008}
“The shortest distance between two points is usually under construction.”  {Issue #62}
“The President says [that] he is not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true.
You can impeach him.” (2007)  {Issue #71}
“Where's all the freedom / that we're fighting for?” (song lyric)  {Issue #68}
“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}
“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}
“Nothing lasts. You can't count on anything but yourself.”  {Issue #36}
“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}
“Education is only half the battle against poverty. The other half is opportunity.”  {Issue #48}
“If you look at the suffering around you, you can't be happy.”  {blog 12/2009}
“The basic problem in the world today is that there is too much religion
and not enough common sense.”  {Issue #46}
“The man who knows what freedom means will find a way to be free.”  {Issue #25}
“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for
the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”  {Issue #40}
“Mental illness takes so many forms.”  {Issue #50}
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}
“It takes brains to understand a smart remark, but none to be offended by it.”  {Issue #71}
• • “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}
“One person speaking up makes more noise than a thousand people who remain silent.”  {blog 12/2011}
“In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these.”  {blog 10/2009}
“Work unswervingly to do something [that] you want in your local sphere.”  {Issue #62}
“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}
• • “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}
“You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.”  {blog 1/2012}
“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}
“We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.”  {blog 7/2011}
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.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “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}
“Nobody’s civil to anybody anymore.”  {Issue #63}
“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}
“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}
• • “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}
“The cure for capitalism's failing would require that a government ... rise
above the interests of one class alone.”  {Issue #49 & blog 2/2011}
“There are more fools in the world than there are people.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “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}
• • “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}
“It is best to act with confidence no matter how little right you have to it.”  {blog 6/2011}
• • “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}
“A firm grip on reality is not a critical component of happiness.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “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}
“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}
“If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “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}
“The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives
but have only one course of action.”  {blog 9/2008}
“Jehovah has always seemed to me the most fascinating character in all fiction.”  {blog 2/2011}
“To lay blame is an abdication of power.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Be kind to dumb people.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “Man is the only animal that plays poker.”  {blog 9/2011}
“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}
• • “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}
“Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.”  {blog 11/2011}
• • “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}
“This life's hard, man, but it's harder if you're stupid.”  {blog 4/2009}
“There is no moral to my life – I have none – except: 'Stand up and take it'.
The rest is sentiment.”  {Issue #36}
“Everyone does better when everyone does better.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “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}
“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}
“Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “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}
• • “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}
“Consequent to a time of War ... the life of Man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
(in 'Leviathan', 1651)  {blog 10/2007}
“The art of living is the art of bringing dreams and reality together.”  {Issue #56}
• • “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}
“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}
“Everything in this world is an opportunity for pain and failure.”  {blog 12/2007}
“Waterboarding is torture.” (testifying before Congress as U.S. Attorney General-designate
on 15 January 2009)  {blog 2/2009}
“The only thing more astounding than the [Bush] administration's staggering hubris
is the smugness of its ignorance.” (in The Washington Spectator)  {Issue #66}
“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}
“It is well remembered that the entire universe, with one trifling exception,
is composed of others.” circa 1927  {blog 6/2010}
• • “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}
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}
• • “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}
“Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.”  {blog 10/2010}
“Don't tell your problems to people: eighty percent don't care; and the other twenty percent
are glad you have them.”  {blog 5/2010}
“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”  {blog 11/2011}
“No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government
is actually doing is worse than you imagine.”  {Issue #69}
“A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.”  {Issue #59}
“It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way [that] you carry it."
“The true engines of economic growth [are] human ingenuity and productivity.”  {blog 4/2011}
“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}
“Half of knowing what you want is knowing what you have to give up to get it.”
{not Calvin Coolidge}  {blog 9/2009}
“There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo.
Use in that order.”  {blog 5/2010}
“What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “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}
• • “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}
• • “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}
“Children need love, especially when they do not deserve it.”  {blog 3/2008}
“Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken.”  {blog 8/2011}
“Hedge funds are the sophisticated way to lose money, as opposed to the more mundane way[s].”
