Liberty Quotes
| Balance | Creation | Education | Equality | History | Humility | Law | Leadership | Liberty | Marriage | Peace | Personal Responsibility | Philosophy/Inspiration | Preparation | Private Virtue | Prosperity | Public Virtue | Unique Abilities | Writing |
Balance
“Now those who go to excess in making people laugh seem to be crude buffoons, greedily eager to do anything for a laugh, and aiming at causing laughter rather than at speaking gracefully without causing pain to the one who is made fun of. But those who co not say anything funny themselves, and are disdainful toward people who do, seem to be boorish and rigid. Those who are playful in a harmonious way are called charming, as being readily flexible, for such acts seem to be motions that come from one’s character, and just as bodies are judged by their ways of moving, so too are people’s characters.” -Aristotle
Creation
“Sculpture is an art which, by removing all that is superfluous from the material under treatment, reduces it to that form designed in the artist’s mind.” -Irving Stone
Education
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Education either functions
(1.) as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or
(2.) it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” -Paulo Freire
“Whoever controls the image and information of the past determines what and how future generations will think; whoever controls the information and images of the present determines how those same people will view the past.” -George Orwell
“Say whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people…Educate and inform the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them…They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Our progress as a nation can be no more swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.” -John F. Kennedy
“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.” -Henry Brooks Adams
“It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. [You] must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise [you]–with your specialized knowledge–more closely resemble a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person.” -Albert Einstein
“Philosophy is the science of wisdom, and wisdom is the art of living. Happiness is the goal, but virtue, not pleasure, is the road. The old ridiculed maxims are correct and are perpetually verified by experience; in the long run, honesty, justice, forbearance, kindliness, bring us more happiness than ever comes from the pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure is good, but only when consistent with virtue; it cannot be a wise man’s goal; those who make it their end in life are like the dog that snaps at every piece of meat thrown to it, swallows it whole, and then, instead of enjoying it, stands with jaws agape anxiously awaiting more. But how does one acquire wisdom? By practicing it daily, in however modest a degree; by examining your conduct of each day at its close; by being harsh to your own faults and lenient to those of others; by associating with those who excel you in wisdom and virtue; by taking some acknowledged sage as your invisible counselor and judge. You will be helped by reading the philosophers; not outline stories of philosophy, but the original works.” -Historian Will Durant
“Education is the slow process of learning our ignorance.” -Will Durant
Equality
“Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.” -Will Durant
“Whoever pretends to be naturally superior to other men, claims from nature what she never gave to any man.” -Marcus Porcius Cato
“The state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave, because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue; nor to the master, because by having an unlimited authority over his slaves he insensibly accustoms himself to the want of all moral virtues, and thence becomes fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous, and cruel.” -Montesquieu
“The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any interest, but to prevent it; to preserve with equal care the independence of labour and the security of property; to make the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the statesmanship of Greece.” -Lord Acton in Essays in the History of Liberty
History
“…the story of the future is written in the past, and that which hath been is the same thing that shall be.” -Lord Acton, Essays in the History of Liberty
“…the present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for our understanding.” -Will Durant
“It is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.” - Thomas Jefferson
Humility
“…since, in comparison with what a man knows, those things of which he is ignorant are infinite, and beyond comparison greater and more beautiful, he is out of his mind who extols himself in regard to his own knowledge…the wiser men are, the more humbly they are disposed to receive the instruction of another, nor do they disdain the simplicity of the teacher, but behave humbly toward peasants, old women, and children, since many things are known to the simple and unlearned which escape the notice of the wise…I have learned more important truths from men of humble station than from all the famous doctors. Let no man, therefore, boast of his own wisdom.” -Roger Bacon
Law
