August 2012 Quotations

"America’s founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more — and nothing less.”
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Dog food again?”
~~ Snoopy, of the Peanuts comic strip

"The wisdom of the ages and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.”
~~ Benjamin Disraeli [1804-81]

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”
~~ biologist Richard Dawkins

"Lack of money is the root of all evil.”
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"To steal from a thief is not theft. It is merely irony.”
~~ Johnston McCulley [1883-1958]

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of govern-ment by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
~~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]

"When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”
~~ Nora Ephron [1941-2012]

"The real problem of humanity is the following: We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.”
~~ biologist Edward. O. Wilson

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.”
~~ novelist Catherine Aird

"The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall.”
~~ comedian Mitch Hedberg [1968-2005]

"The dream which is not fed with dream disappears.”
~~ poet Antonio Porchia [1885-1968]

"Talent does you no good unless it's recognized by someone else.”
~~ employment baron Robert Half [1919?-2001]

"The butterfly counts not months but moments and has time enough.”
~~ Rabindranath Tagore [1861-1941]

"Just as the world's powers have siezed and exploited the physical territories and natural resources of the Earth, so too they have colonized the cultural commons – the space of ideas that everyone shares.”
~~ Antonio Lopez

"In order to succeed in the U.S., you must speak English; having a second language, such as Spanish or Chinese, is a major advantage over those who do not. But it does not work the other way around, even in foreign countries.”
~~ G.E. Nordell

"The Higgs boson [particle] has two functions: One is to give mass to the Universe. The other is to prevent the standard model from going bananas.”
~~ physicist Fabiola Gianotti

"Civilization begins with distillation.”
~~ William Faulkner [1897-1962]

"We all choke. Winners know how to handle choking better than losers.”
~~ John McEnroe

"Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.”
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"Never second-guess inspiration.”
~~ Flannery O'Connor [1925-64]

"One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”
~~ writer-aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry [1900-1944]

"Television enables you to be entertained in your home by people [that] you wouldn't have [there].”
~~ David Frost

"If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine Floor.”
~~ Neil Simon

"A good writer is not per se a good book critic, no more than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.”
~~ journalist Jim Bishop [1907-87], in the New York Journal, 1957

"...If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.”
~~ Hilaire Belloc [1870-1953]

"If [the Republicans] will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”
~~ Adlai E. Stevenson II [1900-65], during the 1952 campaign

"A government big enough to give you everything [that] you want is a government big enough to take from you, everything [that] you have.”
~~ Gerald Ford [1913-2006]

"The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change.”
~~ Bill Clinton

"Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.”
~~ author Cyril Connolly [1903-74]

"Show business is not so much 'dog eat dog' as 'dog doesn't return other dogs' phone calls'.”
~~ Woody Allen

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
~~ Richard P. Feynman [1918-88]

"A mistake is simply another way of doing things.”
~~ newpaper publisher Katharine Graham [1917-2001]

"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
~~ Hannah Arendt [1906-75]

"Existence is a tough proposition, and a man has to possess fortitude to endure it.”
~~ Johnston McCulley [1883-1958]

"A failure is a man who has bludered but is not able to cash in on the experience.”
~~ Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]

"There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you can enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961], in "Farewell To Arms", 1929

"We have something to fight for in this [election]: the future of the American middle class.”
~~ Shelley Berkley, running in 2012 for U.S. Senate from Nevada

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
~~ Edith Wharton [1862-1937]

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
~~ Alice Walker

"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
~~ author Harper Lee

"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”
~~ Theodore Isaac Rubin

"Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.”
~~ philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach [1804-72]

"The life [that] you have led doesn't need to be the only one [that] you have.”
~~ Anna Quindlen

"An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anyhting into an empty head.”
~~ longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer [1902-83]

"It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot harder to make a difference.”
~~ Tom Brokaw

"Knowledge may have its purposes, but guessing is always more fun than knowing.”
~~ W.H. Auden [1907-73]

"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”
~~ Albert Camus [1913-60]

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile, but that it is indifferent.”
~~ cinema master Stanley Kubrick [1928-99]

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