Thomas Paine
-
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
- Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous
debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the
unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half
the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that
we called it the word of a demon than the word of God.
It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt
and brutalize mankind.
- Character is much easier kept
than recovered.
- The declaration which says that God visits the sins
of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every
principle of moral justice.
- He that would make his own liberty secure must guard
even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this
duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
- A thing moderately good is not as good as it ought to be.
- Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation
in principle is always a vice.
- Society in every state is a blessing, but government,
even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its
worst state an intolerable one.
- Society is produced by our wants; government by our wickedness.
- One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.
- There are two distinct classes of men . . . those who pay
taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.
Dorothy Parker
-
Life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporania;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
- People are more fun than anybody.
- Asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence, she replied:
"You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."
- If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid
end to end--I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
- Every year, back come Spring, with nasty little birds
yapping their fool heads off and
the ground all mucked up with plants.
Theodore Parker
-
That which is called liberality is frequently nothing more
than the vanity of giving.
- Did the mass of men know the actual selfishness and
injustice of their rulers, not a government would stand a year.
The world would ferment with revolution.
- What is the idea of the abolitionists? Only this, That all men
are created free, endowed with unalienable rights; and in respect
of those rights, that all men are equal.
Blaise Pascal
-
Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should
have a right to kill me because he lives on the other
side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel
with mine, though I have none with him?
Pat Paulson
-
As I have said again and again, the important thing is
to avoid the extremists. Those who say we should get
out of Vietnam and those who say we should escalate.
I maintain that we should avoid either extreme and
just continue messing around like we have been doing.
- I'm not affiliated with the Democratic Party,
the Republican Party, or any other branch of the
United States Government.
William Penn
-
Do good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.
- In all debates, let Truth be thy aim, not victory,
or an unjust interest: And endeavor to gain, rather
than expose thy Antagonist.
- Passion (is) the mob of man, that commits a
riot upon his reason.
William Lyon Phelps
-
This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect
for those who can be of no possible service to him.
- When I read a newspaper, I turn first to the
sports section, where are recorded the accomplishments of man.
The front page records only his failures.
Wendell Phillips
-
To hear some men talk of the government, you would
suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation,
and kept the planets in their places.
- Government began in tyranny and force, began in
the feudalism of the soldier and the bigotry of the
priest, and the ideas of justice and humanity have
been fighting their way, like a thunderstorm, against
the organized selfishness of human nature.
- Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
- Revolution is the only thing, the only power,
that ever worked out freedom for any people.
The powers that have ruled long, and learned to love
ruling, will never give up that prerogative till they
find they must, till they see the certainty of overthrow
and destruction if they do not!
- Perish the Union when its cement must be the blood of the slave.
James A. Pike
-
The eleven o'clock hour on Sunday is the most segregated
hour in American life.
Gary Player
-
I have a great feeling for the soil. My brother is
the leading conservationist in the world, and I
just love sitting on my bulldozer and experiencing nature.
Channing Pollock
-
Marriage suffers most from our regarding it a
failure whenever it falls below a perfect score.
Arthur Ponsonby
-
When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty.
Karl Popper
- The medieval conversion of Christianity into an authoritarian
creed could not fully suppress its humanitarian tendencies ...
- There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number
of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these
is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history
of the world. But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent
conception of mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the history
of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind.
For the history of power politics is nothing but the history of
international crime and mass murder (including, it is true, some of
the attempts to suppress them). This history is taught in schools,
and some of the greatest criminals are extoled as its heroes.
George Prentice
-
What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety
about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.
William Prescott
-
Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhun
-
The great are only great because we are on our knees.
Let us rise!
- To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied,
directed, law-ridden, regulated, penned up, indoctrinated,
preached at, checked, appraised, seized, censured,
commanded by beings who have neither title nor knowledge not virtue.
To be governed is to have every operation, every transaction,
every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped,
measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized,
indorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected.
To be governed is, under pretext of public utility and
in the name of the general interest, to be laid under contribution,
drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, exhausted,
hoaxed and robbed; then, upon the slightest resistance, at the
first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified,
annoyed, hunted down, pulled about, beaten, disarmed, bound,
imprisoned, shot, judged, condemned, banished, sacrificed,
sold, betrayed, and, to crown all, ridiculed, derided, outraged,
dishonored.
Matthew S. Quay
-
If you have a weak candidate and a weak platform, wrap
yourself up in the American flag and talk about the Constitution.
Dan Quayle
-
I stand by all my misstatements.
- "What a waste it is to lose one's mind--or not to have a mind.
How true that is." Dan Quayle addressing a United Negro College
Fund affair and garbling their slogan, "A mind is a terrible thing
to waste."
- Rural Americans are real Americans.
There's no doubt about that.
You can't always be sure with other Americans.
Not all of them are real.
- One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president.
And that one word is "to be prepared."
- My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can
and we will never, never surrender to what is right.
- I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more
freedom and democracy. But that could change.
- A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people
going to the polls.
- It isn't pollution that's harming our environment.
It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.
- The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's
history ... this century's history. ... We all lived in this century.
I didn't live in this century.
- We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO.
We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe.
- Vice President Quayle's pledge to El Salvador: "The United
States will work toward the elimination of human rights."
- On Paul Johnson's Modern Times: "It's a very good historical
book about history."
- On the concept of a manned mission to Mars: "It's time for
the human race to enter the solar system."
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