No free people ever existed, or can ever exist, without keeping the purse strings in their own hands. Where this is the case, they have a constitutional check upon the administration, which may thereby by brought into order without violence. But when such a power is not lodged in the people, oppression proceeds uncontrolled in its career, till the governed, transported into rage, seek redress in the midst of blood and confusion.

I will make a bargain with the Republicans. If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.

Adlai Stevenson

Yawns are not the only infectious things out there besides germs.Giggles can spread from person to person.So can blushing.But maybe the most powerful infectious thing is the act of speaking the truth.

Vera Nazarian

I try to keep it light and positive most of the time, whereas earlier on I didn't always do that.

Gordon Lightfoot

I think that the U.S. does have this very much more open attitude, and I admire it very much and I think it's very important to the world. But the information and the discussion sometimes come too late, after the effective decision has been made.

E. P. Thompson

And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task.

Jostein Gaarder

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Naguib Mahfouz

I think the biggest lie the devil ever told was that beauty and goodness are the same.

Daniel Nayeri

Laws are never as effective as habits.

Adlai Stevenson

When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.

Barbara Tuchman

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom. Without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail.

Albert Einstein

Government is inherently incompetent, and no matter what task it is assigned, it will do it in the most expensive and inefficient way possible.

Charley Reese

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

E. M. Forster