“The liberty of considering all cases in an equitable light must not be indulged too far, lest thereby we destroy all law, and leave the decision of every question entirely in the breast of the judge. And law, without equity, though hard and disagreeable, is much more desirable for the public good than equity without law; which would make every judge a legislator, and introduce most infinite confusion.” -William Blackstone
Leadership/Self-Improvement
“To persevere in one’s duty and be silent is the best answer to calumny.” -George Washington
“It is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate, to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” -Abraham Lincoln
“Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.” -Abraham Lincoln
“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.” -Abraham Lincoln
“Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he who would be a great soul in the future must be a great soul now.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Freedom is useless if we don’t exercise it as characters making choices…We are free to change the stories by which we live. Because we are genuine characters, and not mere puppets, we can choose our defining stories. We can do so because we actively participate in the creation of our stories. We are co-authors as well as characters. Few things are so encouraging as the realization that things can be different and that we have a role in making them so.” -Daniel Taylor
“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” -Gandhi
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” -David Brinkley
“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” -Abraham Lincoln
“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.” -Abraham Lincoln
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” -Helen Keller
There is nothing moral in blood, or in title, or in place; actions only, and the causes that produce them, are moral. He therefore is best that does best.” -Cato
“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, 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 sacrifice, the more glorious the triumph.” -Thomas Paine
“Power consists in one’s capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.” -Woodrow Wilson
“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.” -Woodrow Wilson
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” -Theodore Roosevelt
“It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them 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 short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but he who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in 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 know neither victory nor defeat.” -Theodore Roosevelt
“It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.” -Theodore Roosevelt
“Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” -Calvin Coolidge
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” -Thomas Paine
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret Mead
“Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him unto himself.” -James Allen
“Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.” -James Allen
“The calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to adapt himself to others; and they, in turn, reverence his spiritual strength, and feel that they can learn of him and rely upon him. The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power, for good…the strong, calm man is always loved and revered.” -James Allen
“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.” -James Allen
“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an invasion of ideas.” -Victor Hugo
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” -Leo Tolstoy
“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” -Horace Mann
“The interplay between leaders and their publics in a democracy is always complex. A leader who confines himself to the experience of his people in a period of upheaval purchases temporary popularity at the price of condemnation by posterity, whose claims he is rejecting. A leader who gets too far ahead of his society will become irrelevant. A great leader must be an educator, bridging the gap between his visions and the familiar. But he must also be willing to walk alone to enable his society to follow the path he has selected.” -Henry Kissinger
“Any idiot can face a crisis. It is the day to day that wears us out.” -Chekov
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” -Marcel Proust
“Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.” -Horace
“We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.” -Sir Thomas Browne
“Enlightenment is quietly accepting what is.” -Dr. Wayne Dyer
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” -Pericles
“Leadership is the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations.” -Jim Kouzes
“In order to contract a thing, one should surely expand it first. In order to weaken, one will surely strengthen first. In order to overthrow, one will surely exalt first. In order to take, one will surely give first. This is called subtle wisdom.” -Lao Tzu
“The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.” -Carlos Castaneda
“If you think that by killing men you can prevent some one from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves.” -Socrates
“If a man is reported to have spoken ill of you, make no defense but say, ‘He did not know the rest of my faults, else he would not have mentioned only these.’” -Epictetus
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius–and a lot of courage–to move in the opposite direction.” -Albert Einstein
“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” -William Shakespeare
