Ravens to the left! Ravens to the right!

Quotations
(In chronological order of birth. Author's names are links to their biographies.)

Aesop (Phrygian Writer - ~620-?? BCE
  •  "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."

Confucius (Chinese Philosopher - 551-479 BCE)
  • "I will not teach a man who is not anxious to learn, and will not explain to one who is not trying to make things clear to himself."

Themistocles (Greek Admiral/Politician - 527 BCE-460 BCE)
  • "I choose the likely man in preference to the rich man; I want a man without money rather than money without a man."

Euripides (Greek Dramatist - 480?-406 BCE)
  • "Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish."

Plato (Greek Philosopher - 428-347 BCE)
  • "The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men."
  • "Mankind will never see an end of trouble until . . . lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power . . . become lovers of wisdom."

Aristotle (Greek Philosopher - 384 BCE-322 BCE)
  • "If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost."

Epicurus (Greek Philosopher - 341?-270? BCE
  • "You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity."
  • "Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempest."
  • "Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance."
  • "Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

Cornelius Tacitus (Roman Historian - 55-117 CE)
  • "There can never be a complete confidence in a power which is excessive."

Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri (Syrian Poet - 973-1057 CE)
  • "The world holds two classes of men -- intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."

Blaise Pascal (Philosopher/Mathematician - 1623-1662)
  • "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

Voltaire (French Author/Philosopher - 1694-1778)
  • "In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other."
  • "Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference."
  • "The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity."

Benjamin Franklin (American Printer/Statesman/Scientist - 1706-1790)
  • "He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money."
  • "Well done is better than well said."
  • "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
  • "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
  • "Experience is a dear teacher, and only fools will learn from no other."
  • "Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it."
  • "Most fools think they are only ignorant."

Thomas Jefferson (3rd U.S. President [1801-1809] - 1743-1826)
  • "Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust." --To M. van der Kemp, 1812.
  • "I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom." --To Samuel Kercheval, 1816.
  • "Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men, governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity? But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature." --Notes on Virginia.
  • "The influence over government must be shared among all the people. If every individual which composes their mass participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe, because corrupting the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth, and public ones cannot be provided but by levies on the people. In this case every man would have to pay his own price." --Notes on Virginia
  • "The legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions." --To Danbury Baptists, 1802.
  • "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Notes on Virginia.
  • "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." --To Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

James Madison (4th U.S. President [1809-1817] - 1751-1836)
  • "The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad."
  • "What has been the fruits of Christianity? ...Superstition, bigotry and persecution."
  • "If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
  • "The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."

John Stuart Mill (British Philosopher/Economist - 1806-1873
  • "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

William E. Gladstone (British Prime Minister [1868-1874, 1880-1885, 1886, 1892-1894] - 1809-1898)
  • "Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear."

Abraham Lincoln (16th U.S. President [1861-1865] - 1809-1865)
  • "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

Herbert Spencer (British Philosopher/Sociologist - 1820-1903)
  • "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."

Mark Twain (American Author/Humorist - 1835-1910)
  • "In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination."
  • "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
  • "It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
  • "Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
  • "The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them."
  • "Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."
  • "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."

Ambrose Bierce (American Author - 1842-1914)
  • "Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others."

Friedrich Nietzsche (Prussian Philosopher - 1844-1900)
  • "Madness is something rare in individuals-but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule."
  • "Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons."
  • "That which does not destroy me, makes me stronger."
  • "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Henry David Thoreau (Writer/Poet - 1850-1920)
  • "Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
  • "A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living."

Woodrow Wilson (8th U.S. President [1913-1921] - 1856-1924)
  • "A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt."
  • "America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men."
  • "By 'radical,' I understand one who goes too far; by 'conservative,' one who does not go far enough; by 'reactionary,' one who won't go at all."
  • "I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty."
  • "If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it."
  • "If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing."
  • "Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it... The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it."
  • "The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people."

George Bernard Shaw (Irish Critic/Dramatist/Socialist - 1856-1950)
  • "Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."
  • "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
  • "A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself; indeed, he progresses in all things by making a fool of himself."

Elbert Hubbard (American Author - 1856-1915)
  • "Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped"

Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer/Writer - 1857-1937)
  • "When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it."

Theodore Roosevelt (26th U.S. President [1901-1909] - 1858-1919)
  • "Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft."
  • "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
  • "If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month."
  • "The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants."
  • "The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."
  • "To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase it's usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."
  • "When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer "Present" or "Not Guilty.""

Agnes Repplier (American Essayist/Biographer - 1858-1950)
  • "People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization."

H. G. Wells (British Sci-Fi Author - 1866-1946)
  • "Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."

Paul Valéry (French Writer/Poet - 1871-1945)
  • "Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them."

Bertrand Russell (British Philosopher/Mathematician - 1872-1970)
  • "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
  • "A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
  • "Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party."

