I do love quotes! A novel in every sentence, as I see it.
I’ve been collecting quotes for years. These are quotes that I noticed or noticed anew over the past six months. There’s no particular theme here, though many of these do concern education/enlightenment:
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
I don’t mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don’t understand.
Sir Edward Appleton
Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
Albert Camus
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
Henry Ford
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
B. F. Skinner , New Scientist, May 21, 1964
Most people have seen worse things in private than they pretend to be shocked at in public.
Edgar Watson Howe
Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
A. J. Liebling
“We do not inherit the world from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”
Navajo proverb
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Voltaire
“Just let the doorknob hit you where the dog shoulda bit you!”
From an old Willie Dixon song
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.
African Proverb
The most damaging phrase in the language is: `It’s always been done that way.
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.
Dante Aleghieri (1265-1321)
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The big thieves hang the little ones.
Czech Proverb, regarding capital punishment
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
Woody Allen
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
William Arthur Ward
Only the educated are free.
Epictetus
To educate a man in mind, and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society.
Theodore Roosevelt
The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if the people are in ignorance.
Thomas Jefferson
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
Nietzsche, Human All-too-Human, I,1878
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
Bishop Desmond Tutu
These are from a book I recently began reading, and seem more worthwhile than the book itself. See if you can guess the book.
"The Majority is Never Right"
-L. Long
"It's a poor sort of memory which only works backward"
-C. Dodgson
"Success Lies in Acheiving the top of the food chain"
J. Harshaw
"When in doubt tell the truth"
M. Twain
"If anyone doubts my veracity, I can only say that I pity his lack of faith"
B. Munchausen
"The truth is the one thing that nobody will believe"
G. Shaw
"The mice voted to bell the cat"
Aesop
"Whatever you do, you'll regret it"
A. Gray
(Hint: Science Fiction)
Here's one from me! A little Valentine's Day gift:
"Love is as much a matter of will and decision as chemistry and circumstance."
C.T.Thatch
🙂
Mencken: “We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”
Came across this gem in the Harris vs. Sullivan blog. To me it seems that Harris is sucessfully demonstrating that, deep down, underneath the once-inpenetrable strata of Christian rhetoric, Sullivan is not really "moderate" after all.
On another note…Am I the only one who didn't know that the daily Kos gets 500k visitors a day, including famous politicians such as Kerry, Obama, and Pelosi?
Dr Smug, many of the regulars here are fans of the lat R.A.H.
Here are a couple of quotes:
"Our fathers gave us many laws which they had learned from their fathers. They told us to treat all men as they treated us. That we should never be the first to break a bargain. That it was a disgrace to tell a lie. That we should speak only the truth. We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything and that he never forgets. This I believe and all my people believe the same."
Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perce
"Wars are fought to see who owns the land, but in the end it (the land) possesses man. Who dares say he owns it- is he not buried beneath it?"
Cochise, Chiricahua Apache
"Being poor is nothing dishonorable, it's just damned inconvenient!"
M. Twain
"Satisfaction is death!"
G.B Shaw