“I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” -Abraham Lincoln
“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” -Mother Teresa
“A leader is best when people barely knows he exists; not so good when people obey and acclaim him; worst when they despise him. But a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, ‘we did it ourselves.’” -Sun-Tsu
“Men should immediately ask themselves seriously what errors or mistakes they have made if the crowd agrees and applauds.” -Francis Bacon
“Let people feel the weight of who you are and let them deal with it.” -John Eldredge
“Life is not a problem to be solved; it is an adventure to be lived. That’s the nature of it and has been since the beginning when God set the dangerous stage for this high-stakes drama and called the whole wild enterprise good. He rigged the world in such a way that it only works when we embrace risk as the theme of our lives, which is to say, only when we live by faith. A man just won’t be happy until he’s got adventure in his work, in his love and in his spiritual life.” -John Eldredge
“A man’s basic sin is his choice to offer strength only in those situations where he knows things will go well. And so repentance for a man is entering into the very situations that he fears and offering his strength anyway.” -John Eldredge
“Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune.” -Walt Whitman
Liberty/Political Philosophy/Constitutional Government
“The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.” -George Washington
“In questions of power…let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” -Thomas Jefferson
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.” -Thomas Jefferson
“…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.” -Thomas Paine
“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” -Samuel Adams
“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” -John Adams
“If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is…because worthless men are at the tail and the middle.” -John Adams
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” -Patrick Henry
“The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.” -Aristotle
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” -James Madison
“…a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants…” -Alexander Hamilton
“It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” -Samuel Adams
“Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.” -Harry S. Truman
“Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow.” -Elias Boudinot
“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition. We must not then depend alone upon the love of liberty in the soul of man for its preservation.” -John Adams
“The generation and corruption of governments, which may, in other words, be called the progress and course of human passions in society, are subjects which have engaged the attention of the greatest writers; and whether the essays they have left us were copied from history, or wrought out of their own conjectures and reasonings, they are very much to our purpose, to show the utility and necessity of different orders of men, and of an equilibrium of powers and privileges. They demonstrate the corruptibility of every species of simple government, by which I mean a power without a check, whether in one, a few, or many.” -John Adams
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” -James Madison
“The evils pointed out in the system are now within our power to remedy…but if we suffer ourselves to be influenced by specious reasoning unsupported by example to an unconditional adoption of an imperfect government, the opportunity will be forever lost, for history does not furnish a single instance of a government once established voluntarily yielding up its powers to secure the rights and liberties of the people.” -George Clinton at the New York Ratifying Convention, July 11, 1788
“…power poisons the mind of its possessor and aids him to remove the shackles that restrain itself.” -Richard Henry Lee
“If faction should long bear down law and government, tyranny may raise its head, or the more sober part of the people may even think of a king.” -John Jay
“The genius of republics is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men and to extinguish those inflammable humours which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics…will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.” -Alexander Hamilton
“By liberty, I understand the power which every man has over his own actions, and his right to enjoy the fruit of his labor, art, and industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society or any members of it, by taking from any member or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.” -Cato
“It is a mistaken notion in government that the interest of the majority is only to be consulted, since in society every man has a right to every man’s assistance in the enjoyment and defense of his private property; otherwise the greater number may sell the lesser, and divide their estates amongst themselves; and so, instead of a society, where all peaceable men are protected, become a conspiracy of the many against the minority.” -Cato
“Must the magistrate tie up every man’s legs, because some men fall into ditches? Or must he put out their eyes, because with them they see lying vanities?” -Cato
“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
“Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.
