THE WEEKLY QUOTATION
January 24, 2017 But I have always found that the only kind of statement worth making is an overstatement. A half truth, like a half brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. it carries further. (Stephen Leacock, 1869 - 1944)
January 17, 2024 ...from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. There is in this subject a profound and widespread hypocrisy whenever people talk in general terms. (Bertrand Russell, 1872 - 1970)
January 10, 2024 My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. ( Adlai Stevenson, 1900 - 1965)
January 3, 2024 Most collectors collect tangibles. A a quotation collector, I collect wisdom, life, invisible beauty, soul in ink. (Terri Guillemets, 1973 - )
December 27, 2023 Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. (Carl Sagan, 1934 - 1996)
December 20, 2023 Science is basically an inoculation against charlatans. Neil deGrasse Tyson, 1958 - )
December 13, 2023 Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we're hard-wired to form tribalistic religions. E. O. Wilson, 1929 - )
December 6, 2023 The Roman Empire was very, very much like us. They lost their moral core, their sense of values in terms of who they were. And after all of those things converged together, they just went right down the tubes very quickly. (Ben Carson, 1951 - )
November 29, 2023 Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive. (Margaret Mead, 1901 - 1978)
November 22, 2023 Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives. (Eric Hoffer, 1902 - 1983)
November 15, 2023 A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers. (Friedrich August von Hayek, 1899 - 1992)
November 8, 2023 Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst. (Thomas Paine, 1737 - 1809)
November 1, 2023 When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. (Eric Hoffer, 1902 - 1983)
October 24, 2023 Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty. (Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826)
October 17, 2023 Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it... (Jonathan Swift, 1667 - 1745)
October 11, 2023 One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. (Golda Meir, 1898 - 1978)
October 4, 2023 The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets. (Eric Hoffer, 1902 - 1983)
September 27, 2023 The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes. (Thomas Paine, 1737 - 1809)
September 20, 2023 Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. (Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859) (cf. February 18, 2015)
September 13, 2023 A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority. (Eric Hoffer, 1902 - 1983)
September 6, 2023 Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. (Dr. Seuss, 1904 - 1991)
August 30, 2023 When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives. (Robert A. Heinlein 1907 - 1988)
August 23, 2023 If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy. (Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 -2007)
August 16, 2023 We've got to dumb America up again. (Ray Bradbury, 1920 - 2012)
August 9, 2023 Responsibility is the price of freedom. (Elbert Hubbard, 1856 - 1915)
August 2, 2023. Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves. (Eric Hoffer, 1902 - 1983)
July 26, 2023 The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation. ( Sam Harris, 1967 --)
July 19, 2023 The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man. ( Milan Kundera, 1929 - 2023)
July 12, 2023 Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. Eric Hoffer, (1902 - 1983)
July 5, 2023 Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.” (Sam Harris, 1967 - )
June 28, 2023 Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. ( Barbara Kingsolver, 1955 - )
June 21, 2023 There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people. ( Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1846)
June 14, 2023 If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it. ( Robert A. Heinlein, 1907 - 1988)
June 7, 2023 No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. (Virginia Woolf, 1882 - 1941)
May 25, 2023 The treacherous are ever distrustful. ( J.R.R. Tolkien, 1892 - 1973)
May 17, 2023 Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn't quite as spectacular. ( Lisa Lutz, 1970 - )
May 10, 2023 Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too. ( Marcus Aurelius, 121 A.D. - 180)
May 3, 2023 No man was ever wise by chance. (Seneca, 4B.C. - 65 A.D.)
April 26, 2023 Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse. (Joseph Brodsky, 1940 - 1996)
April 19, 2023 The trouble is you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind. ( Terry Pratchett, 1948 - 2015)
April 12, 2023 The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. ( Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960)
April 5, 2023 We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged. (Heinrich Heine, 1797 - 1856)
March 29, 2023 On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time. (George Orwell, 1903 - 1950)
March 22, 2023 I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. ( Bertrand Russell, 1872 - 1970)
March 15, 2023 A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. ( William S. Burroughs, 1914 - 1997)
March 8, 2023 The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. (Plato, 428/424 - 348 B.C.)
March 1, 2013 The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950)
February 22, 1923 There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. (Elie Wiesel, 1928 - 2016)
February 15, 2023 Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. ( Bertrand Russell, 1872 - 1970)
February 8, 2023 Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. (Frank Zappa, 1940 - 1993)
February 1, 2023 Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact. (George Eliot, 1819 - 1880)
January 25, 2023 It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak. (Neil Gaiman, 1960)
January 18, 2023 If God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion. Martin Amis, 1949 - )
January 11, 2023 I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking.( Dorothy L. Sayers, 1893 - 1957)
January 4, 2023 Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth. (Virginia Woolf, 1882 - 1941)
December 28, 2022 Much learning does not teach understanding. (Heraclitus, 544 B.C. - 483 B.C.)
December 21, 2022 The world in general doesn't know what
to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought,
and its first reaction is one of anger. (W. Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965)
December 14, 2022. In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not
forgotten this. (Terry Pratchett, 1948 - 2015)
December 7, 2022 An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man. (Thomas More, 1478 - 1535)
November 30, 2022 If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. (Emma Goldman, 1869 - 1940)
November 23, 2022 Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. (H. G. Wells, 1866-1946)
November 16, 2022 To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. (Elbert Hubbard, 1856 - 1915)
November 9, 2022 Every dogma has its day. (Anthony Burgess, 1917 - 1993)
November 2, 2022 I am optimistic when I consider the spiritual dimension which the scientist's discipline forces him to ignore. (William Golding, 1911 - 1993)
October 26, 2022 Experience teaches only the teachable. (Aldous Huxley, 1894 - 1963)
October 19, 2022 Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society. (Natan Sharansky, 1948 – )
October 12, 2022 A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. (Ayn Rand, 1905 - 1982)
October 5, 2022 Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive. (Margaret Mead, 1901 - 1978)
September 28, 2022 We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. (Carl Sagan, 1934 - 1996)
September 21, 2022 Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. (Isaac Asimov, 1920 - 1992)
September 14, 2022 Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. (Elbert Hubbard, 1856 - 1915)
September 7, 2022 I never learned from a man who agreed with me. (Robert Heinlein, 1907 - 1988)
August 31, 2022 It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. (H. L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
August 24, 2022 The brain is wider than the sky. (Emily Dickinson, 1830- 1886)
August 17, 2022 Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can't get out of it if we would. (Thomas Hardy, 1840 - 1928)
August 10, 2022 Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through. (Anthony Burgess, 1917 - 1993)
August 3, 2022 Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811 - 1863)
July 27, 2022 Man produces evil as a bee produces honey.
(William Golding, 1911 - 1993)
July 20, 2022 The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total
anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency. (Aldous Huxley, 1894 -
1963)
July 13, 2022 There is no such thing as Something for nothing. (Napoleon Hill, 1883 - 1970)
July 6, 2022 Thy fate is the common fate of
all; Into each life some rain must fall. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 -
1882)
June 29, 2022 The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest,
truthful, and virtuous. (Frederick Douglass, 1818 - 1895)
June 22, 2022 The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity. (Benjamin Disraeli, 1804 - 1881)
June 15, 2022 A home without books is a body without soul. Marcus Tullius Cicero 106 B.C. - 43 B.C.
June 8, 2022 Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist. (Edmund Burke, 1729 - 1797)
June 1, 2022 Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. (Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 - 1519)
May 25, 2022 Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. (Robert A. Heinlein, 1907 - 1988)
May 18, 2022 If people think nature is their friend, then
they sure don't need an enemy. Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007)
May 11, 2022 The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of
unhappiness. (Eric Hoffer, 1898 - 1983)
May 4, 2022 The most dangerous man to any government is
the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing
superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the
government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable. (H. L. Mencken,
1880 - 1956)
April 27, 2022 Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.
