Quotes, March 2003
01. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.
- Dave Barry
02. On the other hand, the Bible contains much that is relevant today, like Noah taking 40 days to find a place to park.
- Curtis McDougall
03. How happy is he born and taught,
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!
- Henry Wotton
04. La critique est aisée, et l’art est difficile.
[Critique is easy, art is difficult.]
- Destouche, French writer 18th century
05. Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organisation of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.
- Adlai Stevenson
06. Children are like TV sets. When they start acting weird, whack them across the head with a big rubber basketball shoe.
- Hunter S. Thompson
07. Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
- Jonathan Swift
08. A man of sense only trifles with women, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child. But he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.
- The Earl of Chesterfield
09. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That unalterable rule applies both to God and man.
- Lord Acton
10. Too much of a good thing is wonderful.
- Mae West
11. If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
- Robert A. Heinlein
12. My prayer to God is a very short one: "O Lord, make mine enemies ridiculous." God has granted it.
- Voltaire
13. It is impossible, in our condition of society, not to be sometimes a snob.
- William M. Thackeray
14. For there was never yet a philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently.
- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
15. Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.
- Shirley Conran
16. Christian: One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
- Ambrose Bierce
17. There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
- Machiavelli
18. When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.
- Victor Hugo
19. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
- Martin Luther King
20. Der Krieg ist nichts anderes als die Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln.
[War is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means.]
- Karl von Clausewitz
21. Delenda est Carthago.
[Carthage must be destroyed.]
- Cato the Elder
22. Hit hard. Hit fast. Hit often.
- Adm. William F. Halsey
23. On going to war over religion: "You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend."
- Rich Jeni
24. We must be free or die.
- William Wordsworth
25. Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
- Winston Churchill
26. Revolutions are not made with rosewater.
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
27. As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
- Oscar Wilde
28. Fortis fortuna adiuvat.
[Fortune favors the brave.]
- Terents, Roman poet 195-159 BC
29. Furor arma ministrat.
[Anger supplies the weapons.]
- Virgil
30. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers’ pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.
- Edward Gibbons, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"
31. If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
- Earl Wilson
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