Don Marquis (American Humorist/Journalist - 1878-1937) 
  • "When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'"

Will Rogers (American Writer/Humorist - 1879-1935)
  • "A fool and his money are soon elected."
  • "We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others."
  • "I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.”
  • "I don’t tell jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts"
  • "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."
  • "On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does."
  • "Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators."
  • "There ought to be one day - just one - when there is open season on senators."
  • "This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer."
  • "If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"

Albert Einstein (German Physicist - 1879-1955)
  • "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
  • "Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
  • "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
  • "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
  • "Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions."
  • "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

H. L. Mencken (American Humorist/Essayist/Critic - 1880-1956)
  • "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."
  • "Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right."

Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd U.S. President [1932-1945] - 1882-1945)
  • "A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward."
  • "A nation that destroys it's soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people."
  • "Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle."
  • "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."
  • "It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach."
  • "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."

Howard Scott (Engineer/Philosopher - 1890-1970)
  • "Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation."

Aldous Huxley (British Writer - 1894-1963)
  • At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

E. B. White (American Essayist/Writer - 1899-1985)
  • "Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time."

John Kenneth Galbraith (American Economist - 1908-Present)
  • "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 F. Kennedy (35th U.S. President [1960-1963] - 1917-1936)
  • "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. "
  • "Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."
  • "I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future."
  • "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."
  • "Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce."
  • "Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."
  • "The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. "
  • "There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in war and some men are wounded, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in military or personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair."
  • "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
  • "Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others."
  • "Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

Isaac Asimov (American Writer - 1920-1992)
  • "Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right." (Salvor Hardin in Foundation novels)
  • "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
  • "If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."
  • "Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly..." (on the subject of religion)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Clergyman/Civil Rights Leader - 1929-1968)
  • "Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation."
  • "A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan."
  • "Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness."
  • "Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."
  • "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

Anton LaVey (American Author/Occultist - 1930-1997)
  • It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful.
(I don't agree with this man's philosophy, lifestyle, or beliefs, but I do like this quote of his).

Malcolm Bradbury (British Writer - 1932-2000)
  • "If God had been a Liberal there wouldn't have been Ten Commandments, there would have been Ten Suggestions"

Harlan Ellison (American Sci-Fi Author - 1934-Present)
  • "The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity."

Tom Stoppard (Tomas Straussler - English/Czechoslovakian Playwright - 1937-Present)
  • "It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting."

George Carlin (American Humorist - 1937-Present)
  • "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

Alan Coren (British Writer/Humorist - 1938-Present)
  • "Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear."

George Will (American Conservative Political Columnist - 1941-Present)
  • "Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose."

Alan Dean Foster (American Sci-Fi Author - 1946-Present)
  • "Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." (From the novel "To the Vanishing Point")
  • "Society floats on a sea of sarcasm and hypocrisy." (From the novel "Codgerspace")

P.J. O'Rourke (Conservative American Journalist - 1947-Present)
  • "The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

David Brin (American Sci-Fi Author - 1950-Present)
  • "It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power."

Jay Leno (American Humorist/Actor - 1950-Present)
  • "If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates."

Art Spander (Sports Writer - 1938-Present)
  • "The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid."

Tony Pettito
  • "The trouble with political jokes is that they often get elected to office.."

Larry Hardiman
  • "The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'."

Anonymous/Unknown
  • "'If something is made so simple that fools can use it, only fools will use it."
  • "Being stupid is its own reward."
  • "Never argue with an idiot. They pull you down to their level, then beat you with experience."

Capt. Edward A. Murphy, Jr. (American Engineer/Pilot - 1917-1990)
  • Murphy's Law
    "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it."

Col. John P. Stapp (American Doctor - 1910-1999)
  • Stapp's Ironical Paradox
    "The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle."

Larry Niven (American Sci-Fi Writer - 1938-Present)
  • Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives (variant)
    "The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum."
  • Finagle's Law
    "Anything that can go wrong, will"

Robert J. Hanlon (Unpublished Writer from Scranton, PA)
  • Hanlon's Razor
    "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity."

Theodore Sturgeon (American Sci-Fi Writer - 1918-1985)
  • Sturgeon's Revelation
    "Ninety percent of everything is shit".
  • Sturgeon's Law
    "Nothing is always absolutely so."

Biographical Quick Links

Aesop
Themistocles
Euripides
Plato
Aristotle
Epicurus
Tacitus
al Ma'ari
Pascal
Voltaire

Franklin
Jefferson
Madison
Mills
Gladstone
Lincoln
Twain
Bierce
Nietzsche
Wilson

Roosevelt
Wells
Shaw
Hubbard
Darrow
Repplier
Valery
Russell
Churchill
Marquis

Rogers
Einstein
Mencken
Roosevelt
White
Galbraith
Kennedy
Asimov
King
Bradbury

Stoppard
Ellison
Carlin
Coren
Will
Foster
O'Rourke
Brin
Leno
Spander

Scott
Pettito
Hardiman
Murphy
Stapp
Niven
Hanlon
Sturgeon 		   

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