(Zig Ziglar 1926 - 2012)
April 20, 2022 The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going. (Napoleon Hill 1883 - 1970)
April 13, 2022 Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. (Frederick Douglass, 1818 - 1895)
April 6, 2022 Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle. (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896 - 1940)
March 30, 2022 Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. (Joseph Campbell, 1904 - 1987)
March 23, 2022 None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. (Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
March 16, 2022 Men and women aren't the same. And they won't be the same. That doesn't mean that they can't be treated fairly. (Jordan Peterson, 1962 -- )
March 9, 2022 Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again. (Willa Cather, 1873 - 1947)
March 2, 2022 Liberals have invented whole college majors - psychology, sociology and women's studies - to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. (P. J. O'Rourke, 1947 - 2022)
February 23, 2022 I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally. (W. C. Fields, 1880 - 1946)
February 16, 2022 Gods always behave like the people who make them. Zora Neale Hurston (1891 - 1960)
February 9, 2022 The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law. David Mamet, 1947 – )
February 2, 2022 It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found. (Wilson Mizner, 1876 - 1933)
January 26, 2022 Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you'll know you're dead. (Tennessee Williams, 1911 - 1983)
January 19, 2022 Half a truth is often a great lie. (Benjamin Franklin, 1706 - 1790)
January 12, 2022 You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog. (Harry S Truman, 1884 - 1972)
January 5, 2022 There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. (Gertrude Stein, 1874 - 1946)
December 29, 2021 It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. (Joseph Stalin 1878 - 1953)
December 22, 2021 An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882)
December 15, 2021 Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer. (Soren Kierkegaard, 1813 - 1855)
December 8, 2021 We do need a return to individual
integrity, self-reliance, and old-fashioned gumption. We really do. (Robert M.
Pirsig, 1928 - 2017)
December 1, 2021 The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the
easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows
others worthy of consideration. (Allan Bloom,
1930 - 1992)
November 24, 2021 If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him. (George Carlin 1937 - 2008)
November 17, 2021 I'm going to get an MRI to find out whether I have claustrophobia. (Steven Wright, 1955 - )
November 10, 2021 Hubris is one of the great renewable resources. (P. J. O’Rourke, 1947 - 2022)
November 3, 2021 The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. (Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826)
October 27, 2021 Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders. (Walter Bagehot, 1826 - 1877)
October 20, 2021 One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived. (Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469 - 1527)
October 13, 2021 The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be. (Walter Bagehot, 1826 - 1877)
October 6, 2021 Give me the luxuries of life, and I will willingly do without the necessities. (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867 - 1959)
September 29, 2021 The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it. (William James, 1842 - 1910)
September 22, 2021 Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits. (Walter Bagehot, 1826 - 1877)
September 15, 2021 Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. (H. G. Wells, 1866 - 1946)
September 8, 2021 Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humour was provided to console himself for what he is. (Horace Walpole, 1717 - 1797)
September 1, 2021 There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is a compact between men. (Epicurus, 341 B.C. - 270 B.C. )
August 25, 2021 The mob is the mother of tyrants. (Diogenes, 412 B.C. - 323 B.C.)
August 18, 2021 Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself. (Plutarch, 46 - 120)
August 11, 2021 The measure of a man is what he does with power. (Plato, 427 B.C. - 347 B.C.)
August 4, 2021 The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gather knowledge faster than society gather wisdom. (Isaac Asimov, 1920 - 1992)
July 28, 2021 No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been. (B.F. Skinner, 1904 - 1990)
July 21, 2012 Free speech is not just another value. It's the foundation of Western civilization. (Jordan Peterson, 1962 - )
July 14, 2012 Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness. (Richard Dawkins, 1941 - )
July 7, 2021 Original sin -- that is to say the sin of having been born with human nature that contains within it the temptation to evil -- will always make a mockery of attempts at perfection based upon manipulation of the environment. (Theodore Dalrymple, 1949 - )
June 30, 2021 Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
June 23, 2021 The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
June 16, 2021 I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. That's when it's time for my nap. (Bob Hope, 1903 - 2003)
June 9, 2021 The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. 1809 - 1894)
June 2, 2021 All government, of course, is against liberty. (H. L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
May 26, 2021 We are an impossibility in an impossible universe. (Ray Bradbury, 1920 - 2012)
May 19, 2021 Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. (Elbert Hubbard, 1856 - 1915)
May 12, 2021 Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)
May 5, 2021 The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. (Isaac Asimov, 1920 - 1992)
April 28, 2021 Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution? (H. L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
April 21, 2021 Video game are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that. (Ray Bradbury, 1920 - 2012)
April 14, 2021 Sometime a concept is baffling, not because it is profound, but because it is wrong. (E. O. Wilson, 1929 - )
April 7, 2021 It's far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. (Virginia Woolf, 1882 - 1941)
March 31, 2021 I always have a quotation for everything -- it saves original thinking. (Dorothy L. Sayers, 1893 - 1957)
March 25, 2021 We don't stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950); Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. 1809 - 1894)
March 18, 2021 If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. (Milton Berle, 1908 - 2002)
March 11, 2021 Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why. (Kurt Vonnegut 1922 - 2007)
March 4, 2021 It's not what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so. (Will Rogers, 1879 - 1935)
February 25, 2021. When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society. (Orson Wells, 1915 - 1985)
February 17, 2021 Once you label me, you negate me. (Soren Kierkegaard, 1813 - 1855)
February 10, 2021 If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing. (Margaret Thatcher, 1925 - 2013)
February 3, 2021 Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. (Will Rogers, 1879 - 1935)
January 27, 2021 Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. (Sigmund Freud, 1856 - 1939)
January 20, 2021
Clay lies
still, but blood's a rover,
Breath's a ware that will not keep. (A. E Houseman 1859 - 1936)
January 13, 2021 A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers. (Friedrich von Hayek, 1899 - 1992)
January 6, 2021 What makes old age hard to bear is not the failings of one's own faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories. (W. Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965)
December 30, 2020 Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour. (Stephen Leacock, 1869 - 1944)
December 23, 2020 Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover there are other views. (William F. Buckley Jr., 1925 - 2008)
December 16, 2020 An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. (Winston Churchill, 1874 - 1965)
December 9, 2020 Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret. (Benjamin Disraeli, 1804 - 1881)
December 2, 2020 Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so. (Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, 1694 - 1773)
November 25, 2020 You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. (John Morley, 1838 - 1923)
November 18, 2020 Let sleeping dogs lie. (Robert Walpole, 1676 - 1745)
November 11, 2020 Rather than being a 'perversion' of Islam, it is truer to say that the version of Islam espoused by ISIS, while undoubtedly the worst possible interpretation of Islam, and for Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere the most destructive version of Islam, is nevertheless a plausible interpretation of Islam. (Douglas Murray, 1979 -)
November 4, 2020 A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. (Abraham Lincoln, 1809 - 1865)
October 28, 2020 What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind. (Walter Bagehot, 1826 - 1877)
October 21, 2020 To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity. (Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784)
October 14, 2020 An acquired indifference to the ills of others is the price at which we live. (Stephen Leacock, 1869 - 1944)
October 7, 2020 At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice. (Gore Vidal, 1925 - 2012)
September 30, 2020 Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. (James Baldwin, 1924 - 1987)
September 23, 2020 Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)
September 16, 2020 Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. (Soren Kierkegaard, 1813 - 1855)
September 9, 2020 The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much. (William Hazlitt, 1778 - 1830)
September 2, 2020 Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. (Edmund Burke, 1729 - 1797)
August 26, 2020 Socialism is a mere beautiful dream, possibly only for the angels. The attempt to establish it would hurl us over the abyss. (Stephen Leacock, 1869 - 1944)
August 19, 2020 The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection. (George Orwell, 1903 - 1950)
August 12, 2020 Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think. (Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905 - 1980)
August 5, 2020 Desire is the essence of a man. (Baruch Spinoza, 1632 - 1677)
July 29, 2020 Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting. (Jonathan Swift, 1667 - 1745)
July 22, 2020 Stupidity has a knack of getting its way. (Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960)
July 15, 2020 Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages. (Michel de Montaigne 1533 - 1592)
July 8, 2020 I may be no better, but at least I am different. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 - 1778)
July 1, 2020 Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. (H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
June 25, 2020 We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice. (Friedrich August von Hayek, 1899 - 1992)
June 17, 2020 Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. (Ambrose Bierce 1842 - 1914)
June 10, 2020 Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views. (William F. Buckley, Jr., 1925 - 2008)
June 3, 2020 When humor goes, there goes civilization. (Erma Bombeck 1927 - 1996)
May 27, 2020 Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear -- and what they want to hear is what won't happen. (Paul Samuelson, 1915 - 2009)
May 20, 2020 If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion. (Friedrich August von Hayek, 1899 - 1992)
May 13, 2020 Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. (George Orwell, 1903 - 1950)
May 6, 2020 To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs. (Aldous Huxley, 1894 - 1963)
April 29, 2020 It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality. (Arnold Bennett, 1867 - 1931)
April 22, 2020 Man produces evil as a bee produces honey. (William Golding, 1911 - 1993)
April 15, 2020 In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour. (Henri Bergson, 1859 - 1941)
April 8, 2020 Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is. (Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960)
April 1, 2020 Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. (Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962)
March 25, 2020 The lucky person passes for a genius. (Euripides, 480 - 406 B.C.)
