April 2012 Quotations

"The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for."
~~ Dostoyevsky [1821-81]

"The middle class built America. It's time for America to rebuild the middle class."
~~ Rev. Al Sharpton

"The only lord I know, is the landlord."
~~ bookseller Lewis Micheaux [1885-1976]

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to concieve."
~~ Don Herold [1889-1966]

"God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand."
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]

"Never interrupt someone doing something [that] you said couldn't be done."
~~ aviator Amelia Earhart [1897-1937]

"If we do not speak up for our children, they may not be heard. And if we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much."
~~ Marian Wright Edeleman

"Vanity is a mortgage that must be deducted from the value of a man."
~~ Otto von Bismarck [1815-98]

"Silence is the unbearable repartee."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"There is no perception that is not full of memories."
~~ Henri Bergson [1859-1941]

"The most important four words in politics are 'up to a point'."
~~ conservative columnist George Will

"It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet."
~~ Margaret Mead [1901-78]

"The greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved. They can only be outgrown."
~~ sci-fi novelist Frank Herbert [1920-86]

"You want me to do something? Tell me [that] I can't do it."
~~ Maya Angelou

“To be at once exceedingly wealthy and good is impossible.”
~~ Plato [428?-327? B.C.E.]

"The greatest thing in the world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-94]

"Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"All that we see or seem / Is but a dream, within a dream"
~~ Edgar Allan Poe [1809-49]

"Conceit may puff a man up, but can never prop him up."
~~ John Ruskin [1819-1900]

"To try to be better is to be better."
~~ actress Charlotte Cushman

"Exhilaration is that feeling [that] you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it."
~~ British actor Rex Harrison [1908-90]

"It is my rule never to lose my temper till it would be detrimental to keep it."
~~ Irish playwright Sean O'Casey [1880-1964]

"Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

"Beauty is a short-lived tyranny."
~~ Socrates [469-399 B.C.E.]

"Whoever has learned to be anxious the right way has learned the ultimate."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]

"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
~~ Wm. Jennings Bryan [1860-1925]

"Nothing is more responsible for 'the good old days' than a bad memory."
~~ Franklin P. Adams [1881-1960]

"The only reason [that] some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory."
~~ actor Paul Fix [1901-83]

"There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown helpless about them."
~~ Clare Boothe Luce [1903-87]

"Our reality is determined by our usefulness."
~~ playwright Edward Albee, in 1978

"Believe those who search for truth. Doubt those who claim to have found it."
~~ Nobel Laureate André Gide [1869-1951]

"At the moment of creativity, absolute inner peace is essential for the artist."
~~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky [1840-93]

"I feel sorry for future generations that won't have polar bears or coastal cities."
~~ TIME Magazine columnist Joel Klein

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
~~ Berthold Auerbach [1812-82]

"Speak truth to power!" ~~ slogan created by the American Friends Service Committee {Quakers} circa 1955

"If states are the laboratory for democracy, [then] Arizona is a meth lab."
~~ educator quoted by Native American activist Winona LaDuke (in 2012)

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, misdiagnosing it, and applying the wrong remedies."
~~ Groucho Marx [1890-1977]

"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

"World history is nothing but an endless, dreary account of the rape of the weak by the strong ... (It is) a race with time, a scramble for profit, for power, for treasures."
~~ Herman Hesse [1877-1962], in "The Glass Bead Game", 1943

"When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble."
~~ James H. Boren [1925-2010]

"Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in a man."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Every dream has a price."
~~ Louis L'Amour [1908-88], in "Sitka" 1957

"One kind of change occurs when you add something. If you take an entity and add something to it, it's changed. Another kind of change occurs when you take an entity and subtract something from it – so you've got two kinds of changes there. There's a third kind of change which is very strange – the only kind which I think has any real value – and that is when you take a thing and get it to be itself. You neither add to it nor subtract from it. This is almost a definition of consciousness for me."
~~ Werner Erhard (KQED radio interview, 1975)

"The single most exciting thing [that] you encounter in government is competence, because it is so rare."
~~ Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan [1927-2003]

"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"There is no country in which people live under more overpowering compulsions [than America]. You must wave, you must shout, you must go with the irresistible crowd: otherwise, you will feel like a traitor, a soulless outcast, a deserted ship high and dry upon the shore . . . In a country where all men are free, every man finds that what most matters has been settled for him beforehand."
~~ George Santayana [1863-1952]

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