September 2018 Quotations (55)

"Make no mistake: Brett Kavanaugh’s a liar. He lies about little things. He lies about big things. He lies under oath."
~~ editorial in the Boston Globe newspaper

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."
~~ John F. Kennedy [1917-63]

"Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809], in "The Age of Reason"

"Fascism is cured by reading, and racism is cured by traveling."
~~ poet & philosopher Miguel de Unamuno [1864-1936]

"Wow. I'm in the middle of a story about a rotten president who is about to be impeached. This is a once in a lifetime event!"
~~ reporter Bob Woodward, in 1972

"When you know who you are; when your mission is clear and you burn with the inner fire of unbreakable will, no cold can touch your heart, no deluge can dampen your purpose. You know that you are alive."
~~ Chief Seattle [1786?-1866]

"If anyone wants to clap, now is the time to do it."
~~ character Eeyore (a friend of Winnie the Pooh)

“I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.”
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]

"Kavanaugh is a corporate supremacist to a fanatic level of protecting corporate cruelty and greed. Giving him an unaccountable lifetime position on the Court will weaken our democracy and empower the corporate state."
~~ Ralph Nader, in September 2018

“We’re supposed to stand up to discrimination. And we’re sure as heck supposed to stand up clearly & unequivocally to Nazi sympathizers. How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad?"
~~ Barack Obama

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"The greatest gift [that] you ever give is your honest self."
~~ children's TV host Fred Rogers [1928-2003]

“Building bridges takes us further than building walls.”
~~ Dr. DaShanne Stokes

"We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn."
~~ cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson

"Charisma is not so much getting people to like you as getting people to like themselves when you're around."
~~ blogger Robert Brault

“If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.”
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Blood is thicker than water? So is toothpaste."
~~ Steven Martin Cohen, on Facebook 2018

"Does it seem funny to you that the same folks who complain when anybody mentions Hitler are the same crowd that worships dictator-wannabee Trump?"
~~ G.E. Nordell

"That was the heart of the problem: every choice made sense from some vantage point.”
~~ Jacob M. Appel

"Adapt to that which you can't prevent. Prevent that to which you can't adapt."
~~ eco-activist Bill McKibben

"The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it."
~~ engineer Vannevar Bush [1890-1974]

“The world is most consistent with purposeful creation.”
~~ Nobel-laureate Arno Penzias

“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.”
~~ novelist Thomas Berger [1924-2014]

"Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it."
~~ French/Dutch philosopher René Descartes [1596-1650]

"Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible."
~~ playwright Lillian Hellman [1905-84]

"Science fiction is literary fiction with the lid blown off."
~~ Robin Winter

"The real purpose of Socialism is precisely to advance beyond the predatory phase of human development."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Education is not something [that] you can finish."
~~ author Isaac Asimov [1920-92]

"My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to find peace with exactly who and what I am. To take pride in my thoughts, my appearance, my flaws - and to stop this incessant worrying that I can't be loved as I am."
~~ Anaïs Nin [1903-77]

"We all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It's our basic human right."
~~ Aretha Franklin [1942-2018]

"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will."
~~ Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948]

"Artists use lies to tell the truth while politicians use them to cover the truth up."
~~ from "V Is For Vendetta" [2006]

"An elective despotism is not the government [that] we fought for."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"All [that] tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
~~ Edmund Burke [1729-97]

"Totalitarianism has many forms . . ."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue."
~~ James Q. Wilson [1931-2012]

"Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"If they do not give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair."
~~ Cong. Shirley Chisholm [1934-2005]

"It's not a principle until it costs you money."
~~ advertising pioneer William Bernbach [1911-82]

"If you can go through life without experiencing pain, you probably haven't been born yet."
~~ playwright Neil Simon [1927-2018]

"The reason [that] I talk to myself is because I'm the only one whose answers I accept."
~~ George Carlin [1937-2008]

"We must talk about poverty because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it."
~~ activist Dorothy Day [1897-1980]

"Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man."
~~ Arthur Schopenhauer [1788-1860]

"I think [that] the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise, what is there to defend?"
~~ Robert Redford

"You know [that] great things are coming when everything seems to be going wrong. Old energy is clearing out for new energy to enter. Be patient!"
~~ motivational speaker Idil Ahmed

"Only a fool would try to deprive men and women of their right to join a union of their choice."
~~ Gen. Dwight D. 'Ike' Eisenhower [1890-1969]

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you 'til it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."
~~ Harriet Beecher Stowe [1811-96]

"The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange."
~~ Walt Whitman [1819-92]

"I don't care how much talent a team has. If the boys don't think tough, practice tough, and live tough, how can they play tough on Saturday?"
~~ football coach Paul William 'Bear' Bryant [1913-83]

"We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words."
~~ John Fowles [1926-2005]

"You will be too much for some people. Those aren't your people."
~~ Glennon Doyle Melton

"Do not judge my path, you haven't walked in my shoes . . . or ridden my broom."
~~ pagan poet A.M. Galdorcraeft

"Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them."
~~ R. Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983]

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