March 18, 2020 The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led. (Edgar Allan Poe, 1809 - 1849)
March 11, 2020 You have freedom when you're easy in your harness. (Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963)
March 4, 2020 An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882)
February 26, 2020 If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 --)
February 19, 2020 Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
February 12, 2020 'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded. (Friedrich August von Hayek, 1899 - 1992)
February 5, 2020 Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. (Joseph Campbell, 1904 - 1987)
January 29, 2020 To speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and we're deluding ourselves with euphemisms. We're talking about Islam being a religion of peace that's been hijacked by extremists. If ever there were a religion that's not a religion of peace, it is Islam. (Sam Harris, 1967 - )
January 22, 2020 Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. (Ernest Benn, 1875 - 1954)
January 15, 2020 Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up. (Orson Welles, 1915 - 1985)
January 8, 2020 I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you. (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900)
January 1, 2020 The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy, from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more. (Henning W. Prentis Jr., 1884 - 1959)
December 25, 2019 While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive. (Sam Harris, 1967 -)
December 18, 2019 There are only two ways of telling the complete truth -- anonymously and posthumously. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
December 11, 2019 Too much mercy... often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second. (Agatha Christie, 1890 - 1976)
December 4, 2019 When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. (Thomas Paine, 1737 - 1809)
November 27, 2019 Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays. (Henny Youngman, 1906 - 1998)
November 20, 2019 Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
November 13, 2019 I am all for trying to teach household finance in schools, starting as early as possible. And when it comes to high school, I think learning about compound interest is at least as important as trigonometry or memorizing the names of all 50 state capitals. (Richard Thaler, 1945 - )
November 6, 2019 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, 1930 - )
October 30, 2019 All national institutions of
churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than
human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and to monopolize power
and profit. (Thomas Paine,
1737 - 1809)
October 23, 2019 The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. ( Thomas Sowell, 1930 -)
October 16, 2019 Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know of that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
October 9, 2019 One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. (Elbert Hubbard 1856 - 1915)
October 2, 2019 If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner. (H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
September 25, 2019 The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. (Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)
September 18, 2019 How can one respect people as members of the human race unless one holds them to a standard of conduct and truthfulness? (Theodore Dalrymple, 1949 - )
September 11, 2019
September 4, 2019 I poured spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone. (Steven Wright, 1955 - )
August 28, 2019 All comedians are, in a way, anarchists. Our job is to make fun of the existing world. (Bob Newhart, 1929 – )
August 21, 2019 Character is simply habit long continued. (Plutarch 46 - 120)
August 14, 2019 I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be. (Diogenes 412 - 323 B.C.)
August 7, 2019 One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. (Plato 427 - 347 B.C.)
July 31, 2019 The Cartesian point of moral epistemology: I'm angry, therefore I'm right. (Theodore Dalrymple, 1949 - )
July 24, 2019 With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -- that takes religion. (Steven Weinberg, 1933 - )
July 17, 2019 A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 5 B.C. - 65 A.D.)
July 10, 2019 I've been in love with the same woman for forty-one years. If my wife finds out, she'll kill me. (Henny Youngman, 1906 - 1998)
July 3 2019 Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. (Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900)
June 26, 2019 The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
June 19, 2019 All forms of human happiness contain within themselves the seeds of their own decomposition. (Theodore Dalrymple, 1949 - )
June 12, 2019 The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. (William Arthur Ward, 1921 - 1994)
June 5, 2019 The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. (H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
May 29, 2019 I do benefits for all religions -- I'd hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality. (Bob Hope, 1903 - 2003)
May 22, 2019 I can resist anything except temptation. (Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900)
May 15, 2019 Life is just one damned thing after another. (Elbert Hubbard, 1856 - 1915)
May 8, 2019 The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression. (H. L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
May 1, 2019 Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation? (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
April 24, 2019 He had a look of composed dissatisfaction, as if he understood life thoroughly. (Flannery O'Connor, 1925 - 1964)
April 17, 2019 No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up. (Lily Tomlin, 1939 - )
April 10, 2019 Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be. (Ambrose Bierce, 1842 - 1914)
April 3, 2019 Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions. (Blaise Pascal, 1623 - 1662)
March 27, 2019 Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. (Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769 - 1821)
March 20, 2019 Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech. (Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955)
March 13, 2019 ...ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country. (John F. Kennedy, 1917 -1963)
March 6, 2019 Hubris is one of the great renewable resources. (P. J. O'Rourke, 1947 - )
February 27, 2019 I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio. (Rodney Dangerfield, 1921 - 2004)
February 20, 2019 Resentment is a great rationalizer: it presents us with selected versions of our own past, so that we do not recognize our own mistakes and avoid the necessity to make painful choices. (Theodore Dalrymple, 1949 - )
February 13, 2019 I will confront another form of bias: the soft bigotry of low expectations. (George W. Bush -- speech written by Michael Gerson, 1964 - )
February 6, 2019 Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious. (H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
January 30, 2019 Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. (C. S. Lewis, 1898 - 1963)
January 23, 2019
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
(Epicurus, 341 - 270 B.C.)
January 16, 2019 Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them. (Thomas Paine, 1737 - 1809)
January 9, 2019 The absence of utopianism in the Constitution, law, and traditional political culture has been ... important in limiting expectations concerning what can be achieved by politics. The history of the last two centuries confirms what the framers of the Constitution understood: that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the search for unalloyed virtue in public life leads to unalloyed terror. (Jeane Kirkpatrick, 1926 - 2006)
January 2, 2019 The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
December 26, 2018 Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment. (Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784)
December 19, 2018 Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
December 12, 2018 It is clear to me that people often want incompatible things. They want danger and excitement on the one hand, and safety and security on the other, and often simultaneously. Contradictory desires mean that life can never be wholly satisfying or without frustration. (Theodore Dalrymple, 1949 - )
December 5, 2018 Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! (Ronald Regan, 1911 - 2004)
November 28, 2018 Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. (Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962)
November 21, 2018 The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom. (Ladybird Johnson, 1912 - 2007)
November 14, 2018 Common sense is not a gift. It's a punishment because you have to deal with everyone who doesn't have it. (Unknown)
November 7, 2018 When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano. (Bob Hope, 1903 - 2003)
October 25, 2018 Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know -- and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me -- has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. (H. L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
October 17, 2018 Political correctness is often the attempt to make sentimentality socially obligatory or legally enforceable. (Theodore Dalrymple, 1949 - )
October 10, 2018 I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind... (Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955)
October 3, 2018 All that is necessary for evil to triumph, said Burke, is for good men to do nothing; and most good men nowadays can be relied upon to do precisely that. Where a reputation for intolerance is more feared than a reputation for vice itself, all manner of evil may be expected to flourish. (Theodore Dalrymple, 1949 - )
September 26, 2018 The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)
September 19, 2018 We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special. (Stephen Hawking, 1942 - 2018)
September 12, 2018 You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough. (Aldous Huxley, 1894 - 1963)
September 5, 2018 The purpose of those who argue for cultural diversity is to impose ideological uniformity. (Theodore Dalrymple, 1949 - )
August 29, 2018 I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. (Noel Coward, 1899 - 1973)
August 22, 2018 I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation. (Somerset Maugham, 1864 - 1965)
August 15, 2018 Life is a Shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. (Voltaire, 1694 - 1778)
August 8, 2018 Religions get lost as people do. (Franz Kafka 1883 - 1924)
August 1, 2018 If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. (Thomas Szasz, 1920 - 2012)
July 25, 2018 Where thou art, that is home. (Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886)
July 18, 2018 I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back. (Henny Youngman, 1906 - 1998)
July 11, 2018 Every people have gods to suit their circumstances. (Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862)
July 4, 2018 In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order. (Will Durant, 1885 - 1981)
June 27, 2018 The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
June 20, 2018 All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours. (Aldous Huxley 1894 - 1963)
June 13, 2018 Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. (Plato, 427 B.C. - 347 B.C.)
