More quotes I’ve recently added to my growing collection …
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951)
[I]f by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”
John F. Kennedy, 1960
“When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall meekly behind them. . . The mantra ‘the best we can get’ is a recipe for corruption. We are not politicians, but citizens. We have no office to hold on to, only our consciences.”
Howard Zinn
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Krishnamurti
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
Dean Acheson
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), Ecce Homo, Foreword
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
H.G. Wells
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
Voltaire
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
Bill Vaughn
Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
Mark Twain
What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.
Henry David Thoreau
Sanity is a cozy lie.
Susan Sontag
All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Society attacks early when the individual is helpless.
B. F. Skinner
To be free it is not enough to beat the system, one must beat the system every day.
Anonymous
A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what’s going on.
William Burroughs
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
Albert Camus
