January 2011 Quotations

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
[In regione caecorum rex est luscus.]
~~ Desiderius Erasmus [1466-1536]

"The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth."
~~ John Galt quote ending last public speech by philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82] in New Orleans, November 1981

"If there’s one piece of economic wisdom [that] I hope people will grasp this year, it’s this: Even though we may finally have stopped digging, we’re still near the bottom of a very deep hole."
~~ Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist, in January 2011

"Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will."
~~ Goethe [1749-1832]

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries."
~~ Anne Herbert

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Deregulation [of broadcast media] has made celebrities of the loudest asses in the barn."
~~ Diane Simon

"When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere."
~~ François de La Rochefoucauld [1613-80]

"The name of the game is not Social Security. What an error! Social Security is an entirely different game. The name of the game is Give All."
~~ Saul Bellow [1915-2005]

"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965], in a speech in the House of Commons, 11 November 1947

DICTA by G.E. Nordell
• Dream like you're going to live forever.
• Plan like no one can stop you.
• Act like the deadline is today.
• Be very thankful when anything actually works out.

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home."
~~ Twyla Tharp

"Life is too short to have anything but delusional notions about yourself."
~~ rocker Gene Simmons

"Marriage is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers."
~~ Alan King [1927-2004]

"To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all."
~~ Helen Rowland

"Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth would be to have been young and never dreamed at all."
~~ Jean Genet [1910-86]

"Experience is the teacher of all things."
~~ Julius Caesar [100-44 B.C.E.]

"Speech is of time, silence is of eternity."
~~ Thomas Carlyle [1795-1881]

"The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known."
~~ Susan Sontag [1933-2004]

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty."
~~ John F. Kennedy [1917-63], Inaugural Address on 20 January 1961

"Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance."
~~ Robert Frost [1874-1963]

"Is it possible to succeed without any act of betrayal?"
~~ French filmmaker Jean Renoir [1894-1979]

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

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."
~~ battlefield photographer Robert Capa [1913-54]

"Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains."
~~ bandleader John Philip Sousa [1854-1932]

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?"
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
~~ John Maynard Keynes [1883-1946], in 1919

"Death is nothing to someone who knew how to live."
~~ French outlaw Jacques Mesrine [1936-79]

"Information wants to be free."
~~ Stewart Brand, in 1984

"Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love scenes like murders."
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]

"Wit, perhaps, might find many interpretations, but wisdom none."
~~ Samuel Wesley [1662-1735]

"This is business. It's the best game in the world."
~~ John Dickson Carr [1906-77]

"Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely."
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]

"It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all of the answers."
~~ James Thurber [1894-1961]

“A progressive believes that society can be made better, that it can be made better by informed people acting in concert, and that it can be called 'better' only when it is better for everyone.”
~~ Garret Keizer

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