June 6, 2018 All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. (Thomas Paine, 1737 - 1809)
May 30, 2018 We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place. (Daniel J. Boorstin, 1914 - 2004)
May 23, 2018 Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed. (Barbara Tuchman, 1912 - 1989)
May 16, 2018 Practical politics consists in ignoring facts. (Henry Adams, 1838 - 1918)
May 9, 2018 I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously. (Douglas Adams, 1952 - 2001)
May 2, 2018 The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. (Arthur C. Clarke, 1917 - 2008)
April 25, 2018 It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. (Thomas Paine 1737 - 1809)
April 18, 2018 Men naturally despise those who court them, but respect those who do not give way to them. (Thucydides, 460 - 95 B.C.)
April 11, 2018 No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny. (Hannah Arendt, 1906 - 1975)
April 4, 2018 Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal. (Will Durant, 1885 - 1981)
March 28, 2018 The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil. ( H. L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
March 21, 2018 Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense. (Joseph Addison, 1672 - 1719)
March 14, 2018 He who dares not offend cannot be honest. (Thomas Paine, 1737 - 1809)
March 7, 2018 People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov, 1920 - 1992)
February 28, 2018 Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind. (E. O. Wilson, 1929 - )
February 21, 2018 Whenever the speech is corrupted, so is the mind. (Seneca, 5 B.C.- 65 A.D.)
February 14, 2018 Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem. (John Galsworthy, 1867 - 1933)
February 7, 2018 It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other. (Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784)
January 31, 2018 At the deepest level, all living things that have ever been looked at have the same DNA code. And many of the same genes. (Richard Dawkins, 1941 - )
January 24, 2018 When being the most oppressed victim gives you the highest status, then it’s a race to the bottom. (Jordan Peterson, (1962 - )
January 17, 2018 The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. (Terry Pratchett, 1948 - 2015)
January 10, 2018 Several excuses are always less convincing than one. (Aldous Huxley, 1894, 1963)
January 3, 2018 Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily. (Thomas Szasz, 1920 - 2012)
December 27, 2017 Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative. (H. G. Wells, 1866 - 1946)
December 20, 2017 It's a difficult business, finding out what's true about the world, the universe. (Richard Dawkins, 1941 - )
December 13, The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
December 6, 2017 Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)
November 29, 2017 Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around! (Alexander Pope, 1688 - 1744)
November 22, 2017 The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
November 15, 2017 The difference is too nice -- Where ends the virtue or begins the vice. (Alexander Pope, 1688 - 1744)
November 8, 2017 The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in. (A. E. Houseman, 1859 -1936)
November 1, 2017 I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying. (Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900)
October 25, 2017 The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
October 18, 2017 The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it. (Ayn Rand, 1905 - 1982)
October 11, 2017 Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society. (Niccolo Machiavelli 1467 - 1527)
October 4, 2017 Optimism is the opium of the people. (Milan Kundera, 1929 – )
September 27, 2017 It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so. Robert A. Heinlein (1907 – 1988)
September 20, 2017 Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility. (Thomas Szasz, 1920 - 2012)
September 13, 2017 Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. (Ashley Montagu, 1905 - 1999)
September 6, 2017 Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed. (Thomas Huxley, 1825 - 1895)
August 30, 2017 The problem is we don't know what the
climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist
books -- mine included -- because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.
(James Lovelock, 1919 - )
August 23, 2017 By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. (Richard Dawkins, 1941 - )
August 16, 2017 How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. (A. A. Milne --Winnie-the-Pooh -- 1882 - 1956)
August 9, 2017 I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion. (Baruch Spinoza 1632 - 1677)
August 2, 2017 Love is always being given where it is not required. (E. M. Forster, 1879 - 1970)
July 26, 2017 There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless. (W. Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965)
July 19, 2017 I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific. (Lily Tomlin, 1939 - )
July 12, 2017 The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. (Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626)
July 5, 2017 Peddling false history from within the mantle of victimhood is perilously arrogant for those who claim special treatment based on history. (John Robson, National Post, July 1, 2017 on aboriginal demands.)
June 28, 2017 The facts of life are conservative. (Margaret Thatcher, 1925 - 2013)
June 21, 2017 Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority. (Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626)
June 14, 2017 We would all like a reputation for generosity and we'd all like to buy it cheap. (Mignon McLaughlin, 1913 - 1983)
June 7, 2017 Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking. (H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
May 31, 2017 People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive. (E. O. Wilson, 1929 - )
May 24, 2017 The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything -- and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.' (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
May 17, 2017 The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom. (Milton Friedman, 1912 -2006)
May 10, 2017 It is one of the delights of the committedly progressive mind that it can never contemplate the notion of its own fallibility. (Rex Murphy, 1947 --. National Post May 5, 2017)
May 3, 2017 People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
April 26, 2017 As comedians, we are all laughing because life is so horrible. Life is so difficult, and I cope with it by making jokes about absolutely everything. (Joan Rivers, 1933 - 2014)
April 19, 2017 Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared. (Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 - 43 B.C.)
April 12, 2017 Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 4 B.C. - 65 A.D.)
April 5, 2017 Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver. (Edmund Burke, 1729 - 1797)
March 29, 2017 Whatever the evolutionary basis of religion, the xenophobia it now generates is clearly maladaptive. (Lawrence Krauss 1954 - )
March 22, 2017 Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. (Adam Smith, 1723 - 1790)
March 15, 2017 The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
March 8, 2017 At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. (George Orwell, 1903 - 1950)
March 1, 2017 Striving to better, oft we mar what's well. (William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616. King Lear)
February 22, 2017 In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. (Often attributed to George Orwell, but not verified.)
February 15, 2017 One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
February 8, 2017 All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. (Edmund Burke, 1729 - 1797)
February 1, 2017 The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries. (John Stuart Mill, 1806 - 1873)
January 25, 2017 How often misused words generate misleading thoughts. (Herbert Spencer, 1820 - 1903)
January 18, 2017 Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. (H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
January 11, 2017 Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives. (Ronald Regan, 1911 - 2004)
January 4, 2017 Important principles may, and must, be inflexible. (Abraham Lincoln, 1809 - 1865)
December 28, 2016 Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous. (David Hume, 1711 -1776)
December 21, 2016 If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull. (W. C. Fields, 1880 - 1946)
December 14, 2016 The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency. (Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965)
December 7, 2016 If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated. (Voltaire, 1694 - 1778)
November 30, 2016 Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 4 B.C. - 65 A.D.)
November 23, 2016 If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
November 16, 2016 To hold a pen is to be at war. (Voltaire, 1694 - 1778)
November 9, 2016 Sometime a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong. (E. O. Wilson, 1929 - )
November 2, 2016 The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. (Thomas Huxley, 1825 - 1895)
October 26, 2016 The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations, and benefits. (Plutarch, 46 - 120)
October 19, 2016 Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals. (E. O. Wilson, 1929 - )
October 12, 2016 I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
October 5, 2016 In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker. (Plutarch, 46 - 120)
September 28, 2016 If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. (Modern Proverb) In fact -- the original is: Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for - because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything. (Peter Marshall, 1902 - 1949)
September 21, 2016 To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. (Voltaire, 1694 - 1778)
September 14, 2016 Impropriety is the soul of wit. (Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965)
September 7, 2016 The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
August 31, 2016 The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours. (Bertrand Russell, 1872 - 1970)
August 24, 2016 One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
August 17, 2016 The genius, wit and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs. (Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626)
August 10, 2016 A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
August 3, 2016 Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science, for its part, will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition. (E. O. Wilson, 1929 - )
July 27, 2016 Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
July 20, 2016 History teaches us that weakness arouses evil. (Mike Pence, 1959 - )
July 13, 2016 It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness. (Thomas Jefferson 1743 - 1826)
July 6, 2016 Abstract sins one cannot defend against are the hallmarks of totalitarian states. (Barbara Kay, 1943 - ) (National Post, July 5, 2016)
June 29, 2016 The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
June 22, 2016 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, 1930 - )
June 15, 2016 The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. (Aristotle, 384 B.C. - 322 B.C.)
