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

Page Five

Alphabetical by Author
A thru C • D thru F • G thru J • K thru N

here on Page Five: O • P • Q • R

S thru Z • Proverbs & Anonymous • Laws of Life

Books of Quotations Page

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 O thru R

Conan O'Brien
“There are few things more liberating in life than having your worst fear realized.”  {blog 8/2011}

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

painter Georgia O'Keeffe [1887-1986]
“My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me.”  {blog 6/2011}

Austin O'Malley [1858-1932]
“The American government is a rule of the people, by the people, for the bosses.”  {blog 3/2011}

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

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

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

P.J. O'Rourke
• • “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”  {Issue #43}
• • “Everybody wants to save the earth. Nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”  {blog 11/2011}

Barack Obama
Illinois State Senator, 1997-2004
United States Senator from Illinois, 2005–2008
44th President of the United States, 2009-2012
• • “Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is
just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.” as President-elect  {blog 2/2009}
• • “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small,
but whether government works.”, Inaugural Address 20 January 2009  {blog 2/2009}
• • “I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay.” (on 23 February 2009)  {blog 4/2009}
• • “I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way
they are. . . . Not this time. Not now.” (speech to Joint Session of Congress, 9 September 2009)  {blog 9/2009}
• • “You're going to face a choice in November. This is a choice between the policies that got us into this
mess in the first place and the policies that got us out of this mess – and what the other side
is counting on is people not having a good memory.” (8 July 2010)  {blog 10/2010}

William Obler [1849-1919]
“The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinquishes man from animals.”   {blog 3/2011}

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

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

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

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

George Orwell [1903-50]
{ real name Eric Arthur Blair }
• • “Who controls the present controls the past. Who controls the past controls the future.”
(in his novel "1984", 1949)  {Issue #41}
• • “War is peace.” (in his novel "1984", 1949)
George W. Bush, 2003: “This war is really about peace.”  {Issue #43}
• • “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”  {Issue #57}
• • “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”  {Issue #65}
• • “In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality ... sooner or later
a false belief bumps up against the solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “There are some things [that] only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.”  {blog 2/2008}
• • “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”  {blog 2/2009}
• • “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”  {blog 12/2011}

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

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

Ovid [43 B.C.E. – 17 or 18 C.E.]
“Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.”  {blog 6/2010}

novelist Cynthia Ozick
“We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”  {blog 12/2011}

George Packer, columnist at The New Yorker Magazine
“Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another. ...
Inequality undermines democracy.”  {blog 11/2011}

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

Thomas Paine [1737-1809]
• • “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”  {Issue #56}
• • “Ye that dare oppose not only tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth!”  {Issue #69}
• • “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”  {blog 11/2007}
• • “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance
of being right.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “Character is much easier kept than recovered.”  {blog 12/2011}

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

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

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

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

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

Cyril Northcote Parkinson [1909-93]
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
(aka "Parkinson's Law")  {blog 5/2010}

Blaise Pascal [1623-62]
• • “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it
from religious conviction.”  (in "Pensees")  {Issue #65 & blog 4/2009}
• • “It is force, not opinion, that queens its way over the world, but it is opinion
that looses the force.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.”  {blog 10/2011}
• • “All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.”  {blog 12/2011}

Louis Pasteur [1822-95]
“Chance favors the trained mind.”  {blog 5/2010}

Susan S. Pastin of Chicago, Illinois
“Didn't we settle the question of Divine Right in 1776?”
(in a Letter to Time Magazine, August 2011)  {blog 9/2011}

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

Gen. George S. Patton [1885-1945]
• • “You don't win wars by giving up your life for your country, you win by
making the other s.o.b. give up his.”  {Issue #64}
• • “Success is measured by how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”  {blog 12/2010}

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

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

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

Allison Pearson
“The great thing about unrequited love is that it's the only kind that exists.”  {blog 3/2011}

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

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

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

John Perkins
“The marketplace is democratic.”  {blog 3/2011}

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

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

Laurence J. Peter [1919-90]
“The expression 'as a matter of fact' precedes many an expression that isn't.”  {blog 10/2011}

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

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

comedian Emo Phillips
“I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body.
Then I realized who was telling me this.”  {blog 4/2011}

