P

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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?

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• The eleven o'clock hour on Sunday is the most segregated hour in American life.

• 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.

• Marriage suffers most from our regarding it a failure whenever it falls below a perfect score.

• When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty.

• 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.

• What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

• Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue.

• 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.

Q

• If you have a weak candidate and a weak platform, wrap yourself up in the American flag and talk about the Constitution.

• 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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