Principal Quotes

• There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

  Denis Diderot

  Knowledge, Mean, Reflection

  Denis Diderot (1966). “Selected Writings”, New York : Macmillan

  35 Copy quote

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• The principal role of the President of the United States is the security of the country and participating in trying to stabilize the world.

  John Sununu

  Country, Trying, President

  4 Copy quote

• Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Life, Wedding

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.79, Routledge

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• Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.

  Mark Twain

  Mom, Baby, Children

  Pudd'nhead Wilson ch. 4, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

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• A mother is neither cocky, nor proud, because she knows the school principal may call at any minute to report that her child had just driven a motorcycle through the gymnasium.

  Mary Blakely

  Mother, Children, Cocky

  85 Copy quote

• If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Inspiring, Thankful

  Pudd'nhead Wilson ch. 16, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

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• It is just as necessary to forgive ourselves as it is to forgive others, and the principal reason why forgiveness seemed so difficult is because we have neglected to forgive ourselves.

  Christian D. Larson

  Life Changing, Forgiving, Reason Why

  22 Copy quote

• The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

  H. L. Mencken

  Lying, Men, Office

  "Charting the Candidates '72" by Ronald Van Doren, 1972.

  146 Copy quote

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• Advertising is the principal reason why the business person has come to inherit the earth.

  James Adams

  Advertising Business, Earth, Reason Why

  9 Copy quote

• Let grace and goodness be the principal loadstone of thy affections.

  John Dryden

  Grace, Affection, Goodness

  15 Copy quote

• Smoking is the now the principal avoidable cause of premature death in Britain. It hits the worst off people hardest of all. Smoking is one of the principal causes of the health gap which leads to poorer people being ill more often and dying sooner.

  Frank Dobson

  People, Smoking, Dying

  52 Copy quote

• My grandmother was a teacher, my sister was a teacher, my daughter was a teacher and is now a superintendent in northern California, and my son-in-law is a high school principal. I am surrounded.

  Loni Anderson

  Daughter, Mother, Teacher

  58 Copy quote

• A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

  Henry Adams

  Inspirational, Leadership, Education

  The Education of Henry Adams ch. 20 (1907)

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• Everyone thinks that the principal thing to the tree is the fruit, but in point of fact the principal thing to it is the seed.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Thinking, Tree, Fruit

  30 Copy quote

• I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

  Bertrand Russell

  Death, Christian, Atheist

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

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• Common sense … has the very curious property of being more correct retrospectively than prospectively. It seems to me that one of the principal criteria to be applied to successful science is that its results are almost always obvious retrospectively; unfortunately, they seldom are prospectively. Common sense provides a kind of ultimate validation after science has completed its work; it seldom anticipates what science is going to discover.

  Russell L. Ackoff

  Successful, Validation, Common Sense

  31 Copy quote

• The battle against the Devil, which is the principal task of Saint Michael the Archangel, is still being fought today, because the Devil is still alive and active in the world.

  Pope John Paul II

  Battle, Devil, Saint

  54 Copy quote

• Hippo in a skirt: this was a comic reference to one of Solomon's principal wives, the one from Moab. Childish? Yes. But in the days before printing we had limited opportunities for satire.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Opportunity, Wife, Skirts

  5 Copy quote

• Words may be either the servants or masters. If the former they may safely guide us in the way of truth. If the latter they intoxicate the brain and lead into swamps of thought where there is no solid footing. Among the sources of those innumerable calamities which from age to age have overwhelmed mankind, may be reckoned as one of the principal, the abuse of words.

  George Horne

  Abuse, Brain, Age

  7 Copy quote

• One of the principal occupations of man is to divine woman.

  Jacques de Lacretelle

  Men, Occupation, Divine

  4 Copy quote

• The principal difference between love and hate is that love is a irradiation, and hate is a concentration. Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the object of its hatred.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Love, Hate, Differences

  Sydney J. Harris (1953). “Strictly personal”

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• The principal end both of my father and of myself in the conquest of India... has been the propagation of the holy Catholic faith.

  Ignatius of Loyola

  Father, Catholic, India

  52 Copy quote

• As long as my sixth graders showed an average improvement of five years, the principal and district pretty much left me alone to create my own curriculum and teach whatever I wanted

  Dan Simmons

  Average, Years, Long

  8 Copy quote

• I would have thought it possible to choose delegates for these larger conferences who, even if they could not speak the principal languages, could at least understand them or could have friends seated beside them who could keep them informed on essential points.

  Fredrik Bajer

  Essentials, Literature, Language

  7 Copy quote

• The basic function of the government everywhere in all times, whatever title it adopts and whatever its origin and organisation may be, is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, of defending the oppressors and the exploiters: and it's principal, characteristic and indispensable instruments are the police agent and the tax-collector, the soldier and the gaoler - to whom must be invariably added the trader in lies, be he priest of schoolmaster, remunerated or protected by the government to enslave minds and make them docilely accept the yoke.

  Errico Malatesta

  Lying, Government, Police

  29 Copy quote