June 8, 2016 Don't talk about yourself; it will be done when you leave. (Wilson Mizner, 1876 -1933)
June 1, 2016 Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength. (E. O. Wilson, 1929 - )
May 25, 2016 The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money. (Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859)
May 18, 2016 For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. (H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
May 11, 2016 If there is no struggle, there is no progress. (Frederick Douglass, 1817 - 1895)
May 4, 2016 A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
April 27, 2016 The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it. (George Orwell, 1903 - 1950)
April 20, 2016 Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgement. (Seneca, 4 B.C. - 65 A.D.)
April 13, 2016 People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made. (Joan Rivers, 1933 - 2014)
April 6, 2016 All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. (Edgar Allan Poe, 1809 - 1849)
March 30, 2016 Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism. (Carl Jung, 1873 - 1961)
March 23, 2016 The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic. (Charles Darwin, 1809 - 1882)
March 16, 2016 If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. (Dorothy Parker, 1893 -1967)
March 9, 2016 I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations. (Galileo Galilei, 1564 - 1642)
March 2, 2016 Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. (Thomas Paine, 1737 - 1809)
February 24, 2016 Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf. (George Orwell, 1903 - 1950)
February 17, 2016 Success has always been a great liar. (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900)
February 10, 2016 Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. (George Santayana, 1863 - 1952)
February 3, 2016 I have the knack of easing scruples. (Molière, 1622 - 1673)
January 27, 2016 Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950)
January 20, 2016 I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)
January 13, 2016 Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive. (William F. Buckley, Jr. 1925 - 2008)
January 6, 2016 A woman telling her true age is like a buyer confiding his final price to an Armenian rug dealer. (Mignon McLaughlin, 1913 - 1983)
December 30, 2015 In the end, more than the freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. (From a speech by Margaret Thatcher -- 1925 -2013 -- which she attributed to Edward Gibbon, 1737 - 1794. It may have been derived from a passage in Edith Hamilton's Echo of Greece)
December 23, 2015 The more I see of men the more I like dogs. (Madame de Stael, 1766 - 1817)
December 16, 2015 It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it. (Joseph Joubert, 1754 -1824)
December 9, 2015 How easy it is to make people believe a lie and how hard it is to undo that work again! (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)
December 2, 2015 Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth. (Horace Walpole, 1717 - 1797)
November 25, 2015 Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration. (William Hazlitt, 1778 - 1830)
November 18, 2015 If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself, but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. (Sun Tzu, 544 B.C. - 496 B.C.)
November 11, 2015 He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass. (Edgar Fielder, 1929 - 2003)
November 4, 2015 Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
October 28, 2015 If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand. (Milton Friedman, 1912 - 2006)
October 21, 2015 Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good. (Thomas Sowell, 1930 - )
October 14, 2015 But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
(Andrew Marvell, 1621 - 1678)
October 7, 2015 Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts. (Claire Boothe Luce, 1903 - 1987)
September 30, 2015 An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. (Benjamin Franklin, 1706 - 1790)
September 23, 2015 The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. (Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963)
September 16, 2015 Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship. (James Russell Lowell, 1819 - 1891)
September 9, 2015 Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. (Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963)
September 2, 2015 No man is the wiser for his learning; it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man. (John Selden, 1584 - 1654)
August 26, 2015 The nervous system and the automatic machine are fundamentally alike in that they are devices which make decisions on the basis of decisions they made in the past. (Norbert Weiner, 1894 - 1964)
August 19, 2015 The inherent vice of capitalism is the
unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal
sharing of miseries.
(Winston Churchill, 1874 - 1965)
August 12, 2015 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, 1874 - 1965)
August 5, 2015 All cruelty springs from weakness. (Lucius Annaeus
Seneca, 5 B.C. - 65 A.D.)
July 29, 2015 A fellow who is always declaring he's no fool usually has his suspicions. (Wilson Mizner, 1876 - 1933)
July 22, 2015 Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. (Usually attributed to Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 5 B.C. - 65 A.D. It has been claimed that this is a misattribution, and that the quotation is based on a similar statement by Edward Gibbon, 1737 - 1794)
July 15, 2015 There is something about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless. (Wilson Mizner, 1876 - 1933)
July 8, 2015 Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost. (David Mamet, 1947 - )
July 1, 2015 No great thing is created suddenly. (Epictetus, 55 - 135)
June 24, 2015 A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle. (Benjamin Franklin, 1706 - 1790)
June 17, 2015 Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well. (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910) We prefer another version: Never put off till tomorrow what can be put off till the day after.
June 10, 2015 To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. (Isaac Asimov, 1920 - 1992)
June 3, 2015 If evil be spoken of you, and it be true, correct yourself; if it be a lie, laugh at it. (Epictetus, 55 - 135)
May 27, 2015 For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. (Carl Sagan, 1934 - 1996)
May 20, 2015 Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. (Franz Kafka, 1883 - 1924)
May 13, 2015 You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. (Aldous Huxley, 1894 - 1963)
May 6, 2015 A friend to all is a friend to none. (Aristotle, 384 - 322 B.C.)
April 29, 2015 Fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity. (Edward Gibbon, 1737 - 1794)
April 22, 2015 Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive. (James Anthony Froude, 1818 - 1894)
April 15, 2015 The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game. (Karl Popper, 1902 - 1994)
April 8, 2015 Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712 - 1778)
March 31, 2015 Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object. (Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960) (Cf. Francis Bacon, February 23, 2011)
March 24, 2015 My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be the servants of their human interests. (George Santayana, 1863 - 1952)
March 17, 2015 In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900)
March 11, 2015 Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness. (Andre Gide, 1869 - 1951)
March 4, 2015 Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence. (Aristotle, 384 - 322 B.C.)
February 25, 2015 You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money. (P.J. O'Rourke, 1947 - )
February 18, 2015 But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom. (Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859)
February 11, 2015 Life is hard. After all, it kills you. (Katharine Hepburn, 1907 - 2003)
February 4, 2015 The hardest thing to explain is the
glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.
(Ayn Rand, 1905 - 1982)
January 28, 2015 America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we
falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
(Abraham Lincoln, 1809 - 1865) A popular version of the actual: At
what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever
reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If
destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a
nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
January 21, 2015 No memory of having
starred
Atones for later disregard
Or keeps the end from being hard. (Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963. From
Provide, Provide.)
January 14, 2015 Faith: not wanting to know what is true. (Frederick Nietzsche, 1844 -1900)
January 7, 2015 Man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably aboreal in its habits. (Charles Darwin, 1809 - 1882)
December 31, 2015 I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science: The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws. (Stephen Hawking, 1942 - )
December 24, 2014 Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy. (Joseph Campbell, 1904 - 1987)
December 17, 2014 Fortune befriends the bold. (Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886)
December 10, 2014 Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope. (Aristotle, 384 - 322 B.C.)
December 3, 2014 ...nothing that you will earn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life -- save only this -- that if you work hard and intelligently, you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole purpose of education. (John Alexander Smith, 1863 - 1939)
November 26, 2014 Men create gods after their own image, not only with respect to their form, but with regard to their mode of life. (Aristotle, 384 - 322 B.C.)
November 19, 2014 It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously. (H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
November 12, 2014 Among the calamities of war
may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods
which interest dictates and credulity encourages. (Samuel Johnson, 1709- 1784.
The Idler, 1758)
Also: The first casualty when war comes is truth. (Hiram Johnson, 1866 - 1945)
November 5, 2014 Life is a long lesson in humility. (James M. Barrie, 1860 - 1937)
October 29, 2014 They are always saying God loves us. If that's love, I'd rather have a bit of kindness. (Graham Greene, 1904 - 1991)
October 22, 2014 Perfection has one grave defect: it
is apt to be dull. (Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965)
October 15, 2014 Fiscal reality trumps utopian ideology every time. (Philip
Cross, ? Former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada.)
October 8, 2014 God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot
change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the
difference. (Reinhold Niebuhr, 1892 - 1971)
October 1, 2014 I believe that a scientist looking at
nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
(Richard Feynman, 1918 -1988)
September 25, 2014 Men will always be mad, and those who think they can
cure them are the maddest of all. (Voltaire, 1694 - 1778)
September 17, 2014 What use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings? (Diogenes, 412 - 323 B.C.)
