February 2009 Quotations

"Under Bush, no violent acts against the U.S. have occurred since 9/11. But the cost has been a legal and spiritual 9/11 every day since."
~~ Abraham Sategh (Time Letters 12/2008)

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable."
~~ Martin Buber [1878-1965]

"Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today."
~~ President-elect Barack Obama

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."
~~ Ray Bradbury

"Whatever competence I may have comes from my having trained myself to be out there with what I am dealing with instead of being in here trying to deal with what is out there."
~~ Werner Erhard

"Peace goes into the making of a poem as flour goes into the making of bread."
~~ Pablo Neruda [1904-73]

"Waterboarding is torture."
~~ Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General-designate testifying before Congress 15 January 2009

"The average inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90 percent of earners was lower in 2006 than it was back in 1973."
~~ David Cay Johnston

"The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether government works."
~~ President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address 20 January 2009

"Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little."
~~ Tom Stoppard

"When somebody farts out loud, an angel gets its wings."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"If we would learn what the human race is at bottom, we need only observe them during an election."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment".
{"Il n'y a rien dans ce monde qui n'ait un moment decisif."}
~~ Cardinal de Retz [1613-79]

"Not often in the story of Mankind does a man arrive on Earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect."
~~ poet Carl Sandburg [1878-1967], describing Abraham Lincoln before Congress in 1959

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence university education."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"Those who don't build must burn."
~~ Ray Bradbury (in "Fahrenheit 451", 1953)

"Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens."
~~ Epictetus [circa 55-135 C.E.], Stoic philosopher & crippled former slave

"The trouble with socialism is that it would take too many evenings."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"By far the greatest threat to private life is the obscene disproportion of private wealth."
~~ Garrett Keizer

"[When you] let the fear of poverty govern your life ... your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"We are the music makers and the dreamers of dreams."
~~ Roald Dahl [1916-90]

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."
~~ Voltaire [1694-1778]

"Parody is a game; satire is a lesson."
~~ Vladimir Nabakov [1899-1977]

"You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself."
~~ W. Clement Stone [1902-2002]

"We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we are only six percent of the world's population, that we cannot impose our will on the other 94 percent of mankind, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every problem."
~~ John F. Kennedy (1961)

"Homeland security patriotism ... has turned the neo-cons' idea of loyalty into a loveless lock step and their democratic creed into Orwellian sloganeering."
~~ Jim Sleeper

"Hope is a fine sentiment, but it's not a plan."
~~ George Dunn

"What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar."
~~ Thomas R. Marshall [1854-1925]

"Exploration and the pursuit of knowledge have always paid dividends in the long run."
~~ astronaut John Glenn, testifying before Congress 26 February 1962

"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
~~ Samuel Johnson [1709-84]

"Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong."
~~ Peter T. McIntyre

"You become a writer by writing. It is a yoga."
~~ novelist R.K. Narayan [1906-2001]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}