Finding the truth through Quotes and Sayings, old and new.
Do you agree with these? Why or why not?
On Freedom:
• Freedom is not free – Anonymous
• They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin. Franklin is often misquoted as saying: ” those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither.” Same meaning.
• Freedom of speech makes it much easier to spot the idiots – Anonymous
• “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” – Thomas Jefferson
• “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never can be.” – Thomas Jefferson
On Truth
• The truth is rarely pure and never simple. – Oscar Wilde
• The first principle is that you must not fool yourself. And you are the easiest person to fool. – Richard Feynman
• It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense. – Mark Twain [See Psyc in politics -link-]
• “Proof by analogy is fraud”. Bjarne Stroustrup, Page 692 of The C++ Programming Language. A good analogy is an excellent way of illustrating an idea, but far too often such analogies are not accompanied by solid reasoning, data, etc.
• An experiment is a question which science poses to nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature’s answer – Max Plank
• If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything. – Mark Twain
• You never find yourself until you face the truth – Pearl Bailey
• Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters. – Albert Einstein
• Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. – Albert Einstein
• The first reaction to truth is hatred – Tertullian
• A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. – Winston Churchill
• If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. C.S. Lewis
• That which meets the most human needs comes the closest to truth. – Gandhi
• Education is like a double-edged sword. It may be turned to dangerous uses if it is not properly handled. – Wu Ting-Fang
◦ Corollary: Blind adoption and usage of technology for technology’s sake is a recipe for disaster.
• In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. – Galileo Galilei, contrarian astronomer.
• I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies. – Pietro Aretino
• “When one’s ideas are not challenged, one’s ability to defend them weakens”. – John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty
On War and Peace:
• In war, resolution. In defeat, defiance. In victory, magnanimity. In peace, good will.– Winston S. Churchill
• An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last. – Winston Churchill
• What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? .– Mahatma Gandhi
• You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. – partly from Leon Trotsky
God/Higher Power:
• We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God. F. D. R., from his WWII declaration speech.
• The toughest task is to live with unexpected, unwanted answers. – William Willimon
• Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want.
Faith is the belief that God will do what is right. –Max Lucado
• The best rose bush, after all, is not that which has the fewest thorns, but that which bears the finest roses. – Emily Dickinson
• The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you can do only a little. – Sydney Smith
• Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see.. –William Newton Clarke
• You and I live in a world with a low tolerance for mystery, confusion and ambiguity. We like things simple, explained, straightforward.
Yet in our hearts, we also know that life is anything but simple and the world is more mysterious than we like to admit. – William Willimon
• Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. – Benjamin Franklin
Economics
• It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.– Adam Smith
• In the long run, we are all dead. Keynes – Implicitly admitting that his means of boosting up an economy by government spending does not in the end work
• Do not believe in a false dichotomies, such as Regulation versus free-market – Anonymous
On Progressive Politics
• We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. C. S. Lewis
• It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of looking insufficiently progressive. – French poet Charles Peguy
• “It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.” – Mark Twain; Maybe this is an early version of the 99% ? He has it only half correct because free will is necessary for the 1% to succeed.
On Government Power
• When I speak I put on a mask. When I act, I am forced to take it off- Helvetius – In other words, when deciding who to vote for, use actions to judge a candidate and discount the rhetoric and act.
• Voters will forgive the errors of activist government more than the constant omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
• You can have no influence over those for whom you have underlying contempt. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
• A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”. –Benjamin Franklin, 1787 – For more on that, see: Benjamin Franklin - https://www.ourrepubliconline.com/Author/21
• The New Deal divided America into “those who work for a living and those who vote for a living.” – H.L. Mencken
• The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor. – Ronald Reagan
• “It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program – on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off – than on any positive task.” – Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
• “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The Communist Party must command all the guns; that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party.” – Mao Zedong – The way of oppressive government.
Miscellaneous:
• Money is the root of all evil.-Anonymous False: Money is just a tool. It’s the love of money that may be the root of evil, not money itself.
• Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. – Steve Jobs
• “There’s a way to do it better – find it.” – Thomas Edison
• 85% of the world’s work is done by people who don’t feel very well. – Winston Churchill. {Can’t prove}
• If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away – Henry David Thoreau
• Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good – Anonymous. In other words, always wanting more and better may leave one with less.
• It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of looking insufficiently progressive – French poet Charles Peguy
• Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify. – Henry David Thoreau
• To not discriminate is irresponsible – Anonymous
• Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him. – Epictetus
• Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. – Philip K. Dick
• With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another. – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
• It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. – Henry David Thoreau
• There are three great destroyers of mankind: Plague, Famine, and Hero. Plague and Famine destroy your persons only, and leave your goods to your Heirs; but Hero, when he comes, takes life and goods together; his business and glory it is, to destroy man and the works of man. – Benjamin Franklin in 1748. {hmmm??}
• “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” – Dr. Linus Pauling
• “Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
• The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. – Herbert Spencer
• Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. – Mahatma Gandhi
• It is what it is – Some boss I had
• “He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing.” – Epicurus
Old favorites
• United we stand, divided we fall.
• e pluabus unim – From many, one.
• The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
• Honesty is the best policy.
• Waste not, want not.
• Trust, but verify.
• A stitch in time saves nine.
• I’m from the Government – and I’m here to help you...[ other great Reagan bits of wisdom]
• “Some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them” – Orwell
• He with the gold makes the rules.
• Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
• Hope is not a viable investment vehicle.
Jewels of Wisdom - http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/659-qa-republic-if-you-can-keep-itq
Ronald Reagan Quotes - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan