Quotes, June 2004
01. My time has not yet come either; some are born posthumosly.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
02. Demagogue: One who preaches a doctrine he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
- H.L. Mencken
03. Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
- Unknown
04. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.
- Oscar Wilde
05. Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
- Michel De Montaigne
06. How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
- Ronald Reagan
07. I once played a sheriff who thought he could do the job without a gun. I was dead for twenty-seven minutes of a thirty minute show.
- Ronald Reagan
08. The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
- Ronald Reagan
09. We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.
- Ronald Reagan, Normandy, France, June 6, 1984
10. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history.... [It is] the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism- Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.
- Ronald Reagan
11. Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.
- Ronald Reagan
12. You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.
- Ronald Reagan
13. Let us beware that while they [Soviet rulers] preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination over all the peoples of the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world ... beware the temptation to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.
- Ronald Reagan
14. Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
- H. W. Longfellow
15. Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no profession is necessary.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
16. No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing.
- W. H. Auden
17. Hypocrasy is a tribute that vice renders to virtue.
- De La Rochefoucauld
18. H. L. Mencken’s Law:
Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, teach.
19. Everybody's a self-made man; but only the successful ones are ever willing to admit it.
- Unknown
20. If there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is he playing at? Is he a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sports? ... Is he manuvering to maximize David Attenborough’s television ratings?
- Richard Dawkins
21. Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.
- Unknown
22. 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 a man.
- Mark Twain
23. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.
- Dave Barry
24. Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hand he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way.
- O. Henry "The Octopus Marooned"
25. What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
- Unknown
26. Nor is the people’s judgement always true
The most may err as grossly as the few
- John Dryden
27. I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil, you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself.
- Dan Barker
28. Argument is the worst sort of conversation.
- Jonathan Swift
29. The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.
- Unknown
30. Beware the fury of a patient man.
- John Dryden
Back to main page
