Quotations

Below are some of my favorite quotations.

But first… if you only read one poem in your life, this should be it. There’s never been so much truth put into a few lines of text.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

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To love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues. (John Locke)

There is not a truth existing which I fear… or would wish unknown to the whole world. (Thomas Jefferson)

Truth doesn’t need laws to protect it – only lies or scams do. (Anonymous)

To see the right and not do it is cowardice. (Confucius)

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. (Thomas Jefferson)

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. (Mark Twain)

There is nothing to fear from truth. (Ray Dalio)

If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave. (John Bryant)

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. (Winston Churchill)

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. (George Orwell)

‎Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. (Edmund Burke)

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear. (Herbert Agar)

In every controversy, most people care much less for what the truth is than for which side it’s safer and more respectable to take. (Joseph Sobran)

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters. (Franklin)

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. (Goethe)

The object of the superior man is truth. (Confucius)

Always stand on principle, even if you stand alone. (John Quincy Adams)

When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything. (G.K. Chesterton)

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. (Mark Twain)

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.  (Socrates)

A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have. (Gerald Ford)

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. (Albert Einstein)

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. (Winston Churchill)

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom – they are the pillars of society. (Henrik Ibsen)

A great civilization cannot be destroyed from outside if it has not already destroyed itself from within. (Will Durant)

Truth is treason in an empire of lies. (Ron Paul)

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. (John Stuart Mill)

For every problem there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong. (H. L. Mencken)

Few skills are so well rewarded as the ability to convince parasites that they are victims. (Thomas Sowell)

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. (Stanislaw Lec)

All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. (Edmund Burke)

A man can fail but he isn’t a failure until he blames someone else. (Paul Getty)

The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. (T. H. Huxley)

Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master. (Sallust, Roman historian of the 1st Century B.C.)

A mind of mediocre attainments condemns everything beyond its scope. (La Rochefoucauld)

One man’s need is not another man’s obligation. (Ayn Rand)

The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program. (Ronald Reagan)

To attempt to silence a man is to pay him homage, for it is an acknowledgement that his arguments are both impossible to answer and impossible to ignore. (John Bryant)

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints. (Edmund Burke)

‎The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs. (Joan Didion)

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. (Thomas Jefferson)

The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. (Tacitus)

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone. (Frederic Bastiat)

It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability. (Cicero)

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority. (Stanley Milgram)

‎The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born. (William R. Inge)

‎Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves. (D.H. Lawrence)

The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time. (Ayn Rand)

‎Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. (Thomas Sowell)

‎I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. (Winston Churchill)

‎Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to ‘educate the people’ so that they will have but one common mind to delude. (Richard Mitchell)

If you pick up a starving dog, and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. (Mark Twain)

‎The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful. (Calvin Coolidge)

‎Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes. (Antisthenes)

‎The difference between death and taxes is, death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets. (Will Rogers)

‎You are forgiven for your happiness and success only if you generously consent to share them. (Albert Camus)

The fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom. (F.A.Hayek)

What’s the difference between a bright, inquisitive five-year-old, and a dull, stupid nineteen-year-old? Fourteen years of the British educational system. (Bertrand Russell)

There is much discussion of the haves and the have-nots, but very little discussion of the doers and the do-nots. (Thomas Sowell)

‎The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. (Margaret Thatcher)

Everything that liberates our minds without at the same time adding to our resources of self-mastery is pernicious. (Goethe)

When bad ideas have nowhere else to go, they gravitate to American universities and become courses. (Oscar Wilde)

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a manner that when you die the world cries and you rejoice. (Unknown)

‎Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect. (Marcus Aurelius)

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. (George Washington)

Few skills are so well rewarded as the ability to convince parasites that they are victims. (Thomas Sowell)

The road to despotism is paved with “fairness”. (Thomas Sowell)

Occasionally the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. (Thomas Jefferson)

It takes a better man to bear good luck than bad. (La Rochefoucauld)