September 10, 2014 That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent. (Aldous Huxley, 1894 -1963)
September 3, 2014 If you have to invoke a distant past to justify a present grievance, the case for the grievance is already undermined. (David Horowitz, 1939 - )
August 27, 2014 Atheism is a non-prophet organization. (George Carlin, 1937 - 2008)
August 20, 2014 Our life is made by the death of others. (Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 - 1519)
August 13, 2014 On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. ( [The prophetic] H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
August 6, 2014 Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. (G. K. Chesterton, 1874 - 1936) (cf. October 17, 2013)
July 30, 2014 Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand. (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)
July 23, 2014 When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear, and life stands explained. (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)
July 16, 2014 To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900)
July 9, 2014 From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned. (Immanuel Kant, 1724 - 1804)
July 2, 2014 Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. (Aldous Huxley, 1894 - 1963)
June 25, 2014 A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. (Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963)
June 18, 2014 Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long. (Ogden Nash, 1902 - 1971)
June 11, 2014 Time will bring to light whatever is hidden; it will cover up and conceal what is now shining in splendor. (Horace, 65 - 8 B.C.)
June 4, 2014 Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying. (Aldous Huxley, 1894 - 1963) (Cf. October 10, 2013)
May 28, 2014 So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism. (E. M. Forster, 1879 - 1970)
May 21, 2014 (a) The artist in me cries out for design. (Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963)
(b) What but design of darkness to appall? --
If design govern in a thing so small. (from Design, 1922)
May 14, 2014 What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature! (Charles Darwin, 1809 - 1882)
May 7, 2014 Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. (H. G. Wells, 1866 - 1946)
April 30, 2014 The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so. (Ronald Regan, 1911 - 2004)
April 23, 2014 You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. (Mario Cuomo, 1932 - 2015)
April 16, 2014 But, once you get a taste for shutting people up, it's hard to stop. Why bother winning the debate when it's easier to close it down? (Mark Steyn, 1959 - )
April 9, 2014 I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government. (Woody Allen, 1935 - )
April 2, 2014 Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. (Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 - 1519)
March 26, 2014 During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. (George Orwell, 1903 -- 1950)
March 19, 2014 Big Government is the small option: it's the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives. (Mark Steyn, 1959 - )
March 12, 2014 The spirit of envy can destroy; it can never build. (Margaret Thatcher, 1925 - 2013)
March 5, 2014 The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. (Thomas Huxley, 1825 - 1895)
February 26, 2014 No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. (Jacob Bronowski, 1908 - 1974)
February 19, 2014 The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. (Herbert Spencer, 1820 - 1903)
February 12, 2014 When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. (Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826)
February 5, 2014 I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. (Richard Dawkins, 1941 - )
January 29, 2014 The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money. (Margaret Thatcher, 1925 - 2013)
January 22, 2014 Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon us like an intruder, and meets the intruder's welcome. (Charles Mackay, 1812 -1889)
January 15, 2014 I like the word 'indolence.' It makes my laziness seem classy. (Bernard Williams, 1929 - 2003)
January 8, 2014 Every failure is a step to success. (William Whewell, 1794 - 1866)
January 1, 2014 All good art is an indiscretion. (Tennessee Williams, 1911 -1983)
December 25, 2013 Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth. (Lillian Hellman, 1905 - 1984)
December 18, 2013 Only a mediocre person is always at his best. (Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965)
December 11, 2013 The moment you introduce a despotism in the world of thought, you succeed in making hypocrites -- and you get in such a position that you never know what your neighbor thinks. (Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899)
December 4, 2013 There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven. (Robert G. Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899)
November 27, 2013 ...governments, including free and
democratic governments, are not really friendly to freedom and democracy. They
abhor any rule of law that limits their powers and penchant for social
engineering.
(George Jonas, 1935 - 2015)
November 20, 2013 Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. (Ayn Rand, 1905 - 1982)
November 13, 2013 The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise. (Tacitus, 56 - 117)
November 6, 2013 The free lunch is the essence of modern liberalism. (Charles Krauthammer, 1950 - )
October 31, 2013 Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955)
October 24, 2013 Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. (Groucho Marx, 1890 - 1977)
October 17, 2013 Tolerance is another word for indifference. (Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965)
October 10, 2013 The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. (H.L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
October 3, 2013 The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so. (Gore Vidal, 1925 - 2012)
September 25, 2013 So it may be with me...
I shall complete this mortal year, and gain
Some golden still September of the soul
Whose harvest-tide brings ripeness of the whole. (Nathaniel A. Benson,
1903 -1967)
September 18, 2013 Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)
September 11, 2013 Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950)
September 4, 2013 Gratitude is merely the secret hope of future favours. (La Rochefoucauld, 1613 - 1680)
August 28, 2013 It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. (Voltaire, 1694 - 1778)
August 21, 2013 That government is best which governs least. (Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862)
August 14, 2013 A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. (Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900)
August 7, 2013 When people are bewildered, they tend to become credulous. (Calvin Coolidge, 1872 - 1933)
July 31, 2013 The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular. (Edward Gibbon, 1737 - 1794)
July 24, 2013 An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia. (Thomas B. Macaulay, 1800 - 1859)
July 17, 2013 The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. (Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965)
July 10, 2013 I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. (Woody Allen, 1935 - )
July 3, 2013 Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical, or sensible, or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. (Charles Caleb Colton, 1780 - 1832)
June 26, 2013 Jesters do often prove prophets. (Joseph Addison, (1672 - 1719)
June 19, 2013 Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. (Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900)
June 12, 2013 Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804 - 1864) (Cf. May 24, 2011)
June 5, 2013 The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. ( Steven Weinberg, 1933 - )
May 29, 2013 Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies. (Gore Vidal, 1925 - 2012) (See also October 31, 2012)
May 22, 2013 Fools admire, but men of sense approve. (Alexander Pope, 1688 - 1744)
May 15, 2013 Criticism is prejudice made plausible. (H. L. Mencken, 1880 - 1956)
May 8, 2013 People ask for criticism, but they want only praise. (W. Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965)
May 1, 2013 It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. (Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862)
April 24, 2013 Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed. (Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784)
April 17, 2013 The more refined one is, the more unhappy. (Anton Chekov, 1860 - 1904)
April 10, 2013 If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank. (Woody Allen, 1935 - )
April 3, 2013 Dream in a pragmatic way. (Aldous Huxley, 1894 - 1963)
March 27, 2013 Everything popular is wrong. (Oscar Wilde, 1854 -1900)
March 20, 2013 The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. (Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955)
March 13, 2013 The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. (Richard Dawkins, 1941 - )
March 6, 2013 There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe them. (George Orwell, 1903 - 1950)
February 28, 2013 Socialism means slavery. (Lord Acton, 1834 - 1902)
February 21, 2013 Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous. (Francis Bacon, 1561 -1626)
February 14, 2013 Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are affected. (Benjamin Franklin, 1706 - 1790)
February 7, 2013 I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. (Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900)
January 30, 2013 The general purpose of this paper, is to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation...(Richard Steele, 1672-1729, in describing The Tatler)
January 23, 2013 Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. (George Orwell, 1903 -1950) Oddly, we were only able to find the source of: If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear -- from a proposed preface to Animal Farm.)
January 16, 2013 His smile is like the silver plate on a coffin. (John Philpot Curran, 1750 - 1817)
January 9, 2013 I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it. (Voltaire, 1694 - 1778)
January 2, 2013 The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. (Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784)
December 26, 2012 Where error is irreparable, repentance is useless. (Edward Gibbon, 1737 - 1794)
December 19, 2012 Whoever would lie usefully should lie seldom. (Lord Hervey, 1696 - 1743)
December 12, 2012 This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. (Horace Walpole, fourth Earl of Orford, 1717 - 1797)
December 5, 2012 I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. (Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826)
November 28, 2012 The theologian may indulge in the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings. (Edward Gibbon, 1737 - 1794)
November 21, 2012 Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius. (Edward Gibbon, 1737 - 1794)
November 14, 2012 He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950)
November 7, 2012 I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. (Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826)
October 31, 2012 In the misfortune of our friends we find
something that is not displeasing to us. (La Rochefoucauld, 1613 - 1680)
October 24, 2012 Politics is the art of the possible. (Prince Bismarck, 1815
- 1898)
October 17, 2012 Full many a gem of purest ray
serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
(Thomas Gray, 1716 - 1771. From Elegy in a Country Churchyard.)
October 10, 2012 They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. (Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790)
October 3, 2012 It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. (Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826)
September 26, 2012 Evil prospers when good men do nothing. (John Philpot Curran, 1750 - 1817) (Cf. the Spanish Proverb: Quien calla, otorga. He who is silent, gives consent.)
