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

Page Four

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

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

Robert Lipsyte
“Becoming the champion is often the luck of the draw, but being a contender, a somebody
with promise, is about hard work and character.”  {blog 5/2010}

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

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

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

Janet Long
“Part of being sane is being a little bit crazy.”  {blog 5/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Niccolò Machiavelli [1469-1527]
“Virtue and riches seldom settle on one man.”  {blog 6/2010}

Harvey Mackay
“Someone once said life is hard. I say, compared to what?”  {blog 5/2010}

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

James A. Madison [1751-1836]
fourth President of The United States, 1809-17
• • “Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”
{in 'Letter to Edward Livingston', 10 July 1822}  {Issue #58}
• • “If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”  {Issue #59}
• • “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” (in 1822)  {blog 8/2009}
• • “History shows that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain control over governments by controlling the money and the issuance of it.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “The growing wealth aquired by [corporations] never fails to be a source of abuses.”  {blog 4/2010}

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

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

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

radio talk show host Mike Malloy
• • “Taking no action at all is itself an immoral act.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Anyone who has Republican parents should run away from home.”  {blog 4/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abraham Maslow [1908-70]
“When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem resembles a nail.”  {blog 6/2010}

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

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

André Maurois [1885-1967]
• • “Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “The value of the average conversation could be enormously improved by the constant
use of four simple words: 'I do not know'.”  {blog 5/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems
“You have zero privacy... Get over it.” (in 1999)  {blog 7/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

physicist Lise Meitner [1878-1968]
“Life need not be easy, provided only that it is not empty.”  {blog 6/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

author James A. Michener [1907-97]
• • “If our major parties do not know where the boundaries of decency
and acceptance are, then we are already lost.”  {Issue #47}
• • “I consider [work in politics] one of the most fruitful exercises of the human mind.”  {Issue #51}
• • “An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country
that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression.”  {blog 2/2010}
• • “Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.”  {blog 3/2010}
• • “The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat
of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.”  {blog 6/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Irving Mills [1894-1985]
“It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.”  {blog 7/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

Molière {real name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin} [1622-73]
• • “To honor all men is to honor none.”  (in "The Misanthrope")  {Issue #36}
• • “It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.”  {blog 4/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TV journalist Bill Moyers
• • “Congress belongs to the highest bidder.” (2006)  {Issue #58}
• • “Democracy works when people claim it as their own.”  {Issue #68}
• • “The promise of America leaves no one out.”  {Issue #69}
• • “This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and
low social mobility at the bottom ... Millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a
plutocracy, where they are disposable. [In an earlier era] the remedy was a popular insurgency that
ignited the spark of democracy ... Democracy only works when we claim it as our own.”  {blog 6/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

neon art piece by Bruce Nauman
“The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.”  {blog 4/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

John Henry Newman [1801-90]
“Growth is the only evidence of life.”  {blog 7/2010}

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

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

Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]
• • “Every great philosophy [is] the personal confession of its originator,
a type of involuntary and unaware memoirs.”  {Issue #21}
• • “You must carry a chaos inside you to give birth to a dancing star.”  {Issue #28}
• • “Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages
it is the rule.”  {Issue #43}
• • “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”  {Issue #46}
• • “One repays a teacher poorly if one remains a disciple.”  {Issue #62}
• • “Every man has his price? That is not true. But for every man there exists a bait
which he cannot resist swallowing.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Two things are wanted by a true man, danger and play – therefore,
he seeks woman as the most dangerous play.”  {blog 12/2008}
• • “Life becomes harder and harder as it approaches the heights – the coldness
increases, the responsibility increases.”  {blog 2/2010}
• • “They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “This is my way. What is your way? THE way doesn't exist.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other men say in whole books, what other men
do not say in whole books.”  {blog 6/2010}

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

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

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

columnist Peggy Noonan
“Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.”, in The Wall Street Journal (in 2004)  {blog 7/2010}

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

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

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

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