December 2018 Quotations (50)

"The greatest threat facing the United States is its own President."
~~ Washington Post Editorial Board, 12/2018

"Freedom is never given; it is won."
~~ Civil Rights leader A. Philip Randolph [1889-1979]

"Don't make old people mad. We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to p*ss us off."
~~ 86-year-old woman in Letter to New York Times

“Trump is a stupid man’s idea of a smart person, a poor man’s idea of a rich person, and a weak man’s idea of a strong man.”
~~ Fran Lebowitz

"Before you heal someone, ask him if he’s willing to give up the things that made him sick."
~~ Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos [c. 460 - c. 370 BCE]

“Peace has victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.”
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth." — George Orwell, in "1984"
~~ J.K. Rowling retweet to White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders

“We’re in a hell of a mess in every direction. Respect for government, respect for the Supreme Court, respect for the president, it’s all gone. Even respect for the Federal Reserve.“
~~ feisty former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker

'found' text for T-shirt: garaged when not in use

"Donald Trump believes that Truth can be multiple choice: today is Tuesday or Friday or Sunday, it doesn't matter, it's whatever he says."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda."
~~ W.E.B. DuBois [1868-1963]

"Donald Trump and every congressman and senator who take campaign donations from the N.R.A. have blood on their hands."
~~ Norman Kolpas

"Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again."
~~ writer Zora Neale Hurston [1891-1960]

"Just because a problem is obvious doesn’t mean it’s going to get solved."
~~ pro blogger Matt O'Brien

"If you're serious about changing your life, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse."
~~ author Jen Sincero

“There is no power in the world that can stop the forward march of free men and women when they are joined in the solidarity of human brotherhood.”
~~ labor leader Walter Reuther [1907-70]

"The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity."
~~ Harriet Beecher Stowe [1811-96]

"No blessing, no good, can follow in the path trodden by slavery."
~~ Dorothea Dix [1802-87]

"Progress is rewriting your own story."
~~ Audi TV ad 12/2018

"It is human nature to try to impose order and form on even the most defiantly chaotic and amorphous stuff of life . . . Some of us wage war. Others write books."
~~ novelist Lisa Halliday

"Many people, especially politicians, say we can’t shift from fossil fuels overnight. That may be true, but if we don’t start, we’ll never get there."
~~ Canadian eco-journalist David Suzuki

"As my grandfather would say, if she had another brain it'd be lonesome."
~~ folklore insult, source unknown

"Future historians will have to end every paragraph about Trump with the disclaimer, 'Seriously, no kidding, he really said that sh*t'."
~~ columnist John Sheirer, on Facebook

"The only normal people [that] you know are the ones [that] you don't know very well."
~~ Alfred Adler [1870-1937]

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."
~~ Emily Brontë [1818-48]

"Your task is not to seek for love! But to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]

"The government should be in the business of keeping families together, not tearing them apart."
~~ Sen. Kamala Harris

"Religion is at its best when it makes us ask hard questions of ourselves. It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking [that] we have all the answers for everybody else."
~~ American poet Archibald Macleish [1892-1982]

"There is a separation of colored people from white people in the United States. That separation is not a disease of the colored people. It is a disease of white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"The history of human achievement is that people have done remarkable things from very improbable beginnings."
~~ Sir Ken Robinson

"No person who can read is ever successful at cleaning out an attic."
~~ Ann Landers {Eppie Lederer 1918-2002}

"We are now in a second Gilded Age. Giant firms at the center of the American economy are distorting the market and our politics. We must resurrect antitrust."
~~ economist Robert B. Reich

"In a 'you and me' world, when you are successful, whole, validated, and fulfilled, I win."
~~ philosopher Werner Erhard

"If you want something [that] you've never had, you must be willing to do something [that] you've never done."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured to sell weapons."
~~ Arundhati Roy

"Republicans have been pointing out that the Democratic [Party] platform contains no mention of God. Neither does the U.S. Constitution."
~~ TV news anchor Rachel Maddow

"As long as our country's leadership is so appalling and so corrupt, I'l be speaking out at every venue. To be silent in the face of such villainy is to be complicit."
~~ Robert De Niro

"Weakness is provocative."
~~ Donald Rumsfeld

"A great nation ought not to be a hammer, but a magnet."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"We explore because we are human and we want to know."
~~ Stephen W. Hawking [1942-2018]

"Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
~~ Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel [1928-2016]

"Donald Trump isn't a President. He's a motivational speaker for racists."
~~ John Pavlovitz

"Q: How are we to treat others? A: There are no others."
~~ Hindu sage Ramana Maharshi [1879-1950]

"I cannot bear to associate with the ordinary run of people. I have to surround myself with individuals who for the most part are more than a trifle insane."
~~ Wallace Thurman [1902-34], considered a member of the The Harlem Renaissance

"My three favorite things are eating my family and not using commas."
~~ outdoor marquee at Dunn Lumber of Washington State

"We cannot and need not eradicate our ego; rather, we must make sure [that] it is a serving ego and not a deserving ego."
~~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
~~ Gautama Buddha [5th Century BCE]

"Reason is the only way of talking about a problem that is universal."
~~ Sam Harris

"You better cut the pizza into four pieces, because I'm not hungry enough to eat six."
~~ baseball great Yogi Berra [1925-2015]

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