T

• All men are mad who devote themselves to the pursuit of power when they could be fishing, painting pictures, or simply sitting in the sun.

• "It's no mystery, sis," I replied. "The Blessed Trinity is a lot like the Three Stooges. You see, God the Father is mean and bossy like Moe and he yells orders out to Curly who is like Jesus. And Moe says, 'Hey, muttonhead, go down to oith and save your fellow man, by hangin' on the cross.' And Curly says, 'But I hate nails . . . woo-woo-woo-woo-woo, nya-a-a, rruff, rruff!' And of course Larry is just like the Holy Ghost: He's around somewhere, but you never really notice him."

• We are not without accomplishment. We have managed to distribute poverty equally.

• The very existence of armaments and great armies psychologically accustoms us to accept the philosophy of militarism. They inevitably increase fear and hate in the world.

• What a man does compared with what a man is, is but a small part.
• As for doing good, that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called simoon, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me--some of his virus mingled with my blood.
• No man ever stood lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes.
• The boy gathers material for a temple, and when he is thirty concludes to build a woodshed.
• If a man does not keep pace with his companion, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.
• The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think is right.
• Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
• To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.
• I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least," carried out, it finally amounts to this which I also believe--"That government is best which governs not at all." And when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government they will have.
• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
• Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
• A refined taste easily degenerated into effeminacy.
• Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
• I have lived ... with the sense of having suffered a vast and indefinite loss ... what I have lost was a country.
• There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.
• What is called politics is comparatively so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.
• As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
• I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
• If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
• Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail.
• A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
• If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceful revolution, if any such is possible.

• He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

• Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

• Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the State, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.
• The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save the name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life.
• ... it is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest man cannot and must not take part, and the advantages of which he cannot and should not enjoy. And as soon as people clearly understand that, they will naturally cease to take part in such deeds--that is cease to give government soldiers and money. And as soon as a majority of people ceases to do this the fraud which enslaves people will be abolished. Only in this way can people be freed from slavery.
• In order to obtain and hold power a man must love it. Thus the effort to get it is not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.
• One may say with one's lips: "I believe that God is one, and also three;"--but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.

• The trouble with the rat-race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
• We're all in this alone.

• Theologians such as Tillich protect Christianity from criticism at a high price. ... total vacuity ...
• Because a main function of language is to talk about and communicate what is the case, the absence of any distinction between truth and falsity (i.e. between what is and is not so) will destroy language. Anything could be said with impunity, and nothing could be ruled out as inappropriate. This would render it pointless to say anything, since there would be no difference in practice between assertion and denial. It would be impossible ever to teach a language. If there was no chance of using it incorrectly it would be impossible to pass on the correct application of words and sentences, since ex hypothesis there would be no such thing.

• When the ice on the razor wire starts to look pretty, you’ve been in prison too long.

• It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.

• The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of the absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of modern democracy.
• The government is a tyrant living by theft, and therefore has no business to engage in any business.
• Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich.
• Rule is evil, and it is none the better for being majority rule.
• If the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny.
• Anarchism is not the doctrine of no subordination; it is the doctrine that none but the invasive should be subordinated.
• The anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that "the best government is that which governs least," and that that which governs least is no government at all.
• Nor does the Anarchistic scheme furnish any code of morals to be imposed on the individual. "Mind your own business" is its only moral law. Interference with another's business is a crime and the only crime, and as such may properly be resisted. In accordance with this view the Anarchists look upon attempts to arbitrarily suppress vice as in themselves crimes.

• By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another person's I mean.
• I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.
• Shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the people that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?
• A banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
• Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but ... the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
• In all my travels the thing that has impressed me the most is the universal brotherhood of man--what there is of it.
• It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
• Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
• We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one--the one we use--which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics.
• When some men discharge an obligation, you can hear the report for miles around.
• I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
• Familiarity breeds contempt--and children.
• God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made everyone happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!
• Heaven for climate, Hell for society.
• Life does not consist mainly--or even largely--of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.
• Man is the only animal that blushes or needs to.
• If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principle difference between a dog and a man.
• Did I appeal to the law--I? Does it quench the pauper's thirst if the king drink for him?
• Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
• My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not its institutions or its office holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags--that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it.
• Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
• The lack of money is the root of all evil.
• We Americans worship the almighty dollar! Well, it is a worthier god than Heredity Privilege.
• Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
• War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.
• O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle; be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it; for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
• Policemen and politicians ... are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum ... everywhere in America.
• I have no race prejudice, and I think I have no color prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
• The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
• A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
• There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had its rights.
• All religions issue Bibles against Satan, and say the most injurious things against him, but we never hear his side.
• More than one cigar at a time is excessive smoking.
• There is always something about your success that displeases even your best friend.
• If you tell the truth, you won't have to remember anything.
• When in doubt, tell the truth.
• Truth is stranger than fiction--to some people.
• Work consists of whatever a body is obligated to do, and Play consists of whatever a body is not obligated to do.
• No man's property is safe while Congress is in session.

• As long as I count the votes what are you going to do about it?

• The most important thing schools teach children today is: You can be anything you want as long as it isn’t different.

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