Quotes and Conundrums


"The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue.  None ought to govern who is not better than the governed."

Publius Syrus


"It's not what you know that counts...it's what you think of in time."

Les Aikman


"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

General George S. Patton, Jr.


"A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword."

Robert Burton


"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on."

Winston Churchill


"A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny."

Buster Keaton


"The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one."

H.L. Mencken


"Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies."

St. Augustine


"Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing, they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they are allowed to grow so that everyone can recognize them, there is no longer any remedy to be found."

Niccolo Machiavelli


"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there, now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck".

Robert A. Heinlein


"There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people."

Muhammad Ali


"There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us."

The Pogo Papers
Foreword.


"Unreadable history books foster ignorance of history. I recently spent a day at an Ivy League campus, where a professor informed me that entering students - the creme de la creme of our leading prep schools - think that the Middle Ages began in 1 A.D. This accords with the finding of surveys which show that college students can't place the Civil War in the correct century. All this ignorance - at a time when we have more professional historians than ever before. It might lead a disinterested observer to wonder just what we, as donors and taxpayers and tuition-payers, are getting for our money."

Max Boot


"Metternich's work has crumbled to nothing, and Talleyrand's, Richlieu's and innumerable others. But not Bach's, Shakespeare's, Rembrandt's, Dante's, and the work of many more whose names stand in their glorious company. Does not this fact of itself show that side of life upon which we should bear lightly and that upon which we should rest with our whole weight?"

Albert Jay Nock


"Without music life would be a mistake."

Friedrich Nietzsche


"Another good thing about being poor is that when you are seventy your children will not have you declared legally insane in order to gain control of your estate."

Woody Allen



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