...the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Walter Savage Landor

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Alexis de Tocqueville

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

John Adams

The question now is: Can we understand our stupidity? This is a test of intellect, not of character.

John King Fairbank

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.

Kurt Vonnegut

I would rather the man who presents something for my consideration subject me to a zephyr of truth and a gentle breeze of responsibility rather than blow me down with a curtain of hot wind.

Grover Cleveland

It's painful for me to watch someone who isn't funny. It's horrifying to sit in the back and watch some guy who just totally sucks.

Joe Rogan

So nothing is ever good or bad unless you think it so, and vice versa. All luck is good luck to the man who bears it with equanimity.Latin: Adeo nihil est miserum, nisi cum putes: contraque beata sors omnis est aequanimitate tolerantis.

Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severi

And say my glory was I had such friends.

William Butler Yeats

What a man calls his conscience is merely the mental action that follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love.

Helen Rowland

Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.

William Makepeace Thackeray

The back of one door is the face of another.

Proverb