“After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” -Alexis de Tocqueville, speaking of Despotism in Democratic Nations
“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” -Harry S Truman
“Whosoever therefore out of a state of nature unite into a community, must be understood to give up all the power, necessary to the ends for which they unite into society, to the majority of the community, unless they expressly agreed in any number greater than the majority. And this is done by barely agreeing to unite into one political society ,which is all the compact that is, or needs be, between the individuals, that enter into, or make up a commonwealth. And thus that, which begins and actually constitutes any political society, is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate in to such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did, or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world.” -John Locke
“A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that if these states should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent unconnected sovereignties, situated in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of the ages.” -Alexander Hamilton
“Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government; and it is equally undeniable that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights, in order to vest it with requisite powers.” -John Jay
“Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.” -Alexander Hamilton
“There is no happiness without liberty, no liberty without self-government, no self-government without constitutionalism, no constitutionalism without morality–and none of these great goods without stability and order.” -Clinton Rossiter
“The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.” -Alexander Hamilton
“….what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be governed by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” -James Madison
“What condition is more wretched than to live…with nothing to call one’s own, receiving from someone else one’s sustenance, one’s power to act, one’s body, one’s very life?” -Etienne de la Boetie
“…it is essential that you should practically bear in mind, that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue…that to have revenue there must be taxes…that no taxes can be devised, which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant…” -George Washington
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire,a troublesome servant and a fearful master.” -George Washington
Marriage
“In reading history you will generally observe, when you light upon a great character, whether a General, a Statesman, or Philosophy, some female about him either in the character of a mother, wife, or sister, who has knowledge and ambition above the ordinary level of women, and that much of his eminence is owing to her precepts, example, or instigation, in some shape or another.” -Abigail Adams
Peace
“…we seek and pray for peace. We seek order. We seek unity. But we will not accept the peace of stifled rights, or the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest. For peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty.” -Lyndon B. Johnson
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -John F. Kennedy
“Why do people behave so unreasonably? Because, from long continued deception, they no longer see the connection between their bondage and their own share in the deeds of violence.” -Leo Tolstoy
“We must be at war with evil, but at peace with men, and it is better to suffer than to commit injustice.” -Lord Acton
Personal Responsibility
“That Providence has given to every human being the degree of reason necessary to direct himself in the affairs that interest him exclusively is the grand maxim upon which civil and political society rests in the United States.” -Alexis de Tocqueville
“It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life, and if it so monopolizes movement and life that when it languishes everything languishes around it, that when it sleeps everything must sleep, and that when it dies the state itself must perish.” -Alexis de Tocqueville
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -Benjamin Franklin
“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.” -Thomas Jefferson
“One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows from it. Each man learns to think, to act for himself, without counting on the support of an outside force which, however vigilant one supposes it to be, can never answer all social needs. Man, thus accustomed to seek his well-being only through his own efforts, raises himself in his own opinion as he does in the opinion of others; his soul becomes larger and stronger at the same time.” -Alexis de Tocqueville
“That which we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly.” -Thomas Paine
Philosophy & Inspiration
“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The secret to life is to die before you die, and find that there is no death.” -Eckhart Tolle
“The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” -Eden Philpotts
“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be. Your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.” -James Allen
“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogma or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.” -Robert Pirsig
“Peace of mind isn’t at all superficial–it’s the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate test is always your own serenity. If you don’t have this when you start and maintain it while you’re working you’re likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.” -Rober Pirsig from Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
“Cherish your vision and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.” -Napoleon Hill
“There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” -William Shakespeare
“All external changes in the forms of life, not having a change of consciousness at their base, do not improved the condition of the people, but generally make it worse…A better life can only come when the consciousness of men is altered for the better; and therefore all the efforts of those who wish to improve life should be directed to changing their own and other people’s consciousness.” -Leo Tolstoy
“Destiny is not a matter of chance, but of choice. Not something to wish for, but to attain.” -William J. Bryan
“A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong–acting the part of a good man or a bad.” -Socrates
“When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing…then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing.” -Socrates
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.” -Henry David Thoreau
“Fishing baskets are employed to catch fish; but when the fish are got, the men forget the baskets. Words are employed to convey ideas, but when the ideas are grasped, men forget the words.” -Chuang Tzu
“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.” -Thucydides
“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.” -Thucydides
“They muddy the waters to make themselves look deep.” -Dr. Timothy Collins
“Granted, as you build toward your dream, you will get tired. You will grow weary. You will need to stop and recharge. When those times come, you will need inspiration. Beyond inspiration, you will need great vision.” -Dexter R. Yager Sr.
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” -Albert Einstein
“Good deeds can be shortly stated, but where wrong is done a wealth of language is needed to veil its deformity.” -Thebans during the Pelopennesian War 427 a.d.
