December 2019 Quotations (56)

"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants."
~~ patriot and abolitionist Frederick Douglass [1818-95], in December of 1860

"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
~~ Ursula K. Le Guin [1929-2018]

"Existentialism consists of experiencing experience directly."
~~ G.E. Nordell

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
~~ Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci [1891-1937]

"The most beautiful thing [THAT] we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955], in 'What I Believe'

"[The Confederate flag is] offensive to an entire race."
~~ Dale Earnhardt Jr.

"It is not a simple matter to differentiate unsuccessful from successful experiments . . . [Most] work that is finally successful is the result of a series of unsuccessful tests in which difficulties are gradually eliminated."
~~ rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard [1882-1945]

"The Republican Party consists of lobbyists, letchers, liars, and lunkheads."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

CUM DUBITO DESISTO — when in doubt, don't

"[Trump's] going after me on his Twitter account was sort of the end for me. A sign of full-blown demagoguery, as if Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy got together and had a baby and it ended up being Donald Trump."
~~ Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former communications director

“Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom reality.”
~~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]

"Do the best that you can, with what you have, where you are."
~~ Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919]

"I don’t make the rules – the elves do."
~~ Emma Soren, in The New Yorker Magazine

"The events that shape our lives can never be foretold, but only withstood and reckoned with for as long as we live."
~~ Joanne Walker

"Whenever you meet someone, treat them as if they were in serious trouble – and you will be right more than half the time."
~~ educator Henry B. Eyring

"There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea."
~~ Joseph Conrad [1857-1924]

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”
~~ poet May Sarton [1912-95]

"Only a fool argues with a skunk, a mule, or a cook."
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]

"The years forever fashion new dreams when old ones go. God pity a one-dream man."
~~ Bob Goddard

"Future historians will have to end every paragraph about Trump with the disclaimer, "Seriously, no kidding, he really said that shit."
~~ John Sheirer, on Facebook

"The most important thing any teacher can teach a student is how to learn."
~~ Martin Heidegger [1889-1976]

"The system cannot propose a place for novelty, so we must create something outside the system as it is."
~~ French philosopher Alain Badiou

“America is the land of opportunity and don’t ever forget it.”
~~ Will Rogers [1879-1935]

“I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, we can’t eat money, or drink oil.”
~~ Indigenous teen water protector Autumn Peltier addressing the United Nations General Assembly, 9/2019

"We are the change and change is coming."
~~ Greta Thunberg, at the end of her speech at the Fridays For Future rally in Montreal, Canada on Friday 9/27/2019

"Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it."
~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower [1890-1969]

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

"President Trump, you have the right to remain silent."
~~ Mikel Jollett

"I'm not telling you [that] it is going to be easy. I'm telling you [that] it's going to be worth it."
~~ entertainer Judy Garland [1922-69]

"You can’t argue with saw dust."
~~ Jerry Bennett of Georgia USA, on Facebook

"The giving of love is an education in itself."
~~ Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]

“Skeptics warned me: 'The U.S has no friends, only interests' ... Now it turns out that the pessimists were right. I was wrong.”
~~ Ilham Ahmed, co-president of the Democratic Council of Syria

"At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]

"TANSTAAFL: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!"
~~ popularized by sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

funny 'found text' t-shirts:
as seen on TV (red logo)
another one: PERSON OF INTEREST
and another: built (FORD logo) tough
Error 404: This t-shirt cannot be displayed
t-shirt not responding due to a long-running script

"When it shall be said, in any country in the world, my people are happy, my jails are empty, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive . . . then may that country boast of its constitution and government."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]

"Hate is not a solution to anything, except for lowlifes who need someone to oppress (so they can at least not be bottom of the barrel)."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"I would rather take the chance and lose than to admit to myself that I didn't have the courage to try. I'd rather make a hundred mistakes, and take the consequences for every one, than to grovel in the dirt because fear had its foot on my neck."
~~ Errol Flynn [1909-59]

"The whole truth pure and simple? The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Years ago, fairy tales all began with 'Once upon a time' . . . now we know [that] they all begin with, 'If I am elected'."
~~ Carolyn Warner

"Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it."
~~ Alexander Dumas, fils [1824-95]

"I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale."
~~ Nobel-laureate physicist Marie Curie [1867-1934]

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]

"Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"Don't be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with the wind."
~~ Hamilton W. Mabie [1846-1916]

"The destruction of the information system ... is a technique of propaganda that’s extremely effective. It’s working, and the effects are lethal."
~~ philosopher-activist Noam Chomsky

"Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions."
~~ Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]

"Love truth, and pardon error."
~~ French philosopher Voltaire [1694-1778]

"I want the old Swamp back because this Trump Swamp is stinking it up now really badly."
~~ Abel Rodriguez, on Facebook

"George Washington could not tell a lie. Richard Nixon could not tell the truth. Donald Trump cannot tell the difference."
~~ 'SW', in the Albuquerque Journal Sound Off! opinion section

"The only security of all is in a free press."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826], in 1823

"Another day, another shooting in the U.S."
~~ Teresa Hanafin, reporter at the Boston Globe

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."
~~ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord [1754–1838]

"Anything human is mentionable, and anything mentionable is manageable."
~~ Margaret McFarland [1905-88], lifelong collaborator of children's TV host Fred 'Mister' Rogers [1928-2003]

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

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