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

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

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

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

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

Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]
• • “Everything you can imagine is real.”  {Issue #35}
• • “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”  {Issue #57}
• • “To be young, really young, takes a long time.”  {blog 2/2008}
• • “Love is the greatest refreshment in life.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized. People just
don't have that much vision.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “I don't seek, I find.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “Computers are useless, they can only give you answers.”  {blog 6/2010}

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

Franklin Pierce [1804-69]
“Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion.”   {blog 12/2011}

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

British journalist John Pilger
• • “It is time we recognized that the real terrorism is poverty.”  {Issues #21 & 36} full text of article
• • “It's not enough for journalists and broadcasters to see themselves as mere messengers without
understanding and revealing the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.
We ought never to be agents of power, always of the people.”  {blog 7/2011}

Greek poet Pindar [522?–443 B.C.E.]
“Unsung, the noblest deed will die.”  {blog 7/2010}

William Pitt [1759-1806]
“Poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.”  {blog 3/2011}

Plato [428?-327? B.C.E.]
• • “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being
governed by your inferiors.”  {Issue #50}
• • “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find
a way around the laws.”  {blog 4/2011}

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

Edgar Allan Poe [1809-49]
• • “The people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “The pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense is derived,
I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.”  {blog 12/2011}

Hercule Poirot character, written by Agatha Christie [1890-1976]
• • “The world is becoming a difficult place to live in – except for the strong.”  (1948)  {Issue #68}
• • “Unless you are good at guessing, it is not much use being a detective.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “[Stupidity] is the sin that is never forgiven and always punished.”  {blog 8/2008}
• • “With thought, all problems can be resolved.”  {blog 12/2010}

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

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

Mary Pettibone Poole [?-??]
“The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is.” (circa 1938)  {blog 10/2011}

Franklin Porath, former business partner
“Darrell Issa is the most evil man I ever met.”  {blog 2/2011}

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

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

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

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

poet Ezra Pound [1885-1972]
“What matters is not the idea [that] a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.”  {blog 7/2010}

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

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

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

radio talk show host Dennis Prager
“More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant dictators.”  {blog 3/2011}

rock legend Elvis Presley [1935-77]
• • “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away.”   {blog 4/2010}
• • “Ambition is a dream with a V-8 engine.”  {blog 1/2012}

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

Marcel Proust [1871-1922]
• • “Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”   {blog 8/2009}
• • “The only true voyage of discovery would not be to visit strange lands but to behold the universe
thru the eyes of another.”  {blog 11/2011}

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

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

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

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

London banker Sir John Quinton
“Politicians are people who, when they see the light at the end of the tunnel,
go out and buy more tunnel.”   {blog 9/2011}

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

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

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

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

Burton Rascoe [1892-1957]
“What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's
staring out the window.”   {blog 3/2011}

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

English naturalist John Ray [1627-1705]
“Learning makes the wise wiser and the fool more foolish.”  {blog 7/2011}

actor Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
40th President of the United States, 1981-89
• • “Church and state are, and must remain, separate.”  {Issue #57}
• • “Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize
that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “If you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all.”  {blog 7/2011}

Robert Redford
“Whenever there's chaos, there's ambiguity, and where there's ambiguity, there's fear.
And fear gets manipulated.”   {blog 4/2011}

beat writer Ambrose Redmoon {real name James Neil Hollingworth} [1933–96]
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something
is more important than fear.”   {blog 9/2011}

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

Wilhelm Reich [1897-1957]
“It is the basic evasion of the essential which is the problem of man.”  {Issue #13}

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

Harry Reid, U.S. Senate Majority Leader [Dem NV]
“[Social Security] is not in crisis at this stage. Leave Social Security alone. We have a lot of other places
[that] we can look that are in crisis. But Social Security is not.” (in March 2011)  {blog 4/2011}

Jules Renard [1864-1910]
“Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.”  {blog 4/2011}

French filmmaker Jean Renoir [1894-1979]
• • “Goodbye Mr. Zanuck: It certainly has been a pleasure working at 16th-Century Fox.”  {blog 12/2010}
• • “Is it possible to succeed without any act of betrayal?”  {blog 1/2011}
• • “A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again.”  {blog 2/2011}

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

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

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

E.C. Riegel [1879-1953]
“The greatest enemy of mankind is ignorance of the inherent money power in all of us. When the realization
of this comes to man he will, like Sampson, push down the walls of his prison.”  {blog 7/2010}