September 19, 2012
The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal
vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of
his crime and the punishment
of his guilt. (John Philpot Curran, 1750 - 1817)
September 12, 2012 Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. (Thomas Szasz 1920 -2012)
September 5, 2012 The dust of exploded beliefs may make a
fine sunset. (Geoffrey Madan, 1857 - 1947)
August 29, 2012 Hope is necessary in every condition. (Samuel
Johnson, 1709 - 1784)
August 22, 2012 When I was young, I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is. (Oscar Wilde, 1854 - 1900)
August 15, 2012 A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950)
August 8, 2012 Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding. (Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784)
August 1, 2012 Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. (Voltaire, 1694 -1778)
July 25, 2012 Religion...is the opium of the people. (Karl Marx, 1818 - 1883)
July 17, 2012 Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy. (Bishop William Warburton, 1698 - 1779)
July 10, 2012 All great truths begin as blasphemies. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950)
July 3, 2012 Illusion is the first of all pleasures. (Voltaire, 1694 -1778)
June 27, 2012 I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. (Charles Darwin, 1809 - 1882)
June 20, 2012 A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air. (President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882 - 1945)
June 13, 2012 Nature red in tooth and claw. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809 - 1892)
June 6, 2012 Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have. (Elizabeth Bowen, 1899 - 1973)
May 30, 2012 The sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow. (Miss C. F. Forbes, 1817 - 1911)
May 23, 2012 Life is a jest; and all things show it.
I thought so once; but now I know it. (My Own Epitaph. John Gay,
1685 -1732)
May 16, 2012 Click here for audio.
1
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
When April with its sweet-smelling showers
2 The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
3 And bathed every veyne in swich licour
And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid
4 Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
5 Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,
6 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
In every wood and field has breathed life into
7 The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
The tender new leaves, and the young sun
8 Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
Has run half its course in Aries,
9 And smale foweles maken melodye,
And small fowls make melody,
10 That slepen al the nyght with open ye
Those that sleep all the night with open eyes
11 (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
(So Nature incites them in their hearts),
12 Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
13 And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
And professional pilgrims to seek foreign shores,
14 To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
To distant shrines, known in various lands;
15 And specially from every shires ende
And specially from every shire's end
16 Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
Of England to Canterbury they travel,
17 The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
To seek the holy blessed martyr,
18 That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
Who helped them when they were sick
( Geoffrey Chaucer 1343 -1400. From The General Prologue, An Interlinear
Translation - Harvard University.)
May 9, 2012 Take the risk of thinking for
yourself; much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to you that
way.
(Christopher Hitchens
1949 - 2011)
May 2, 2012 An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less. (Nicholas Murray Butler, 1862 - 1947)
April 25. 2012 No more: where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
(Thomas Gray, 1716 - 1771)
April 18, 2012 By education most have been misled;
So they believe, because they have been bred.
The priest continues what the nurse began,
And thus the child imposes on the man. (John
Dryden, 1631 - 1700)
April 11, 2012 'Tis Education forms the common mind,
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
(Alexander Pope, 1688 - 1744)
April 4, 2012 Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy. (Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784)
March 28, 2012 Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. (Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910)
March 21, 2012 Droll thing life is -- that
mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can
hope from it is some
knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable
regrets. (Joseph Conrad, 1857 - 1924. Heart of Darkness)
March 14, 2012 Men, it has
been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while
they only recover their senses slowly, and one
by one. (Charles Mackay, 1814-1889)
March 7, 2012 They are not long, the days of wine and roses. (Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900)
February 29, 2012 I have tried too in my time to be a
philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.
(Oliver Edwards 1711-
1791)
February 22, 2012 Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque
recurret.
You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she'll be constantly running
back.
(Horace 65-8 B.C.)
February 15, 2012 There is no art which one government
sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the
people. (Adam
Smith, 1723 -- 1790)
February 8, 2012 He that complies against his will,
Is of his own opinion still.
(Samuel Butler, 1612-1680)
February 1, 2012 Only the insane take themselves quite seriously. (Max Beerbohm 1872-1956)
January 25, 2012 Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie...(George Orwell, 1903-1950)
January 18, 2012 The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. (Edmund Burke, 1729-1797)
January 11, 2012 The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything. (Edward John Phelps, 1822-1900)
January 4, 2012 I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance. (Christopher Marlowe, 1564-1593.
The Jew of Malta)
December 28, 2011 What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone. (Alexander Pope 1688-1744)
December 21, 2011
December 14, 2011 What I tell you three times is true. (Lewis Carroll 1832-1898. The Hunting of the Snark.)
December 7, 2011 Cui bono? To whose profit? ( L. Cassius Longinus Ravilla, 2nd Cent B.C.) (Cf. Follow the money from All the President's Men, 1976)
December 1, 2011 For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes. (Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
November 23, 2011
In short, whoever you may be, To this conclusion you'll agree, When every one is somebodee, Then no one's anybody! (W.S. Gilbert, 1836- 1911. From The Gondoliers..."There lived a king as I've been told...")
November 16, 2011 Time, you old gypsy
man,
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?
(Ralph Hodgson 1871-1962)
November 9, 2011 Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. Confound those who have said our remarks before us. (Aelius Donatus, 4thC A.D.) [May they perish, he said, who before us our (remarks) have uttered]
November 2, 2011 No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. (John Donne, 1571-1631)
October 26, 2011
This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply;
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,
And meadow rivulets overflow,
And drops on gate bars hang in a row,
And rooks in families homeward go,
And so do I.
(Thomas Hardy, 1840-1928)
October 19, 2011 If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or experience? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. (David Hume, 1711-1776)
October 12, 2011 It takes two to speak the truth,--one to speak, and another to hear. (Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862)
October 5, 2011 But far more numerous was the
herd of such
Who think too little and talk too much.
(John Dryden, 1631-1700)
September 28, 2011 Criticism is easy; achievement is difficult. (Winston Churchill, 1874-1965)
September 21, 2011 For tyme ylost may nought recovered be. (Geoffrey Chaucer, 1340?-1400)
September 14, 2011 It is better to wear out than rust out. (Bishop Richard Cumberland, 1631-1718)
September 7, 2011 Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. (Mark Twain, 1835-1910)
August 31, 2011 No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney. (Alfred Emanuel Smith, 1873-1944)
August 24, 2011 All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure. (Mark Twain, 1835-1910)
August 17, 2011 That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem. (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784)
August 10, 2011 Cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity. (Earl of Chesterfield, 1694-1773)
August 3, 2011 That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. (Frances Hutcheson, 1694-1746) Also: The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. (Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832)
July 27, 2011 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. (T.S. Eliot, 1888- 1965. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.)
July 20, 2011 I slept and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
(Ellen Sturgis Hooper, 1816-1841)
July 13, 2011 We can never be sure that the opinion
we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling
it would be an evil still.
(John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873. On Liberty)
July 6, 2011 Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. (W. Somerset Maugham, 1874-1965)
June 29, 2011 One religion is as true as another. (Robert Burton, 1577-1640)
June 22, 2011 Nemo repente fuit turpissimus. No one ever suddenly became depraved. (Juvenal, A.D. c. 60--c. 130)
June 15, 2011 And that inverted Bowl we call the Sky
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help--for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
(Edward Fitzgerald, 1809-1883 --The Rubaiyat)
June 8, 2011 Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Approves all forms of competition. (Arthur
Hugh Clough, 1819-1861)
June 1, 2011 The world is made up for the most part of fools and knaves. (George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham 1628-1687.)
May 24, 2011 There is no doubt that many things in life come to us...at backrounds so to speak. Happiness is one of them. (Stephen Leacock, 1867-1944; How to Write, 1944.)
May 17, 2011 Errors, like straws, upon the surface
flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below. (John Dryden,
1631-1700)
May 11, 2011 Power is so apt to be insolent and Liberty to be saucy, that they are very seldom on good Terms. (George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695)
May 4, 2011 The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent. (Revd. John H. Holmes, 1879-1964.)
April 27, 2011 The ruling passion, be what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still.
(Alexander Pope, 1688-1744)
April 20, 2011 The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
(Andrew Marvell, 1621-1678. To His Coy Mistress)
April 13, 2011 Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them. (Voltaire, 1694-1778)
April 6, 2011
Faith is believing what you
know ain't so. (Mark Twain, 1835-1910)
March 30, 2011
March 23, 2011 The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a word of it. (Omar Khayyam, 1070-1123.