“To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals–that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.” -Honore de Balzac
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” -John Stuart Mill
“The main value of travel lies not in where you go but in leaving where you have been. Go to a new place…Reexamine your axioms. Find out the evidence for your assumptions, and you will with luck begin to set a true value upon the environment from which you came. I never tire of Sir Oliver Lodge’s way of saying this: ‘The last thing in the world that a deep-sea fish could discover is salt water.’” -Dr. Alan Gregg
Preparation
“I will study and prepare myself, and someday my chance will come.” -Abraham Lincoln
“There comes a special moment in everyone’s life, a moment for which that person was born…When he seizes it…it is his finest hour.” -Winston Churchill
“To every man there comes…that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a a special thing unique to him and fitted to his talent. What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour.” -Winston Churchill
“Nurture great thoughts, for you will never go higher than your thoughts.” -Benjamin Disraeli
“Your circumstances may be uncongenial but they shall not long remain so if you but perceive an ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel within and stand still without.” -James Allen
“Giving up the illusion that you can predict the future is a very liberating moment. All you can do is give yourself the capacity to respond–the creation of that capacity is the purpose of strategy.” -Lord John Browne of Madingley
Private Virtue/Morality/Religion/Service
“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” -James Madison
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” -Benjamin Franklin
“Religion and virtue are are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.” -John Adams
“Statesmen…may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue; and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only exchange tyrants and tyrannies. You cannot, therefore, be more pleasantly or usefully employed than in the way of your profession, pulling down the strong-holds of Satan. This is not cant, but the real sentiment of my heart.” -John Adams
“There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists, in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.” -George Washington
“We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained.” -George Washington
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” -George Washington
“Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” -George Washington
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Liberty regards religion as its companion in all its battles and its triumphs, as the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims. It considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.” -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Never say about anything, ‘I have lost it,’ but only ‘I have given it back.’ Is your child dead? It has been given back. Is your wife dead? She has been returned. ‘I have had my farm taken away.’ Very well; this, too, has been given back. So long as God gives it to you take care of it as something not your own. ‘Alas, that I should be lame in one leg’ Slave! do you then, because of one paltry leg, blame the universe? Will you not make a free gift of it to the whole? ‘I must go into exile’: does anyone keep me from going with a smile, serene? ‘I will throw you into prison.’ It is only my body you imprison. I must die; must I then die complaining? These are the lessons that philosophy ought to rehearse, and write down daily, and practice. A platform or a prison are places, one high, the other low; but your moral purpose can be kept the same in either place.” -Epictetus
“I drown without fear, neither shrinking nor crying out against god, but recognizing that what is born must also perish. For I am a part of the whole, as an hour is part of a day. I must come on as the hour, and like an hour pass away. Regard yourself as but a single thread of all that go to make up the garment. Seek not that the things which happen to you should happen as you wish, but wish the things that happen to be as they are, and you will find tranquility.” -Epictetus
“The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.” -Gandhi
“If the people of our nation, instead of consenting to be governed by laws of their own making and rulers of their own choosing, should let licentiousness, disorder, and confusion reign over them, the minds of men everywhere will insensibly become alienated from republican forms, and prepared to prefer and acquiesce in governments which, though less friendly to liberty, afford more peace and security.” -John Jay
“God makes himself known to the world; He fills up the whole circle of the universe, but makes his particular abode in the center, which is the soul of the just.” -Lucian
“I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private.” -Socrates
“The difficulty…is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.” -Socrates
“…if the soul is immortal, we need to care for it, not only for the sake of this period to which belongs what we call life, but also for the sake of all time; and now it will be clear that if we are going to neglect it, we shall be running a great risk. If death were separation from everything, it would be a godsend to the wicked to be freed when they died, together with the soul, from the body and from their own wickedness; but as it is, since souls is seen to be immortal, there will be no escape nor any salvation except through becoming as good and as wise as possible. The only thing the soul takes with it to the other world is its education and its culture, which are said to e the greatest help or the greatest hindrance that the dead man can have…” -Socrates
