Your Favorite Quotes

[David Octavius]

What is your favorite quotes from famous or infamous people? It can be from leaders, entertainers or whoever - but share the quotes from people who are dead, we hear enough from the people that are alive

Here is one of mine:
It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans.

John Jay

Take away "Monarchs" and put in "leaders" and this quote to me is as timeless as ever. Btw, this came from the Federalist Papers and he was our first chief justice (and was anti-slavery)

I will share other quotes later, whats yours?

[motivez]

"Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all." - Joseph Heller

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster." -Nietzsche

"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." - James Madison

Just a few

[thatguyoverthere]

Good idea for a thread.

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." - Henry David Thoreau

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly." - Thomas Huxley

"Since the mind is a specific biocomputer, it needs specific instructions and directions. The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, learn about them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them." - Denis Waitley

[avsp]

Not exactly pithy but incredibly prescient

Ike from his presidental valedictary speech

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

& Ike again, (sorry for the bold it came with the cut & paste & i'm too inept to remove it)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953."

I think his speeches are massively underated

Got loads of other favoured quotes but they're mostly from songs & are for another day , ..., possibly

[DosEquis]

don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out alive.

[RMNIXON]

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all 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."

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."


- Albert Einstein

[Ardentfrost]

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Ben Franklin

[jimeigh]

"There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist."
-Ayn Rand

"I find that the truth is the most offensive thing in the world. This is why i am not tolerated, because i can't be bothered to tell a lie." - Johnny Rotten

"Pacifism is an act of malevolence against yourself. Turning the other cheek makes your whole face hurt." - JohnJohnJohnson

"clinton is a failure, and ill tell you when i knew he was a failure. i knew he was a failure the moment he sent 22 cruise missles into iraq because of an alleged assassination attempt on george bush. six innocent people died. i'll tell you what we should have done, we should have embarassed the iraqis and assassinated george bush ourselves. that would send the message, "THATS how you do it, you fucking towelheads, dont mess with us!" and since only george bush died, there would have been no loss of innocent life." - Bill Hicks

"George Bush says 'we are losing the war on drugs'. Well you know what that implies? There's a war going on, and people on drugs are winning it! Well what does that tell you about drugs? Some smart, creative motherfuckers on that side." - Bill Hicks


"There are four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." - Christopher Hitchens

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by Ardentfrost

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Ben Franklin

[kinggovernor]

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.- Teddy Roosevelt

[ballz2wallz]

"Turn around and bend over for me"

- Me

[Linzyhop]

Originally Posted by Ardentfrost

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Ben Franklin

haha. i love this quote!

[Linzyhop]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

"Turn around and bend over for me"

- Me

you're an idiot.



-me

[avsp]

"I dont know what I want but I want it NOW!" Sir Henry Rawlinson (Viv Stanshall)
"If I had all the money I've spent on drink, ..., I'd spend it on drink" Sir Henry Rawlinson

[Publius]

I have a few favorite Alexander Hamilton quotes:

"I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man."

"In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution."

"Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal."

"There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism."

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint."

And a few from James Madison as well:

"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."

"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government."

"Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations."

"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."

"What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

And many more from various members of the Founding Generation... It really is amazing how relevant many of their opinions remain in modern America.

A few other random quotes:

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America." -- William Jefferson Clinton (whoever wrote that speech for him deserves an award for this sentence)

"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." -- James Baldwin

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." -- Nietzsche

"You see these dictators up on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They're afraid of words and thought. ... They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words. ... A state of society where men may not speak their mind -- where children denounce their parents to the police -- where a businessman or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinion. Such a state of society cannot long endure if it is continually in contact with the healthy outside world." -- Winston Churchill (speaking in 1938 about Nazi Germany)

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." -- Ayn Rand

[Linzyhop]

"Yes, I know. You are a good woman. Then again, you may be the antichrist."

[WickedLou9]

Something my grandfather said to me once. I don't know why it stuck in my head.

"As you are, I once was. As I am, you will become."

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

"Turn around and bend over for me"

- Me

I wonder who said it first?

When?

And in what ancient language!

[ballz2wallz]

Originally Posted by RMNIXON

I wonder who said it first?

When?

And in what ancient language!

[thomez]

I imagine that was said in gesture ... in Africa... a few million years ago