• If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank. - William Dean Howells, American author (1837-1920).

• Psychology, which explains everything,
  Explains nothing,
  And we are still in doubt."
  - Marianne Moore, American poet (1887-1972).

• Beware the fury of the patient man. - John Dryden, poet and dramatist (1631-1700).

• I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. - Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862).

• The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. - John W. Gardner, American government official.

• The man who does not learn is dark, like one walking in the night. - Chinese proverb.

• Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. - George Santayana, Spanish-born philosopher (1863-1952)

• You can fool too many of the people too much of the time. - James Thurber, American humorist (1894-1961).

• Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience? - Thomas J. Watson, industrialist (1874-1956)

• Everyone's quick to blame the alien. - Aeschylus, Greek poet and dramatist (524 B.C.?-456 B.C.?)

• You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. - Mario M Cuomo, 52nd Governor of New York (1932- )

• Although you're never quite sure when this boy from Lismore (Bob Ellis) is being serious, he says his next book will be called On Interruption. To quote him: "It's about how in the modern world we get to the TV commercial and reality stops, and you're in the middle of Antarctica and you're having a f--k and your husband rings on the mobile phone, and we're so governed by interruption now that we're all going mad and those societies that are relatively uninterrupted, like the west coast of Ireland, are the happiest." - Lyndall Crisp, Financial Review, Oct 5, 2002

• The human mind is like an umbrella - it functions best when open." - Walter Gropius, German-American architect (1883-1969).

• The great rulers - the people do not notice their existence. The lesser ones they attach to and praise them. The still lesser ones - they fear them. The still lesser ones - they despise them. For where faith is lacking it cannot be met by faith. - Tao Te Ching

• A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. - Barnett Cocks

• The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries. - Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)

• Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do? - Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)

• Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. - Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

• Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both. - John Andrew Holmes

• To be well informed, one must read quickly a great number of merely instructive books. To be cultivated, one must read slowly and with a lingering appreciation the comparatively few books that have been written by men who lived, thought, and felt with style. - Aldous Huxley, writer (1894-1963)

• Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

• When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light. - John W. Gardner, author and educator (1912-2002)

• All great truths begin as blasphemies. - George Bernard Shaw, writer, (1856-1950)

• Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. - William Congreve, dramatist (1670-1729)

• I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet. - Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

• Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. - William Strunk and E.B. White, authors of The Elements of Style

• We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. - William R. Inge, clergyman, scholar, and author (1860-1954)

• The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things. - Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)

• Assassination: The extreme form of censorship. - George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

• What you are thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

• A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. - Greek proverb

• There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight. - Vaclav Havel, writer, Czech Republic president (1936- )

• Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. - Carl Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961)

• A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular. - Adlai Stevenson, Democratic Party candidate for President (1900-1965)

• Morally, the Howard Government is a bastard, the illegitimate offspring of the mother of political opportunism and mendacity and the father of popular xenophobia. What are we supposed to do when we look in the pram and see such a pig-ugly kid, morally speaking? Pretend it is beautiful? Talented? Clever? - Terry Lane, The Age (April 21, 2002)

• I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility, doubt of his own powers. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful. - John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)

• The Royals [and the BBC] put on a jolly good show, and even the presence of the Howards, she with her stolid waxen glare, he with his angry little chimpanzee frown, could not sully it. - Peter Woodforde, Canberra, quoted in the Canberra Times, April 12, 2002

• The believer is happy; the doubter is wise. - Hungarian proverb

• Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone. - Thomas De Quincey, writer (1785-1859)

• I shall be telling this with a sigh
  Somewhere ages and ages hence:
  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
  I took the one less travelled by,
  And that has made all the difference.

  - Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)

• There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts. - Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

• A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service. - Georges Pompidou, President of France (1911-74)

• Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation. - Henry Ward Beecher, preacher and writer (1813-1887)

• There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible. - Sir Alec Douglas-Home, British Prime Minister

• If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it. - Margaret Fuller, author (1810-1850)

• 'Conversation', n. A fair to the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbour. - Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914) [The Devil's Dictionary]

• Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. - George Jean Nathan, author and editor (1882-1958)

• In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. - Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, and musician (1875-1965)

• I wasn't lucky. I deserved it. - Margaret Thatcher, aged nine, after receiving a school prize.

