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Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987

It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
Evelyn Waugh

The more you observe politics, the more you've got to admit that each party is worse than the other.
Will Rogers

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
M. Cartmill

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.
Dave Barry

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will Durant

I'm not sure I want popular opinion on my side -- I've noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts.
Bethania McKenstry

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Oscar Wilde

I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks.
Totie Fields

You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.
Al Capone

Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
John Kenneth Galbraith

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Jack London, Jack London's Tales of Adventure

And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all.
Socrates

Hell, there are no rules here--we're trying to accomplish something
Thomas A. Edison

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think--rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.
Bill Beattie

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
Herman Hesse

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams

Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.
Christian Furchtegott Gellert

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.
Bill Cosby

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
Harry S Truman

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

His ignorance is encyclopedic
Abba Eban (1915-)

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854), II, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
Albert Einstein

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks.
Will Durant, The History of Civilization

Adversity is the first path to truth.
Lord Byron

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
George Bernard Shaw

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
Victor Hugo

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations
are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are
no longer strong.
Churchill

If we had more time for discussion, we probably would have made a great many more mistakes.
Leon Trotsky

I would rather be hated for what I am than loved for what I am not
Andre Gide

Only some of us can learn by other people’s mistakes. The rest of us have to be the other people.
Chicago Tribune

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
Ralph Hodgson

Yet man dies not while the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is forgotten, indeed, but the breath he breathed yet stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited today; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrow that he felt are our familiar friends—the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also.
H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men… re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Walt Whitman