Quotes It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more. ~Sir Winston Churchill, Roving Commission: My Early Life, 1930, Chapter 9 Below are my favorite quotes; there are many of them. There is no order, although long quotes are toward the end. When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself. If ignorance is bliss, why isn't the world happier? Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves What is the future of this adventure? What will happen ultimately? Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason. A true patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government. Only the educated are free. Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But, when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever. Good questions outrank easy answers. Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood. If a man does his best, what else is there? But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near. Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. A witty saying proves nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows. We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough? You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty. Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest. In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take. This isn't right, this isn't even wrong. Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies. Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am. The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents. In certain circumstances, desperate circumstances, urgent circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer. To do what ought to be done, but would not have been done unless I did it, I thought to be my duty. It's not that I'm so smart. It's just that I stay with problems longer. It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history. I may disagree strongly with all that you have said sir, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. It is a melancholy truth that even great men have poor relations. Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think. All men dream, but unequally. Those that dream at night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake the next day to find that their dreams were just vanity. But those who dream during the day with their eyes wide open are dangerous men; they act out their dreams to make them reality. Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man. Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds. Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality Ah, why, ye gods! should two and two make four? You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience. Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be. You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it. Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb. Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything. I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one. Where is there dignity unless there is honesty? It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth. How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct. It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score? Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives. Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness; no laziness; no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind. The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think. A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide -everything. The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. Rather to fail with honor than to succeed with fraud. If a man has no enemies, he has no character. Forgive your enemies but never forget their names If you can't convince them, confuse them. Every man dies. Not every man really lives. Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove. Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad. When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield. The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time. If you can discover a better way of life than office-holding for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are truly rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness-a good and wise life. Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. Love not what you are, but what you may become. If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack. When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were- to the very last minute- a chance to lose it. The time is always right to do what is right. Never answer a hypothetical question. `It is destiny' - phrase of the weak human heart! - `It is destiny' - dark apology for every error! The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. If I knew the world was going to end tomorrow. I would still plant a tree today. Decide promptly, but never give your reasons. Your decisions may be right, but your reasons are sure to be wrong. Resolve that whatever you do, you will bring the whole man to it; that you will fling the whole weight of your being into it. How could I lose to such an idiot? They may beat my body, they may break my bones, they may kill me, and then they will have my dead body: but not my obedience. Vulnerant omnia, ultima necat [every hour wounds you, the last one kills] Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously! Without music, life would be a mistake Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize. 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. No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing. Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero. [Seize the present day, trusting the morrow as little as maybe] Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form. People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks. Nonviolence and cowardice are contradictory terms. Nonviolence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice. Nonviolence springs from love, cowardice from hate. Nonviolence always suffers, cowardice would always inflict suffering. Perfect nonviolence is the highest bravery. Nonviolent conduct is never demoralizing, cowardice always is. The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all. I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit. Man is never watchful enough against dangers that threaten him every hour. The power of accurate observation is most oftenly called cynicism by those who have not got it People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him. Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one's own rules- this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live. Who has no faults? To err and yet be able to correct is best of all. A man should never be ashamed to own he has been wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. Much learning does not teach a man to have intelligence. Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. The idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. Whatever it may be, every fortune is to be overcome by bearing it. To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great. A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. The price of liberty is, always has been, and always will be blood: The person who is not willing to die for his liberty has already lost it to the first scoundrel who is willing to risk dying to violate that person's liberty! Are you free? The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling? Titles of honour add not to his worth, I am at war with the living, I have come to terms with the dead. Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly. All kinds of beauty do not inspire love; there is a kind which only pleases the sight, but does not captivate the affections. Is it so bad to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. Truth is incontrovertible, ignorance can deride it, panic may resent it, malice may destroy it, but there it is. If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't. It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others. How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman-a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under. I love those who do not know how to live, for they are those who cross over. The wicked have told me of things that delight them, but not such things as your law has to tell. The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. If Eudaimonia, or happiness, is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will be that of the best thing in us. Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean. God, from the mount of Sinai, whose gray top Shall tremble, he descending, will himself, In thunder, lightning, and loud trumpets' sound, Ordain them laws. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizen are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain. In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. A problem worthy of attacks Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying. The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the lower levels, is and always must be next door to an idiot, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation? Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. The most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher is that he or she transcends accepted educational methods. Imagination is a contagious disease. It cannot be measured by the yard, or weighed by the pound, and then delivered to the students by members of the faculty. It can only be communicated by a faculty whose members themselves wear their learning with imagination. A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works. Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of the billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things within that enormous immensity. Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need. The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him. The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study. Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent. Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. Nature does nothing uselessly. The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart. Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both. 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? 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. Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned. We are so fond of being out among nature, because it has no opinions about us. No man is useless who has a friend, and if we are loved we are indispensable. Everything you've learned in school as `obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merits of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning. Don't answer the question asked of you, but the question you wished was asked of you. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people. A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests. As there is much beast and some devil in man, so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never destroyed. A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around. To act is easy; to think is hard. The men of action are, after all, only the unconscious instruments of the men of thought. However resplendent an action may be, it should not be accounted great unless it is the result of a great design. He is incapable of a truly good action that finds not a pleasure in contemplating the actions of others. Get good counsel before you begin; and when you have decided, act promptly. The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect. To will and not to do when there is opportunity is in reality not to will; and to love what is good and not to do it, when it is possible, is in reality not to love it. All serious daring starts from within. The religious man fears, the man of honor scorns, to do an ill action. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. I prefer silent prudence to loquacious folly. Woman is at once apple and serpent. That the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved. Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution. There's one sad truth in life I've found I like her because she smiles at me and means it. Each relationship you have with another person reflects the relationship you have with yourself. I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship. All life represents a risk, and the more lovingly we live our lives the more risks we take. One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are. There is no greater invitation to love than loving first. To love and win is the best thing. It's not the last words said by the person that determines how a person is like, it's how that person always has been. Lord, make me an instrument of The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference and the opposite of live is not death, it's indifference. Until we learn whichever life lesson we're meant to at the time -- self-acceptance, self-determination, self-discipline, self-esteem, self-forgiveness, self-interest, self-knowledge, self-respect, self-sufficiency or self-worth -- our lessons will keep coming back to us. Tiny choices mean tiny changes. But it is only with infinitesimal change, changes so small no one else even realizes you're making them, that you have any hope for transformation. When a woman is speaking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes. The godfather was a very underappreciated movie when we were making it. I almost got fired. Early unsuccesses shouldn't bother anybody because it happen to absolutely everybody. I am convince that the only way we ever really learn anything is by doing it. I think young people ought to seek that experience that is going to knock them off center. Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks--those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave. I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another. Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect. Let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear that charter of his own and his children's liberty. Measures should be enacted which, without violating the rights of property, would reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort. Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying. If you spend all your time on improving your weakness, you may improve your weaknesses but you may not do much to push the firm ahead. And so really you should spend your time on where your opportunities are and not spend your time on trying to correct your weakness. Wisdom comes through suffering. Fear made the gods; audacity has made kings. Facts do not 'speak for themselves', they are read in the light of theory. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most. He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hopes for the human condition is a fool. Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way. He did not wish to be believed to be the best but to be it. I am not, sir, a bad person, though in truth I am not lacking in reasons for being one. Now, the greatest punishment, if one isn't willing to rule, is to be ruled by someone worse than oneself. And I think that it's fear of this that makes decent people rule when they do. They approach ruling not as something good or something to be enjoyed, but as something necessary, since it can't be entrusted to anyone better than or even as good as themselves. In a city of good men, if it came into being, the citizens would fight in order not to rule, just as they do now in order to rule. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person. The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. Education without direction is a one-sided social value. Direct action without education is a meaningless expression of pure energy. Masterpieces are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. If people knew how hard I have had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all. Aristotle is my friend- Plato is my friend- but my greatest friend is truth. Just as iron rusts from disuse, and stagnant water putrefies, or when cold turns to ice, so our intellect wastes unless it is kept in use. If you put on more garments, the cold cannot reach you. Similarly, increase your patience and concentration and even great injuries cannot vex your mind. To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell. Thirsting for the golden fountain of the fable, from how many stream have we turned away, weary and in disgust? There is something solid and doughty in the man that can rise from defeat, the stuff of which victories are made in due time, when we are able to choose our position better, and the sun is at our back. Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them. It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err. There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it. The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins. Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. Nothing is more foolish than to talk of frivolous things seriously; but nothing is wittier than to make frivolities serve serious ends. Remember the high board at the swimming pool? After days of looking up at it you finally climbed the wet steps to the platform. From there, it was higher than ever. There were only two ways down: the steps to defeat of the dive to victory. You stood on the edge, shivering in the hot sun, deathly afraid. At last you leaned too far forward, it was too late for retreat, and you dived. The high board was conquered, and you spent the rest of the day diving. Climbing a thousand high boards, we demolish fear, and turn into human beings. But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. Freethinkers reject faith as a valid tool of knowledge. Faith is the opposite of reason because reason imposes very strict limits on what can be true, and faith has no limits at all. A Great Escape into faith is no retreat to safety. It is nothing less than surrender. If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray? Understanding is a kind of ecstasy. There's no doubt that I've deserved my enemies, but I don't think I've deserved my friends. I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy. While seeking revenge, dig two graves - one for yourself. Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honor you can bestow on him. It means that you recognize his superiority to yourself. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them. Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. The mind is it's own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven. May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't. The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet not withstanding go out to meet it. Boy you need to understand somethin' that the world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you got inside. And if you're one of those people who only sees problems,darkness and despair that's all there is ever going to be. But if you're one of those people who sees hope, opportunity, love, god, than you're one of the people who can help me and make a change. Or as Emerson said it: That only which we have within, can we see without. If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. Where is everybody? Humans could theoretically colonize the galaxy in a million years or so, and if they could, astronauts from older civilizations could do the same. So why haven't they come to Earth? Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. I'm mad but not ill. I have a most peaceable disposition. My desires are for a modest hut, a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, very fresh milk and butter, flowers in front of my window and a few pretty trees by my door. And should the good Lord wish to make me really happy, he will allow me the pleasure of seeing about six or seven of my enemies hanged upon those trees. The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness. There are the times which try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands NOW, he deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly:-'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to set a proper price on its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. 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; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means which we suffer. Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future. Who then is free? the wise man who is lord over himself; Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat. There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. [...] If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest: no country in the world today show any but patronizing regard for the weak. Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism. True democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village. To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone the talking-machine, and the automoble, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams -daydreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing-are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to invent, and therefore to foster, civilization. The real questions are the ones that obtrude upon your consciousness whether you like it or not, the ones that make your mind start vibrating like a jackhammer, the ones that you come to terms with' only to discover that they are still there. The real questions refuse to be placated. They barge into your life at the times when it seems most important for them to stay away. They are the questions asked most frequently and answered most inadequately, the ones that reveal their true natures slowly, reluctantly, most often against your will. This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for it's own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations. It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more. I have had an aversion to good spelling for sixty years and more, merely for the reason that when I was a boy there was not a thing I could do creditably except spell according to the book. It was a poor and mean distinction and I early learned to disenjoy it. I suppose that this is because the ability to spell correctly is a talent, not an acquirement. There is some dignity about an acquirement, because it is a product of your own labor. It is wages earned, whereas to be able to do a thing merely by the grace of God and not by your own effort transfers the distinction to our heavenly home-where possibly it is a matter of pride and satisfaction but it leaves you naked and bankrupt. What I'm asking people to do is simply this: In your own way, in your own life, every day, you are confronted with a piece of data. Don't just eat it up. Just think about it for a minute. You have the right to process your own information based on the equipment that you were born with. That's your right. That's real freedom. You have the right to make up your own mind. Now, if you choose to numb yourself, and to be bamboozled, you have the right to be bamboozled. But in your state of bamboozlement, you do not have the right to be a liability, because of your self-imposed ignorance, on other people who might want to do things the right way. If you voluntarily choose to be a numbskull, for whatever reason you have chosen it, that's fine. You have the right to be stupid, but you don't have the right to harm other people as a result of your stupidity. And you don't have the right to legislate your stupidity into existence, to force it on other people who have a clearer view of what things are. The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. This is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of, else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition, even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. They do not know those parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred. All that part of the truth which turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavored to see the reasons of both in the strongest light. The need of our country is not to lift marble to the fortieth story of some new office building, but to life the level of character; not to whiten the seas with the sails of commerce, but to develop those simple fidelities and homely virtues which are the cheap defense of nations. When Tennyson wrote ``The Crossing of the Bar,'' he did more for civilization than if he built any ocean-liner or man-of-war. Thomas Stevenson did much for England when he built the lighthouses which send their radiance each night over the tossing waters of the Channel. But we owe far more to his son, Robert Louis Stevenson, because he taught us how to kindle a light within, how to keep the soul serene and steadfast in the face of pain and death. When Millet seized his brush and painted the `Angelus' on the bit of canvas that cost him three francs, he did more for labor and the laboring man than if he had seized a spade and worked for fifty years in the fields in France. Not the men who add to out quantity of materials, but the men who deepen the quality of our living, are the real benefactors and educators of the world. In such endeavor our antagonisms vanish, because we become workers together with god. The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word `trinity.' The word `trinity' appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience, Omnipresence, Supernatural, Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity, Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope, Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation, Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility, Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy, Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy, Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic, Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible. What happens when the same number of people pray for something as pray against it? How does God decide whose prayer to answer? Does the total number of people praying for or against something matter? How about the righteousness of the supplicants? Are positive prayers answered more frequently than negative ones? Does God take the positive ones and Satan the negative? Does the intensity of the praying have any effect on the outcome? Does the length of time one devotes to praying have any effect on the frequency with which one's prayers are answered? Do the words and phrases used in the prayer - either positive or negative - have any bearing on the success rate? Does the nature of the thing or things prayed for have any bearing on the prayer's success rate - either positive or negative prayers? Why or why not? When I see a crowd, I see a collection of free individuals: each a unique person; each a king or a queen; each a story that would fill a book; each an island of human dignity. On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind. One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are. Maybe it'll stop you trying to be so desperate about making more money than you can ever use? You can't take it with you, Mr. Kirby. So what good is it? As near as I can see, the only thing you can take with you is the love of your friends. We must not be deluded by the efforts of the forces of reaction to prostitute the great words of our free tradition and thereby to confuse the struggle. Democracy, freedom, human rights have come to have a definite meaning to the people of the world, which we must not allow to so change that they are made synonymous with suppression and dictatorship. When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic... not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterwards"; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart,? Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable! Home |