• It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. - Voltaire, philosopher (384-322 BC)

• As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. - Matt Cartmill, anthropology professor and author (1943- )

• In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man - if you want anything done, ask a woman. - Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister, 1979-90

• To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart - and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love. - Karl Viktor von Bonstetten, author (1745-1832)

• If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind. - John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)

• People who are willing to give up freedom for the sake of short term security, deserve neither freedom nor security. - Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)

• Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it. - H. L. Mencken

• Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade in public. Never clothe them in vulgar and shoddy attire. - Dr. George W. Crane

• Never is liberty more easily lost than when we think we are defending it. - Ben Chifley (Australian Prime Minister 1945-49)

• We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like? - Jean Cocteau, author and painter (1889-1963)

• I d-d-don't care who's got the n-n-numbers brother, as long as I g-g-get to c-c-count the v-v-v-votes. - Stammering Senator Patrick Kennelly, when told before an ALP Caucus meeting that the Left had the numbers (circa 1950s)

• You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. - Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

• In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it. - John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)

• The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little. - Mark Twain, author (1835-1910)

• We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for. - Marie Ebner von Eschenbach, writer (1830-1916)

• The unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure of speech is too great for his income of ideas. - Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

• The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. - George Orwell

• The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

• If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. - George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)

• When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always. - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

• The real ideology that drives Mr. Bush remains less that of the hard right than that of his soft character, which is a product of a biography full of easy landings. A man who has never faced adversity - who has finessed Andover, Yale, Vietnam and brief careers in business and politics with well-placed connections and sweetheart deals - is not conversant with reality as most Americans have experienced it. The problem isn't that he's wealthy - so were F.D.R. and Ronald Reagan, whose hard knocks in life gave them an empathy for their fellow citizens - but that he's out of touch. He doesn't know how much he doesn't know and is in no rush to find out. - Frank Rich, New York Times, July 7, 2001.

• Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. - Janet Malcolm, Magazine Reporter.

• We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. - Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 1861.

• It's said there were only two shades of opinion in Sir Robert's caucus: "yes" and "yes, sir". - Paul East, New Zealand MP, on former National Party Prime Minister, Sir Robert ("Piggy") Muldoon.

• Forever poised between a cliche and an indiscretion. - Harold McMillan, British Prime Minister (1957-63), on the life of a Foreign Secretary.

• The Labor Party is a party of conviction. The Liberal Party is a party of convenience. - Paul Keating, May 8, 2001.

• The lesson of the Federation should be that the lesson is over. Australia must have a new idea of itself. We have to strike out in a new direction, in a new way, armed with our own self-regard, our own confidence and fully appreciating our own uniqueness. All other roads will lead us into the shadow of great powers. - Paul Keating, May 2001.

• Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important. - Eugene McCarthy, former United States Senator.

• When people cease to complain, they cease to think. - Napoleon Bonaparte

• I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. - Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932)

• If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake. - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

• Where no counsel is, the people fall; but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. - Proverbs 11:14, inscribed on the floor of the vestibule of the Victorian Parliament

• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. - Abraham Lincoln, U.S. president (1809-1865)

• Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. - Mignon McLaughlin, author

• When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves. - Confucius (551-479 BC)

• At the end of a long and probably very boring meal (at a formal dinner), (British Prime Minister) Macmillan turned to Madame de Gaulle and asked politely what she was looking forward to in her retirement. Quick as a flash the elderly lady replied: "A penis." Macmillan had been trained all his life never to appear shocked, but even he was a bit taken aback. After drawling out a series of polite platitudes, - "Well, I can see your point of view, don't have much time for that sort of thing nowadays" - it gradually dawned on him to his intense relief that what the old girl had actually said was "happiness." - Paul Foot, in the essay A New Definition: The Quality of Life, British Medical Journal, VOLUME 321, DECEMBER 2000

