Quotations Set 28

1. I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart, and that is softness of head. - Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919)

2. War would end if the dead could return. - Stanley Baldwin, statesman (1867-1947)

3. When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. - Abraham Joshua Heschel, theology professor (1907-1972)

4. Because we don't understand the brain very well we're constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. (What else could it be?) And I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and now, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer. - John R. Searle, philosophy professor (1932- )

5. Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation. - Henry Fielding, author (1707-1754)

6. The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. - Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (1834-1902)

7. Several excuses are always less convincing than one. - Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

8. The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude. - Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

9. Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)

10. Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. - Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)

11. The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. - J.M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)

12. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. - Robert T. Pirsig, author and philosopher (1928- )

13. In some circumstances, the refusal to be defeated is a refusal to be educated. - Margaret Halsey, novelist (1910-1997)

14. I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept. - John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)

15. For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. - Ingrid Bengis, writer and teacher (1944- )

16. Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed. - Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)

17. You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. - H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

18. Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state controls religion. - Samuel James Ervin Jr., lawyer, judge, and senator (1896-1985)

19. Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments. - Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-92)

20. Lower your voice and strengthen your argument. - Lebanese proverb

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