Translation by Edward Fitzgerald.)
March 16, 2011 Actions are
visible, though motives are secret. (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784)
March 10, 2011 Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess. (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784)
March 3, 2011. Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem as deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound. (Walter Savage Landor, 1775-1864)
February 23, 2011. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. (Francis Bacon 1561-1626. Of Truth, 1601) From the same essay: Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights.
February 16, 2011. ...when the facts are not good enough, I always exaggerate... The complete sentence, from College Days (1923), English as she is Taught at College is: I admit that when the facts are not good enough, I always exaggerate them. (Stephen Leacock, 1869-1944)
February 9, 2011. Knowledge itself is power. (Francis Bacon, 1561-1626)
February 2, 2011 Nothing gold can stay. (Robert Frost, 1874-1963) We cannot resist providing the complete short poem:
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
January 26, 2011 Talent is long patience. (Guy de Maupassant, 1850-1893)
January 19, 2011 Constant experience has shown me that great purity and elegance of style, with a graceful elocution, cover a multitude of faults in either a speaker or a writer. (Earl of Chesterfield, 1694-1773. Letter to his son.)
January 12, 2011 A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. (Francis Bacon, 1561-1626)
January 5, 2011 Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear. (Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826. Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787)
December 29, 2010. Human kind/ cannot bear very much reality. T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
December 22, 2010 A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing. (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784)
December 15, 2010 Out of my great sorrows, I make little songs. (Heinrich Heine, 1797-1856) (I always thought it was my little songs--and I think that sounds better!)
December 8, 2010 Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The best is the enemy of the good. Voltaire, 1694-1778)
December 1, 2010 We are such stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)
November 25, 2010 As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport. (Shakespeare, King Lear)
November 17, 2010. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882)
November 10, 2010. A committee is
organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant.
It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from
which other committees will bloom in their turn. (C. Northcote Parkinson,
1909- 1993)
November 3, 2010. "If people bring so much courage to this
world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The
world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But
those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle
and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it
will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
Ernest Hemingway, (1898 - 1961)
October 27, 2010. Tenet insanabile multos / Scribendi cacoethes et aegro in corde senescit. Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing, and it becomes chronic in their sick minds. (Juvenal, A.D. c. 60-c. 130)
October 20, 2010. There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950)
October 13, 2010. It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. (Winston Churchill, 1874-1965)
October 6, 2010 No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures. (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784)
September 29, 2010 Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons quelque chose que ne nous déplaît pas. In the misfortune of our best friends we always find something which does not displease us. Duc de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
September 22, 2010 Death is the mother of beauty...Wallace Stevens in Sunday Morning. (1879-1955)
September 15, 2010 No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust the experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. (Lord Salisbury, 1830-1903)
September 8, 2010...and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. (Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679)
September 1, 2010
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
(Robert Frost, 1874-1963) from Acquainted with the Night. The interrupted cry suggests foul play on the rainy night in question; it is telling that the narrator perceives the event through the prism of his own isolation.
August 27, 2010 Let's say it one more time loudly for the media moguls in the cheap seats: Most Muslims are not terrorists. But in the 21st century, most of those slaughtering women and children in the name of religion are Muslims. This is a movement. This is reality. And it is a problem. It ought to be seen by Muslims as very much their problem--a pathology within their community, within the "Muslim world," within the ummah. (Clifford May in the National Post, August 27, 2010.)
August 25, 2010 ..moral disapproval is a muscle we are always anxious to flex... (Robert Fulford, National Post, August 24, 2010.)
August 18, 2010 Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen. (George Savile, Marquis of Halifax. 1633-1695)
August 11, 2010 And how am I to face the odds,
Of man's bedevilment and Gods?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made. (A.E.
Houseman, 1859-1936. God's Laws...)
August 4, 2010 Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. (Lewis Carroll 1832-1898. The White Queen in Through the Looking Glass, Chapter V)
July 28, 2010 The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. (Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862. Walden, 1854)
July 22, 2010 (It's a short week.) Fifty years ago people believed, accurately, that they were entitled to seek the blue bird, whereas today they believe, mistakenly, that they're entitled to find it and take it home, in a complimentary cage with a month's supply of birdseed....Those who think they've a right to catch whatever they are free to chase, are doomed to disappointment. That's our generation in a nutshell. (George Jonas, 1935 - 2015. National Post, July 17, 2010.)
July 19, 2010 Educating people beyond their intellectual means is a disservice to humanity. A clueless person who knows little is a nuisance; a clueless person who knows a lot is a menace. (George Jonas, 1935 - 2015. National Post, July 17, 2010.)
July 14, 2010. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882)
July 7, 2010. What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784)
June 30, 2010. No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money. (Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784)
June 23, 2010 Difficile est saturam non scribere. It is hard not to write satire. (Juvenal, A.D. c. 60-c.130)
June 16, 2010. Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one. (Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862)
June 9, 2010. Knavery is the best defence against a knave. (Plutarch, A.D. 46-120)
June 3, 2010. Never be a pioneer. It's the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion. 'Saki' (H. H. Munro) 1870-1916
May 26, 2010: A little learning is a dang'rous
thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) An Essay on Criticism
May 19, 2010: True wit is nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd. Alexander Pope
(1688-1744) An Essay on Criticism (1711)
May 12, 2010: Ridicule often decides matters of importance more effectually, and in a better manner, than severity. (Horace 65-8 B.C. Satires)
May 5, 2010. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again. (William James, 1842-1910.)
April 28, 2010. "This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword...'Put away your gods and come worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!'" (Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881) from The Grand Inquisitor--The Brothers Karamazov.)
April 21, 2010. "The horror! The horror!" The last words and summarizing judgment of Kurtz, a character in Conrad's famous novel, Heart of Darkness (1902). (Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924.)
April 14, 2010. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor
player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(William Shakespeare, 1564-1616. Macbeth)
April 7, 2010. One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice--however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy--is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms... [Man] will attain his object--that is, convince himself he is a man and not a piano-key! (Fyodor Dostoyevsky , Notes from Underground. 1864.)
March 30, 2010. Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men. (Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825-1895.)
March 24, 2010. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. (Robert Frost, 1874-1963) The Figure a Poem Makes-- Preface to Collected Poems)
March 16, 2010. Praise, like gold and diamonds owes its value only to its scarcity. (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784.)
March 8, 2010. Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. (Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826; letter to James Smith, 1822.)
March 3, 2010. It is crucial to remember that weather should not be confused with climate, that climate science remains in its infancy, and that attempting to change global climate by a vast scheme to coordinate national economic policies is an impossible dream that in reality threatens both political and economic nightmare. (Peter Foster, The National Post, March 3, 2010.)
March 1, 2010. Before you take the first dose of any medication your doctor prescribes, you should make it your business to find out more about the drug than the doctor himself knows. (Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D. Confessions of a Medical Heretic 1979.)
February 15, 2010. "Yet, when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force is a but a rotten reed to lean upon." (Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924. Heyst in Victory)
February 8, 2010. For every age is fed with illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end. (Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924. Victory)
February 5, 2010. "When I use a word," Humpty-Dumpty said, "it means just what I choose it to mean --neither more nor less." (Lewis Carroll {Charles Lutwidge Dodgson} 1832-1898.) Through the Looking-Glass.
February 1, 2010. The Social Contract is nothing more or
less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves for
the general Good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into
the social masonry. (H.G. Wells, 1866-1946. Love and Mr.
Lewisham,
ch. 23.)
January 29, 2010. A man who knows the price of everything and the
value of nothing. (Definition of a cynic. Oscar Wilde 1854 -1900)
Suggested by Kevin Final, Toronto.
January 25, 2010. Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities. (Voltaire 1694-1778)
January 18, 2010. L'homme est bien insensé. Il ne saurait forger un ciron, et forge des Dieux à douzaines. (Man is quite insane. He wouldn't know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.) (Montaigne 1533-1592.)
January 11, 2010. Example is always more efficacious than precept. (Samuel
Johnson 1709-1784.)
January 4, 2010. New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
An Essay concerning Human Understanding. 1690 John Locke (1632-1704)
December 28, 2009. Multiculturalism has taught us the outlandish belief
that no culture is better than another. We badly need to unlearn that lesson,
which no one else believes or ever has.
Robert Fulford, National Post. December 24, 2009.
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