Never confuse motion with action.
The left-handed are precious; they take places which are inconvenient for the rest.
Victor Hugo
Les Misérables, 1862
The key to this whole business is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
Ninety percent of the game is half mental.
Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
Don’t say the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.
It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.
Life is a joke that has only just begun.
There is no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.
If men can run the world, why can’t they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.
Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning.
One today is worth two tomorrows.
If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.
…there is a difference between logic and wisdom.
Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
For every complex problem there is a solution which is straightforward, simple, and wrong.
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
If we can’t convince others that our way is best, maybe we should humbly consider the possibility that it isn’t!
Mary Ruwart
The Liberator Online
18 April 2001
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, 1957
There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, just the way President Clinton did.
Timothy C. May
email signature
The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing everyone he didn’t exist.
Verbal Kint
in The Usual Suspects, 1995
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he’ll be a mile away and barefoot.
Anonymous email signature
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Let others seek what is safe. Utter misery is safe; for the fear of any worse event is taken away.
Ovid
Epistulae ex Ponto, Bk ii, eleg 2, 1 31
A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking.
People seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication.
If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbors.
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
If there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own — that thing is the preservation of their own liberties and institutions.
Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is Force, like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
James Madison
speech in the 1788 Virginia Convention
They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Ben Franklin
Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
God may be subtle, but He isn’t plain mean.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
What a cruel reflection that a rich country cannot long be a free one.
Thomas Jefferson
Travels in France, 1787
In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.
Thomas Jefferson
Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782
Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government.
Thomas Jefferson
to John Adams, 1796
Thomas Jefferson
to John Cartwright, 1824
How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object — the happiness of man — to the selfish interest of kings, nobles, and priests.
Thomas Jefferson
to Ellen W. Coolidge, 1825
Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, they don’t hurt anybody. When they do something, they can be dangerous.
Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves.
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
The idea that ‘the public interest’ supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.
If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.
The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all.
…liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power…
James Madison
The Federalist, no. 63, 1788
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy.
Christopher Dawson
The Judgement of the Nations, 1942
No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
Judge Gideon J. Tucker
Final Accounting in the Estate of A.B., 1866
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
Justice William O. Douglas
Public Utilities v. Pollak, 1952
The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
General William Westmoreland
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
V
in V for Vendetta, 2005
Now what liberty can there be where property is taken without consent?
The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.
The fact is that government, like a highwayman, says to a man: “Your money or your life.”
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.
Thomas Paine
The Age of Reason, Part I, 1793
Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Thomas Paine
Common Sense, 1776
I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Goverment, 1849
The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
Henry David Thoreau
Journals
26 September 1859
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Goverment, 1849
There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Goverment, 1849
…he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden (Life in the Woods), 1854
The universe is wider than our views of it.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden (Life in the Woods), 1854
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Thomas Paine
Common Sense, 1776
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
Thomas Paine
The American Crisis, 1776
The rule is perfect; in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
Mark Twain
Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy, 1899
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.
Mark Twain
Europe and Elsewhere. Corn Pone Opinions, 1925
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
Mark Twain
The Innocents Abroad, 1869
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly and I did. I said I didn't know.
Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi, 1883
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi, 1883
H’aint we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?
Mark Twain
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889
Adam was but human — this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn’t.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
It is easier to stay out than to get out.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
