April 2010 Quotations

"In times of change, the Patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Don't let so much reality into your life that there's no room left for dreamin'."
~~ Texas Bix Bender

"The time has come for us to stand up for the American people and to hold the insurance companies accountable."
~~ Congressman Martin Heinrich [Dem NM-01]

"Sartre preferred reading serie noir crime novels to Marleau-Ponty, and who could blame him?"
~~ Gary Indiana (in Los Angeles Times Times Book Review)

"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it."
~~ comedian Steven Wright

"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Every great man is unique."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality."
~~ James A. Michener [1907-97]

"The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths."
~~ neon art piece by Bruce Nauman

"Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

"History happens only once."
~~ John Cassidy

"Be careful to leave your sons well-instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant."
~~ Epictetus [55-135 A.D.]

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
~~ Maya Angelou

"There are idiots. Look around."
~~ economist Lawrence Summers

"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, [then] the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic."
~~ Dresden James

"The growing wealth aquired by [corporations] never fails to be a source of abuses."
~~ President James Madison [1751-1836]

"Never do anything against conscience -- even if the state demands it."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is."
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"More often than not 'fair' and 'balanced' may be mutually exclusive."
~~ Neal Gabler, in Los Angeles Times op-ed

"When it comes to the news, the corporate view is `objective', all else is `propaganda'."
~~ Studs Terkel [1912-2008]

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
~~ President Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]

"Yes, our regulatory agencies are incompetent. But they are incompetent by design."
~~ writer David Goldstein

"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]

"When one hundred million people don't vote, the nation is not bitterly divided. The nation mostly doesn't give a sh*t."
~~ Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone writer

"The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]

"You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore."
~~ Cesar E. Chavez [1927-93], in 1984

"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away."
~~ Elvis Presley [1935-77]

"Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people."
~~ Harry Emerson Fosdick [1878-1969]

"Our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past, while we silence the rebels of the present."
~~ Henry Steele Commager [1902-98]

“What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?"
~~ Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

"It's time for Congress to go cold turkey and stop feeding at the lobbyist-funded trough."
~~ U.S. Senator Russ Feingold [Dem-WI]

"Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee."
~~ F. Lee Bailey

"Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy."
~~ David Korten

"It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable."
~~ Molière [1622-73]

"I figured out why carbon credits seem like a bad idea: It is like an overweight person paying a friend to go to the gym and exercise for them."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Anyone who has Republican parents should run away from home."
~~ radio talk show host Mike Malloy

"Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist."
~~ Billy Wilder [1906-2002]

"The history of our country is a history of slaveowner against slave, landlord against tenant, corporation against worker, rich against poor."
~~ Howard Zinn [1922-2010], in 2006

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