January 2012 Quotations

"The people have a right to the truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
~~ Frank Norris [1870-1902]

"I was friends with President Ronald Reagan and he once said to me, 'I don't know how anybody can serve in public office without being an actor'."
~~ Warren Beatty

"While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
~~ Eugene V. Debs [1855-1926]

"You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do."
~~ Kilgore Trout character, in "Timequake" novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]

"It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit."
~~ Noël Coward [1899-1973]

"Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. It doesn't work."
~~ economist Allan Meltzer

"The most miserable possession [that] a man can have is the thing [that] he hurt somebody to get."
~~ writer & cartoonist Frank A. Clark [1911-91]

"No one changes the world who isn't obsessed."
~~ Billie Jean King

"It is impossible to go thru life without trust. That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself."
~~ Graham Greene [1904-91]

"Law is not an instrument of politics but the other way around."
~~ octogenarian Russian activist Sergei Kovalyov

"Ask not what America can do for women, but ask what women can do for America."
~~ Geraldine Ferraro [1935-2011]

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"The man who dies ... rich dies disgraced."
~~ Andrew Carnegie [1835-1919]

"Truths are illusions [that] we have forgotten are illusions."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them."
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82], in "Circles" 1841

"Flying may not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price."
~~ Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it."
~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-64]

"Ambition is a dream with a V-8 engine."
~~ Elvis Presley [1935-77]

"The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected."
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007] in 2004

"Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor."
~~ Stephen Sondheim

"A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many people want in ... and how many people want out."
~~ Tony Blair

"I honestly think that it is better to be a failure at something [that] you love than to be a success at something [that] you hate."
~~ George Burns 1896-1996]

"Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time like dew on the tip of a leaf."
~~ Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore [1861-1941]

"The only truly serious questions are the ones that even a child can formulate."
~~ Milan Kundera

"Any girl can look glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid."
~~ actress/inventor Hedy Lamarr [1913-2000]

"Expressing anger is a form of public littering."
~~ Prof. Willard Gaylin

"Moral indignation is just jealousy with a halo around it."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]

"What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we loved deeply becomes part of us."
~~ Helen Keller [1880-1968]

"It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]

"[The internet] is a vanity press for the demented, the conspiratorial, or the merely self-important."
~~ Lars-Erik Nelson [1941-2000], New York Daily News reporter

"I find the argument that we need lower taxes to create jobs mystifying, because we've had the lowest taxes in this decade and about the worst job creation ever."
~~ Warren Buffett

"Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can think of no milder term to apply to ... the general prey of the rich on the poor."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"Hope is the raw material of losers."
~~ Fernando Flores

"Every act of love is a change in the universe."
~~ Aleister Crowley [1875-1947]

"Enough is better than too much."
~~ French proverb

"The biggest thing [that] you can do for kids is [to] give them the ability to figure things out."
~~ musician Frank Zappa [1940-93]

"Lying about the future produces history."
~~ Umberto Eco

"When I am happy I am always good, but when I am good I am seldom happy."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"It is said that paradox is a Truth standing on its head to attract attention."
~~ Allan W. Watts [1915-73]

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