• The moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life — the children; the twilight of life — the elderly; and the shadows of life — the sick, the needy and the handicapped. - Hubert Humphrey, Vice-President of the United States 1965-69

• When I joined the Labor Party, it contained the cream of the working class. But as I look about me now, all I see are the dregs of the middle class. When will you middle class perverts stop using the Labor Party as a cultural spittoon? - Kim Beazley Snr to an ALP State Conference, circa 1970

• Any time we kick the Prime Minister in the behind, we know who gets concussion, Senator Heffernan - Labor Senator Robert Ray to Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan during debate in the Australian Senate, 1999

• If there was a university degree for greed, you cunts would all get first-class honours. - Australian Treasurer Paul Keating in 1985 after backbenchers had complained about having to substantiate, for tax purposes, their electoral allowances

• If ignorance ever reaches $40 a barrel, I want the drilling rights to his head. - a political opponent on President George Bush

• Just because he's paranoid doesn't mean there aren't people out to get him. - Henry Kissinger on Richard Nixon

• Everywhere I go around Australia people know that something is wrong. - Liberal Party leader, Bill Snedden, on the hustings in the 1974 election

• Lyndon, I'd feel a whole lot better if just one of them had once run for sheriff somewhere. - Reaction of House Speaker Sam Rayburn to Vice-President-elect Johnson's description of the glittering talent of JFK's inner foreign policy circle

• In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant. - Charles De Gaulle

• ....he reveals that he has been a poor politician, a bad judge and a malevolent individual. - Gough Whitlam on Garfield Barwick ("Abiding Interests", p44)

• We have no political prisons. We have political internal exiles. - General Pinochet, Chilean dictator, 1976

• He is lofty, and I am eminent. - Gough Whitlam, comparing himself to Malcolm Fraser, 1975

• It is the first time the burglar has been appointed as caretaker. - Gough Whitlam, 11th November 1975, following his Dismissal by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr.

• Some of us do not accept the Establishment myth that bad laws must be obeyed. - Tom Driberg, British MP, 1972

• Violence is as American as cherry pie. - Stokely Carmichael

• In a political fight, when you've got nothing in favour of your side, start a row in the opposition camp. - Huey Long

• I have more influence now than when I had the power. - Gough Whitlam, 5 July 1997

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - The Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776

• The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing. - Harold Wilson, British Prime Minister, 1964

• He could not see a belt without hitting below it. - Margot Asquith on David Lloyd George

• One fifth of the people are against everything all the time. - Robert Kennedy

• I'm not a crook. - President Richard Nixon

• Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. - Clement Attlee

• History teaches us to beware of demagogues who wrap themselves in the flag in an attempt to appeal to the worst aspects of nationalism. - Judge Alistair Nicholson on Pauline Hanson

• He has not a single redeeming defect. - Benjamin Disraeli on W.E. Gladstone

• A Conservative government is an organised hypocrisy. - Benjamin Disraeli

• John Major, Norman Lamont: I wouldn't spit in their mouths if their teeth were on fire. - Rodney Bickerstaffe (1993)

• John Major is what he is: a man from nowhere, going nowhere, heading for a well-merited obscurity as fast as his mediocre talents can carry him. - Paul Johnson (March 1993)

• A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. - Edmund Burke

• All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies. - John Arbuthnot

• Politics is the art of putting people under obligation to you. - Jacob L. Arvey

• Venal prick. - Sen. Robert Ray on Sen. Mal Colston (Sunday Age, 13 April 1997)

Quotations

• Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. - Scott Adams, cartoonist (1957- )

• Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste and end by debauching it. - T.S. Eliot, American-Anglo poet and critic (1888-1965)

• Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. - George Santayana, American philosopher (1863-1952)

• Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. - Franklin P. Jones, businessman (1887-1929)

