Miscellaneous Quotes

• When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Confidence, Gun, People

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• Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Education, Hate, Humor

  Attributed without source in "Message Passing Server Internals" by Bill Blunden, (p. 15), 2003.

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• Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

  William Hazlitt

  Life, Motivational, Laughter

  Lectures on the English Comic Writers "On Wit and Humor" (1818)

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• The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step – in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come – is to teach men to shoot!

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Military, War, Mean

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• Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Truth, Speak Your Mind, Minorities

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• In America, they do not inquire of a stranger, "What is he?" but, "What can he do?"

  Benjamin Franklin

  America, Stranger

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• The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Inspirational, Wise, Wisdom

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• If you can't beat them or join them, then do something weird. No matter how much the passengers eat, the weight of the plane stays the same. Do you sometimes feel that you are necessary but not sufficient?

  Thomas Sowell

  Weight, Matter, Sometimes

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• Never hold anyone by the button or the hand in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you, you had better hold your tongue than them.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Hands, Order, People

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• The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started.

  T. S. Eliot

  Travel, Adventure, Science

  Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 5 (1942)

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• Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

  Aldous Huxley

  Inspirational, Motivational, Education

  Proper Studies "A Note on Dogma" (1927)

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• It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

  Upton Sinclair

  Wisdom, Men, People

  Quoted in Evan Esar, The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations (1949)

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• The great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

  Isaac Newton

  Trust, Truth, Ocean

  Quoted in Christian Monitor, and Religious Intelligencer, 4 July 1812. An almost identical quotation by Newton, said to have been uttered "a little before he died," appears in Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men, published in 1820 but extant in manuscript form from around 1730. A paraphrase of Newton's words was printed in a note in a 1797 edition of TheWorks of Alexander Pope.

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• If a thing goes without saying -- let it.

  Jacob Braude

  Ifs

  Jacob Morton Braude (1966). “Speech openers and closers”

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• A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.

  Frederick Douglass

  Men, Gun, Rights

  "How 'Crazy Negroes' With Guns Helped Kill Jim Crow" by Thaddeus Russell, reason.com. July 22, 2014.

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• Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.

  Henry George

  Philosophy, Men, Animal

  Henry George (2006). “Progress and Poverty”, p.98, Cosimo, Inc.

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• A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

  Winston Churchill

  Funny, Change, Business

  Winston Churchill (1987). “The Irrepressible Churchill: Stories, Sayings and Impressions of Sir Winston Churchill”, London : Robson Books

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• The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

  "The Treasury of Humorous Quotations". Book by Evan Esar, p. 103, 1951.

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• A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

  George Santayana

  Happiness, Happy, Determination

  George Santayana (1945). “The Middle Span”

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• Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

  Samuel Butler

  Life, Educational, Learning

  Speech at the Somerville Club, 27 Feb. 1895, in R. A. Streatfield Essays on Life, Art and Science (1904) p. 69

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• Lots of people talk to animals... Not very many listen, though... That's the problem.

  Benjamin Hoff

  Love, Inspiring, Dog

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• Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Art, Mean

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  I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Military, Gun, New World Order

  Douglas MacArthur's speech to the Texas Legislature in Austin (June 13, 1951) as quoted in "General MacArthur Speeches and Reports 1908-1964" edited by Edward T. Imparato (p. 175), June 14, 2000.

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• At any age it does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Character, Past, Years

  Eleanor Roosevelt, David Emblidge (1989). “Eleanor Roosevelt's My Day: Her Acclaimed Columns, 1936-1945”

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• I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore.

  Isaac Newton

  Trust, Teacher, Truth

  Quoted in Christian Monitor, and Religious Intelligencer, 4 July 1812. An almost identical quotation by Newton, said to have been uttered "a little before he died," appears in Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men, published in 1820 but extant in manuscript form from around 1730. A paraphrase of Newton's words was printed in a note in a 1797 edition of TheWorks of Alexander Pope.

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