If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man.
The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle
H. L. Mencken, The Library
Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct
The fox when it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites off their heads.
Leonardo DaVinci, note book
The mole has very small eyes and it always lives under ground; and it lives as long as it is in the dark but when it comes into the light it dies immediately, because it becomes known;--and so it is with lies.
As regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered.
Women have plenty of roles in which they can serve with distinction: some of us even run countries. But generally we are better at wielding the handbag than the bayonet.
Margaret Thatcher
All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of
Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man can't retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time.
Bernard Baruch
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
Charles Caleb Colton
An old Apache storyteller reminds us:
Joseph Campbell
In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his senses a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, and his fame doubtful. In short, all that is of the body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapours; life a warfare, a brief sojourning in an alien land; and after repute, oblivion. Where, then, can man find the power to guide and guard his steps? In one thing and one alone: the love of knowledge.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations II,
The art of leadership, as displayed by really great popular leaders in all ages, consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention into sections. The more the militant energies of the people are directed towards one objective the more will new recruits join the movement, attracted by the magnetism of its unified action, and thus the striking power will be all the more enhanced. The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to the one category; for weak and wavering natures among a leader's following may easily begin to be dubious about the justice of their own cause if they have to face different enemies.As soon as the vacillating masses find themselves facing an opposition that is made up of different groups of enemies their sense of objectivity will be aroused and they will ask how is it that all the others can be in the wrong and they themselves, and their movement, alone in the right.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. 1
The one being abhorrent to the powers above the earth and under them is the hyphenated American
Theodore Roosevelt, Before Liber
I am among those Americans whose ancestors include men and women from many different European countries. The proportion of Americans of this type will steadily increase. I do not believe in hyphenated Americans. I do not believe in German-Americans or Irish-Americans; and I believe just as little in English-Americans. I do not approve of American citizens of German descent forming organizations to force the United States into practical alliance with Germany because their ancestors came from Germany. Just as little do I believe in American citizens of English descent forming leagues to force the United States into an alliance with England because their ancestors came from England.
Theodore Roosevelt, "Metropolita
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts
Theodore Roosevelt, Before Knigh
Much as we complain about our condition or feel victimized by fortune or fellow humans, we simply love being alive. We love life in others and in ourselves. We are in love with life. To love life is to love the activities of which it consists and to hope for more.
John Lachs, In Love With Life: R
It does not really avail us much to get clear definitions. I am for clarity, by all means, but to think that you can reduce a concept to a relatively simple definition, and that you can somehow go somewhere that will be interesting and fruitful, just does not seem to me to be very plausible at the present time. And that is exactly what I used to strive for. I took old Socrates seriously; you search for the definition. You get the essence of the thing, and once you get the essence and the definition that somehow captures that essence, you are home free. That is how you do philosophy. When you read Hegel, you realize how incredibly flexible and supple concepts are, how they take you for a fool when you take them too literally and too tightly, how they are interconnected with one another, how they interplay in ways you really do not understand, how in other words, strangely enough, you really do not understand any part unless, or until, you understand the whole. That is what I learned from these folks. I really think that stress on context is terribly important and enriches one's philosophical approach significantly.http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/philosophy/faculty/lachs_interview.html
John Lachs, Interview with Pat S
We must look at what immigration to America involves. To the new arrivals, the change is excruciating. Learning a new language and dealing with strange customs make the first years of life in the new land painful...The economic system of the United States is a mighty engine of persuasion. It motivates people to do what otherwise they never would in return for fulfilling their dreams. In the process, people learn that there is no sharp line between physical well-being and the higher purposes of life. The comfort of owning a house is at once meeting the obligation to care for onehttp://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/newspub/bjfTyg?id=21797&mode=print
John Lachs, From enemies to peac
What a woman says to her lover should be written on air or swift water.
Catullus
I hate and I love: why I do so you may well ask. I do not know, but I feel it happen and am in agony.Odi et amo: quare id facium, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
Catullus, Carmina
Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.
Fidel Castro
When I was a young boy, my father taught me that to be a good Catholic, I had to confess at church if I ever had impure thoughts about a girl. That very evening I had to rush to confess my sin. And the next night, and the next. After a week, I decided religion wasn't for me.
Fidel Castro, "The Economist", A
And I myself a Catholic will be,So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee.Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestowOn us, the Poets militant below.
Abraham Cowley, On the Death of
Anti-Catholicism is the last respectable prejudice. You can
Tom Clancy, Interview, "Time", J
Revolution is a wasteful, destructive, and inhuman engine of political change. It must be allowed to happen if there is nothing better, but the great challenge to human ingenuity is to find alternative paths to economic and political reconstruction, which can bring basic changes without the massive use of violence. The societies of the- Third World can ill afford the economic and human costs of prolonged civil war. But virtually all of the thinking to date about revolutionizing underdeveloped societies through technology rather than through violence has been designed to serve the political interests of the donor country. The avoidance of revolution has been an end in itself, and very little commitment has been made to the achievement of radical political change through nonviolent means in societies needing revolution. A great nation has an inherent problem, and possibly an insoluble one, in devising a strategy for helping another society to remake its political life without injecting its own interests and values and without coming to dominate the weak.
Richard J. Barnet, Intervention
In revolutions the occasions may be trifling but great interests are at stake.
Aristotle
I have reached the conclusion, a bit late perhaps, that speeches should be short.known for his three-hour speeches, reportedly shortened them to not more than 90 minutes
Haven't you learned yet that I put something more than whisky into my speeches.
Sir Winston Churchill, to his so
Many have been the wise speeches of fools, though not so many as the foolish speeches of wise men.
Thomas Fuller
Churchill wrote his own speeches. When a leader does that, he becomes emotionally invested with his utterances... If Churchill had had a speech writer in 1940, Britain would be speaking German today.
James C. Humes
I asked him on whom or what he had based his oratorical style. Churchill replied, It was an American statesman who inspired me and taught me how to use every note of the human voice like an organ. Winston then to my amazement started to quote long excerpts from Bourke Cockran's speeches of 60 years before. He was my model, Churchill said. I learned from him how to hold thousands in thrall.
Adlai Stevenson, about his last
There wasn't any more truth in over half of what any so-called orator said. If it wasn't a Deliberate Lie, why it was an Exaggerated Falsehood.
Will Rogers, November 13, 1932
All the other candidates are making speeches about how much they have done for their country, which is ridiculous. I haven't done anything yet, and I think it's just common sense to send me to Washington and make me do my share.
Gore Vidal
Rhetoric paints with a broad brush.
George Carlin
The business of obscuring language is a mask behind which stands the much bigger business of plunder.
Frantz Fanon
I feel my belief in sacrifice and struggle getting stronger. I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.
Fidel Castro, letter Carlos Fran
I was a man who was lucky enough to have discovered a political theory, a man who was caught up in the whirlpool of Cuba's political crisis...; discovering Marxism...was like finding a map in the forest.
Fidel Castro, Speech, Chile, Nov
In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas. . . a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.
William S. Burroughs, Remark, 19
Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.
Rita Mae Brown, Starting From Sc
All criticism is opposition. All opposition is counter-revolutionary.
Fidel Castro, in John Newhouse,
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