• The man who never tells an unpalatable truth 'at the wrong time' (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured. - Agnes Repplier, American essayist (1858-1950)

• Scratch a pessimist, and you find often a defender of privilege. - Lord Beveridge, British economist (1879-1963)

• If power corrupts, being out of power corrupts absolutely. - Douglass Cater, American author and educator

• It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper. - Errol Flynn, American actor (1909-1959)

• We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is disappearing. - R.D. Laing, Scottish psychiatrist (1927-1989)

• It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything. - Joyce Cary, English author (1888-1957)

• How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true. - Logan Pearsall Smith, Anglo-American essayist (1865-1946)

• I'd almost say hope isn't what it used to be. It's very difficult today to be a teacher. I speak to children. And tell them, look, no matter what, you must have hope. You must. When I invoke Camus, who said when there is no hope, you must invent hope. . .hope is something that is not what God gives us. It's like peace. It's a gift that one can give to one another. Only another person can push me to despair. And only another person can push me to hope. It’s my choice. - Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize-winner and Holocaust Survivor

• The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one. - Brooks Atkinson, American drama critic (1894-1984)

• If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military. - President Truman (1884-1972)

• A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks th' Lord wud do if He knew th' facts iv th' case. - Finley Peter Dunne, American humorist (1867-1936)

• No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. - John Donne, poet (1573-1631)

• A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company. - Charles Evans Hughes, jurist (1862-1948)

• Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?" - Bertrand Russell, English philosopher and mathematician (1872-1970)

• If you are ruled by mind you are a king; if by body, a slave. - Cato, Roman statesman and historian (234 B.C.-149 B.C.)

• The more people are reached by mass communication, the less they communicate with each other. - Marya Mannes, American author-journalist (1904-1990)

• It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. - James Thurber, American humorist (1894-1961)

• May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. - Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

• If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. - Rachel Carson, American biologist (1907-1964)

• A fellow who is always declaring he's no fool usually has his suspicions. - Wilson Mizner, American playwright (1876-1933)

• To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to. - Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)

• If the rich could hire someone else to die for them, the poor would make a wonderful living. - Jewish Proverb

• You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity. - Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)

• Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. - Paulo Freire, educator (1921-1997)

• To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers - or both." - Elizabeth Charles, British writer (1828-1896).

• The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. - James Baldwin, American author (1924-1987).

• To escape criticism - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. - Elbert Hubbard, American author and publisher (1856-1915).

• If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank. - William Dean Howells, American author (1837-1920).

• Psychology, which explains everything,
  Explains nothing,
  And we are still in doubt."
  - Marianne Moore, American poet (1887-1972).

• Beware the fury of the patient man. - John Dryden, poet and dramatist (1631-1700).

• I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. - Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862).

• The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. - John W. Gardner, American government official.

• The man who does not learn is dark, like one walking in the night. - Chinese proverb.

• Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. - George Santayana, Spanish-born philosopher (1863-1952)

• You can fool too many of the people too much of the time. - James Thurber, American humorist (1894-1961).

• Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience? - Thomas J. Watson, industrialist (1874-1956)

• Everyone's quick to blame the alien. - Aeschylus, Greek poet and dramatist (524 B.C.?-456 B.C.?)

• You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. - Mario M Cuomo, 52nd Governor of New York (1932- )

• Although you're never quite sure when this boy from Lismore (Bob Ellis) is being serious, he says his next book will be called On Interruption. To quote him: "It's about how in the modern world we get to the TV commercial and reality stops, and you're in the middle of Antarctica and you're having a f--k and your husband rings on the mobile phone, and we're so governed by interruption now that we're all going mad and those societies that are relatively uninterrupted, like the west coast of Ireland, are the happiest." - Lyndall Crisp, Financial Review, Oct 5, 2002

• The human mind is like an umbrella - it functions best when open." - Walter Gropius, German-American architect (1883-1969).

