Quotations Set 38

1. The tragedy of modern war is not so much that young men die but that they die fighting each other, instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals. - Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

2. A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)

3. One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment. - Hart Crane, poet (1899-1932)

4. Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. - Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian (1892-1971)

5. We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. - H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

6. A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him, and which one perchance may safely twitch and pull, but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over and over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

7. Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

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

9. We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice - that is, until we have stopped saying 'It got lost,' and say, 'I lost it.' - Sydney J. Harris, journalist (1917-1986)

10. I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me. - Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

11. It is not how old you are, but how you are old. - Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)

12. Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: Great God, grant that twice two be not four. - Ivan Turgenev, novelist and playwright (1818-1883)

13. No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom. - Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

14. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. - George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)

15. The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. - John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006)

16. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own - a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. - Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

17. Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is. - William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910)

18. The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. - Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer (1917-2008)

19. Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

20. Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right. - Carl Schurz, revolutionary, statesman and reformer (1829-1906)

21. Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. - George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)

22. The noble and the nobility are usually at odds with one another. - Johann Gottfried Seume, author (1763-1810)

23. There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for. - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

24. Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. - Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (1889-1951)

25. It was our own moral failure and not any accident of chance, that while preserving the appearance of the Republic we lost its reality. - Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE)

26. The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. - Patrick Henry, revolutionary (1736-1799)

27. It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. - Sydney Smith, writer and clergyman (1771-1845)

28. The sun is pure communism everywhere except in cities, where it's private property. - Malcolm De Chazal, writer and painter (1902-1981)

29. No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. - Henry Brooks Adams, historian (1838-1918)

30. I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. - Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

31. They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness. - Louise Erdrich, author (b. 1954)

32. It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey. - Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)

33. There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor. - George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

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