“I persist in praising not the life that I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it at a mighty distance, crawling.” -Seneca
“If you do not quarrel, no one on earth will be able to quarrel with you…Recompense injury with kindness…To those who are good I am good, and to those who are not good I am also good; thus all get to be good. To those who are sincere, I am sincere, and to those who are not sincere I am also sincere; and thus all get to be sincere…the softest thing in the world clashes against and overcomes the hardest–there is nothing in the world softer or weaker than water, and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it.” -Lao Tze
“If a man is just and resolute, the whole world may break and fall upon him and find him, in the ruins, undismayed.” -Horace
“Who then is free? The wise man, he who is lord over himself, whom neither poverty nor death nor bonds affright, who defies his passions, scorns ambition, and is in himself a whole.” -Horace
“Use me henceforward, O God, as thou wilt; I am of one mind with thee. I am thine. I ask exemption from nothing that seems good in thy sight. Where thou wilt, lead me; in what raiment thou wilt, clothe me.” -Epictetus
“Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone other than oneself–be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself–by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love–the more human he is and the more he actualized himself…Self-actualization is only possible as a side-effect of self-transcendence.” -Viktor Frankl
“He that will do the least sin against conscience is prepared in disposition to do the greatest.” -Lord Acton
“However strong a castle may be, if a treacherous party resies inside (ready to betray at the first opportunity possible), the castle cannot be kept safe from the enemy. Traitors occupy our own hearts, ready to side with every temptation and to surrender to them all.” -John Owen
Prosperity
“Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshiped.” -Calvin Coolidge
“More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has ever been taken from the earth.” -Napoleon Hill
“The truth is that great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent: in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and it is safer for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity.” -Cleon son of Cleaenetus during the Pelopennesian War 427 a.d.
Public Virtue
“Posterity — you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” -John Quincy Adams
“A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Public morality differs from private, because no government can turn the other cheek, or can admit that mercy is better than justice.” -Lord Acton
“There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real liberty.” -John Adams
“…we must keep steadily in mind that no people were ever yet benefitted by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue. It is more important that we should show ourselves honest, brave, truthful, and intelligent than that we should own all the railways and grain elevators in the world. We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received and each of us must do his part if we wish to show that this nation is worthy of its good fortune.” -Theodore Roosevelt
“As we peer into society’s future, we…must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
“The quality of American life must keep pace with the quantity of American goods. This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.” -John F. Kennedy
“…[the] prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposition, among the people of the united states…will induce them to forget their local prejudices and policies, to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the community.” -George Washington
“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” -Samuel Adams
“…corrupt people look for others to spend their days with, running away from themselves, for when they are by themselves they have many uncomfortable recollections, and anticipate other things of the same kind, but when they are with others they forget. And since they have nothing loveable about them, they feel no friendliness toward themselves. Such people do not even feel joy or pleasure along with themselves, since the soul within them is in a state of civil war, and one part, on account of vice, is pained at refraining from certain things when another part is pleased; one part drags them here and the other part there, as if tearing them apart. But if it is not possible to feel pain and pleasure at the same time, still, after a little while, they are pained because they were pleased, and wish these things had not become pleasant to them, since people of low character are full of regrets.” -Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics
Unique Abilities
“A person can have many talents and gifts and do many things exceptionally well, but your vein of gold, ah–that is the thing you do superbly.” -Julia Cameron
“The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” -Frederick Buechner
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Gil Bailie
Writing
“Erasure is as important as writing. Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rythm where the language is harsh, modify it where it is too absolute…the best method of correction is to put aside for a time what we have written, so that when we come to it again it may have an aspect of novelty, as of being another man’s work; in this way we may preserve ourselves from regarding our writings with the affection what we lavish upon a newborn child.” -Marcus Fabius Quintilianius a.d. 35
“Jaw-breaking words often cover up very sloppy thinking.” -Thomas Sowell