• The great rulers - the people do not notice their existence. The lesser ones they attach to and praise them. The still lesser ones - they fear them. The still lesser ones - they despise them. For where faith is lacking it cannot be met by faith. - Tao Te Ching

• A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. - Barnett Cocks

• The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries. - Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)

• Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do? - Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)

• Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. - Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

• Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both. - John Andrew Holmes

• To be well informed, one must read quickly a great number of merely instructive books. To be cultivated, one must read slowly and with a lingering appreciation the comparatively few books that have been written by men who lived, thought, and felt with style. - Aldous Huxley, writer (1894-1963)

• Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

• When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light. - John W. Gardner, author and educator (1912-2002)

• All great truths begin as blasphemies. - George Bernard Shaw, writer, (1856-1950)

• Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. - William Congreve, dramatist (1670-1729)

• I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet. - Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

• Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. - William Strunk and E.B. White, authors of The Elements of Style

• We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. - William R. Inge, clergyman, scholar, and author (1860-1954)

• The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things. - Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)

• Assassination: The extreme form of censorship. - George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

• What you are thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

• A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. - Greek proverb

• There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight. - Vaclav Havel, writer, Czech Republic president (1936- )

• Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. - Carl Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961)

• A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular. - Adlai Stevenson, Democratic Party candidate for President (1900-1965)

• Morally, the Howard Government is a bastard, the illegitimate offspring of the mother of political opportunism and mendacity and the father of popular xenophobia. What are we supposed to do when we look in the pram and see such a pig-ugly kid, morally speaking? Pretend it is beautiful? Talented? Clever? - Terry Lane, The Age (April 21, 2002)

• I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility, doubt of his own powers. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful. - John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)

• The Royals [and the BBC] put on a jolly good show, and even the presence of the Howards, she with her stolid waxen glare, he with his angry little chimpanzee frown, could not sully it. - Peter Woodforde, Canberra, quoted in the Canberra Times, April 12, 2002

• The believer is happy; the doubter is wise. - Hungarian proverb

• Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone. - Thomas De Quincey, writer (1785-1859)

• I shall be telling this with a sigh
  Somewhere ages and ages hence:
  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
  I took the one less travelled by,
  And that has made all the difference.

  - Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)

• There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts. - Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

• A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service. - Georges Pompidou, President of France (1911-74)

• Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation. - Henry Ward Beecher, preacher and writer (1813-1887)

• There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible. - Sir Alec Douglas-Home, British Prime Minister

• If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it. - Margaret Fuller, author (1810-1850)

• 'Conversation', n. A fair to the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbour. - Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914) [The Devil's Dictionary]

• Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. - George Jean Nathan, author and editor (1882-1958)

• In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. - Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, and musician (1875-1965)

• I wasn't lucky. I deserved it. - Margaret Thatcher, aged nine, after receiving a school prize.

• It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. - Voltaire, philosopher (384-322 BC)

• As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. - Matt Cartmill, anthropology professor and author (1943- )

• In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man - if you want anything done, ask a woman. - Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister, 1979-90

• To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart - and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love. - Karl Viktor von Bonstetten, author (1745-1832)

• If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind. - John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)

• People who are willing to give up freedom for the sake of short term security, deserve neither freedom nor security. - Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)

• Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it. - H. L. Mencken

• Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade in public. Never clothe them in vulgar and shoddy attire. - Dr. George W. Crane

• Never is liberty more easily lost than when we think we are defending it. - Ben Chifley (Australian Prime Minister 1945-49)

• We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like? - Jean Cocteau, author and painter (1889-1963)

• I d-d-don't care who's got the n-n-numbers brother, as long as I g-g-get to c-c-count the v-v-v-votes. - Stammering Senator Patrick Kennelly, when told before an ALP Caucus meeting that the Left had the numbers (circa 1950s)

• You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. - Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

• In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it. - John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)

• The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little. - Mark Twain, author (1835-1910)

• We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for. - Marie Ebner von Eschenbach, writer (1830-1916)

• The unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure of speech is too great for his income of ideas. - Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

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