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

Anthony Robbins
“If you always do what you have always done then you'll always have what you've already got.”  {blog 5/2010}

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

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

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

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

Maria Robinson
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today
and make a new ending.”   {blog 10/2010}

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

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

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

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

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

American humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]
• • “I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”  {Issue #43}
• • “A company is known by the people it keeps.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “There's nothing as stupid as an educated man, if you get him off the thing that he is educated in.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “Let Wall Street have a nightmare and the whole country has to help them back to bed again.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation.
The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “The business of government is to keep government out of business – that is,
unless business needs government aid.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “We always want the best man to win an election. Unfortunately, he never runs.”  {blog 11/2011}

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

leading fascist presidential candidate Mitt Romney
“Corporations are people, my friend. Of course they are.” in August 2011  {blog 8/2011}

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

TV curmudgeon Andy Rooney [1919-2011]
“It's just amazing how long this country has been going to hell without ever having got there.”   {blog 10/2011}

Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]
• • “You must do the thing [that] you think you cannot do.”  {Issue #42}
• • “The giving of love is an education in itself.”  {Issue #71}
• • “Small people talk of other people, average people talk of things, great people talk of ideas.”
{blog 10/2007}
• • “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather
than avenge it.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”  {blog 9/2011}

Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]
32nd President of the United States, 1933-45
• • “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point
where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership
of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
  {Issues #46 & #58 & blog 12/2010}
• • “In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed, it must be achieved.”  {Issue #48}
• • “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned
to walk forward.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “It's a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead,
and find no one there.”  {blog 2/2010}
• • “No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence
the rights of minorities.”  {blog 12/2011}

Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]
Republican 26th President of the United States, 1901-09
• • “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right
or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”  {Issue #34}
• • “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”  {Issue #36}
• • “No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.”  {Issue #47}
• • “In any moment of decision, the best thing [that] you can do is the right thing, the next best thing
[that] you can do is the wrong thing, and the worst thing [that] you can do is nothing.”  {Issue #66}
• • “Great as the provocation has been in dealing with the foes who habitually resort to treachery, murder
and torture against our men, nothing can justify . . . the use of torture or inhumane conduct . . .
on the part of the American Army.” (1902)  {blog 12/2007}
• • “All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be
forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders' money for such purposes;
and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping
the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts.”, in 1905  {blog 2/2010}
• • “Ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes
for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.”
in August 1910 speech  {blog 3/2010}
• • “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered
by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much
because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
Labor Day speech, 1903   {blog 12/2010}

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

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

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

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

painter Mark Rothko [1903-70]
“Silence is so accurate.”  {blog 6/2010}

Rothschild Brothers of London
“The few who can understand the [Federal Reserve] system will be so interested in its profits, or so
dependent on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that class; while on the other hand,
the great body of the people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage
that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps
without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.” circa 1825  {blog 11/2009}

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

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

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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78]
• • “Man is born free but is everywhere in chains.”  {Issue #25}
• • “Take the course opposite to custom and you will always do well.”  {blog 8/2011}
• • “The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that [we] can do what we want, but that
we do not have to do that which we do not want.” {paraphrased}  {blog 12/2011}

Helen Rowland
“To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman,
you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.”  {blog 1/2011}

J.K. Rowling
“It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to
stand up to your friends.”   {blog 9/2011}

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

shaman & author Don Miguel Ruiz of Mexico
“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive and express
what we really are.”   {blog 2/2011}

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

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

John Ruskin [1819-1900]
• • “That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble
and happy human beings.”  {Issue #66}
• • “The primary reward for human toil is not what you get by it, but what you become by it.”  {blog 12/2008}
• • “What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence.
The only thing of consequence is what we do.”  {blog 9/2011}

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

Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]
Bertrand Russell Quotations Page at Working Minds
Bertrand Russell Page at Maison d'Être Philosophy Bookstore

Rosalind Russell [1907-76]
“Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral.”  {blog 11/2011}

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

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

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

Russ Rymer
“The Bush administration feels no compunction to honor the truth or seek it;
it conceives truth as a tactic, valuable only insofar as it is useful against one's enemies.”
(editorial in May-June 2005 Mother Jones Magazine)  {Issue #53}

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