Everyone blames his memory, no one his judgment. (La Rochefoucauld)

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on Paul’s support. (George Bernard Shaw)

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. (Sir Winston Churchill)

I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves. (Ronald Reagan)

Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments. (Charles Carroll, Signer of Declaration of Independence)
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact. (Balzac)

I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. (Thomas Jefferson)

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. (Abraham Lincoln)
‎Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. (Winston Churchill)

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking. (H. L. Mencken)

All fashionable vices pass for virtue. (Moliere)

If a man gives no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand. (Confucius)

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. (Milton Friedman)

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged. (Cardinal Richelieu)

There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience. (Laurence J. Peter)

Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record. (Thomas Sowell)

The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. (Frederic Bastiat)

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority. (Stanley Milgram)

You’ll never stand out if your goal in life is to fit in. (Dr. Mardy Grothe)

If a man can reach the latter days of his life with his soul intact, he has mastered life. (Gordon Parks)

The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings. (Mignon McLaughlin)

The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. (Tacitus)

Democracy always leads to conflicts and instability, but never provides for the security of the citizens or their property. Usually it is very short at life, and very bloody at death. (James Madison)

Democracy is the rule of mobs, tempted by newspaper editors. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. (Ronald Reagan)

Where the government fears the people there is liberty; where the people fear the government, there is tyranny. (Thomas Jefferson)

If God does not exist, then everything is permitted. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress. (Isocrates)

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. (Winston Churchill)

The greatest threats to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal – well-meaning but without understanding. (US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928)

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. (Confucius)

Beware of friends not equal to yourself. (Confucius)

Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest. (Alexander Dumas)

‎You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips. (Oliver Goldsmith, English author (1728-1774))

‎Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. (Douglas Casey)

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. (Mahatma Gandhi)

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner. (H.L. Mencken)

It is pointless to repeat something to the intelligent man and it is futile to repeat it to the unwise. (Unknown)

… it is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty. [Liberty] is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike – a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving; and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded and vicious, to be capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it. … [A]n all-wise Providence has reserved [liberty], as the noblest and highest reward for the development of our faculties, moral and intellectual. A reward more appropriate than liberty could not be conferred on the deserving – nor a punishment inflicted on the undeserving more just, than to be subject to lawless and despotic rule. This dispensation seems to be the result of some fixed law – and every effort to disturb or defeat it, by attempting to elevate a people in the scale of liberty, above the point to which they are entitled to rise, must ever prove abortive, and end in disappointment. The progress of a people rising from a lower to a higher point in the scale of liberty, is necessarily slow – and by attempting to precipitate, we either retard, or permanently defeat it. (John C. Calhoun)

Some people use one half their ingenuity to get into debt, and the other half to avoid paying it. (George Dennison Prentice.)

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation. (V.I. Lenin)

We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism. (Nikita Krushchev)

America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within. (Josef Stalin)

The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost. (G. K. Chesterton)

If we become a people who are willing to give up our money & our freedom in exchange for rhetoric & promises then nothing can save us. (Thomas Sowell)

Those who are preoccupied with “making a statement” usually don’t have any statements worth making. (Thomas Sowell)

In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities. (Thomas Sowell)

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today. (Thomas Sowell)

Some people seem to think that my views are “tough”. Im not tough. Life is tough - and I am just trying to get people to recognize that. (Thomas Sowell)

What ‘multiculturalism’ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture. (Thomas Sowell)

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. (Frederic Bastiat)

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. (Voltaire)

The State acquires power… and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates. (Frank Chodorov)

For society as a whole, nothing comes as a ‘right’ to which we are ‘entitled’. Even bare subsistence has to be produced…. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it… The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more the providers have to carry the load. (Thomas Sowell)

I have been always sure, that democracy sooner or late will destroy freedom, or civilization, or both. (Thomas Macaulay)

Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise. (Rochefoucauld)

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. (Milton Friedman)