{blog 6/2008}
“Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “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}
“Pleasure and action make the hours seem shorter.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “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}
“[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}
• • “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}
“In nature, there are no rewards or punishment, only consequences.”  {Issue #51}
“Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.”  {blog 5/2009}
• • “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}
“Don't let anyone ever tell you that it isn't enough just to tell the truth.”  {Issue #68}
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}
“Keep hope alive; let nothing break your spirit.”  {Issue #64}
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}
“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}
• • “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}
• • “Life is, in fact, a battle . . . Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small numbers, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of a night; we wake up to it again for ever and ever; we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “An aristocracy is bad manners organized.”  {blog 12/2010}
• • “Most of us edge forward, painfully advancing, yard by yard;
[the truly creative] parachute behind enemy lines.”   {blog 9/2008}
• • “Knowledge always brings responsibility.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “A poet doesn't choose his subject, it chooses him.”  {blog 9/2008}
“Modern conservatism has decayed from the positive, pragmatic force [that] its founders envisioned
into a bitter resistance movement that's given up on fresh ideas.” (in Time Magazine)  {blog 9/2009}
• • “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”  {Issue #68}
• • “What an absolute savage and pirate the passion of military conquest is.”  {Issue #68}
• • “A great many people think [that] they are thinking when thay are merely
rearranging their prejudices.”  {Issue #68}
• • “The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice
and propagators of corruption.”  {blog 4/2011}
“Each of us needs to get off our backside and go out into the streets
and do what we can to help.”  {Issue #64}
• • “The poets lie too much.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe.”   {blog 8/2011}
• • “I learned that ruling poor men's hands is nothing. Ruling men's money [is] a wedge in the world.
But after I'd split it open a crack I looked in and saw the trick inside it, the filthy nothing,
the fooled and rotten faces of rich and successful men.”  {blog 8/2011}
third President of The United States, 1801-09
Thomas Jefferson Quotations Page at Working Minds
Thomas Jefferson Page at Spirit of America Bookstore
• • “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter
into the kingdom of God.”  (Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25)  {Issue #24 & blog 6/2008}
• • “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren,
ye have done it unto me.”  (Matthew 25:40)  {blog 7/2008}
“It's our job to know what people want before they do.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.” (in 2005)  {blog 10/2011}
“[The United States is] a dysfunctional plutocracy serving the biggest corporations
and the billionaires behind them.”  {blog 11/2011}
“The only problem with country music is that it kills plants.”  {blog 8/2011}
“Right now there is no honor in the Republican Party.”  {Issue #53}
• • “It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.”  {Issue #40}
• • “Sir, he who would earn his bread writing books must have the assurance of a duke,
the wit of a courtier, and the guts of a burglar.”  {blog 11/2007}
• • “It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated
than not to trust.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
{favorite quote of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson [1937-2005] }  {blog 7/2008}
• • “To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors
with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “If it rained knowledge I'd hold out my hand, but I would not give myself the trouble
to go in quest of it.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”   {blog 2/2009}
• • “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”  {blog 11/2010}
• • “The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar
and familiar things new.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.”  {blog 6/2011}
• • “It is better to live rich than to die rich.”  {blog 12/2011}
“The average inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90 percent of earners was lower in 2006
than it was back in 1973.”   {blog 2/2009}
“Money's . . . only importance comes from how it keeps you going after your dream . . .
The only thing important is your dream.” in "Dance On The Wind", 1995  {Issue #26}
“An artist must learn ... that he or she works for the work itself, not for approval.”  {blog 12/2008}
“Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got.”  {Issue #43}
“Some superior minds are unrecognized because there is no standard
by which to weigh them.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “Chance furnishes me with what I need. I am like a man who stumbles along.
My foot strikes something, I bend over and it is exactly what I want.”  {Issue #54}
• • “Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed
in previous lives.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”  {blog 1/2010}
“People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course,
that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote
– a very different thing.”   {blog 1/2008}
• • “No nation keeps its word. A nation is a big, blind worm, following what? Fate perhaps.
A nation has no honor, it has no word to keep.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “We are so accustomed to the apparently rational nature of our world that we can scarcely imagine anything happening that cannot be explained by common sense.” in "Man and His Symbols", 1964  {blog 6/2010}
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