Howard L Nations Law Firm - History of Quotes
- Archive of Quotes by Author
- Complete History of Quotes
It's a Party
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"The one who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the one who is doing it."
- Ancient Chinese Proverb
"We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them."
- Abigail Adams
"Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."
- John Adams (1735-1826)
"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make good use of it! If you do not, I shall repent it in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it!"
- John Adams April 26, 1777
"Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty."
- John Adams (1774)
"Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense."
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
"Wrong must not win by technicalities."
- Aeschylus, The Eumenides, 458 B.C.
"Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead."
- Louisa May Alcott (1832 1888)
"Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you."
- Alan Alda
"Nothing will work unless you do."
- Maya Angelou (1928 - )
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again."
- Maya Angelou (1928 - )
"When you blame others, you give up your power to change."
- Robert Anthony
"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious... they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."
- Aristotle
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
- Aristotle
"Every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger or appetite."
- Aristotle
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
- Isaac Asimov
"Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go."
- Brooks Atkinson
"An open ear is the only believable sign of an open heart."
- David Augsburger
"Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith."
- W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (1907 - 1973)
"The world is a great book, of which they who never stir from home read only a page."
- St. Augustine of Hippo
"Knowledge is power [Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est]."
- Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"The smallest deed is better than the grandest intention."
- Roger Nash Baldwin
"Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute."
- J.G. Ballard (1930)
"Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand."
- Bruce Barton
"If you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you've always got."
- W.L. Bateman
"Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things."
- Henry Ward Beecher
"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."
- Ludwig van Beethoven
"What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it."
- Alexander Graham Bell
"For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change."
- Ingrid Bengis
"Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it."
- Irving Berlin
"Morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless."
- Justice Hugo Black 1970
"[Trial by jury is] a privilege of the highest and most beneficial nature [and] our most important guardian both of public and private liberty. The liberties of England cannot but subsist so long as this palladium remains sacred and inviolate, not only from all open attacks, . . . but also from all secret machinations, which may sap and undermine it."
- Justice William Blackstone (1765)
"When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree."
- William Blake
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
"Illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their footing . . . by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure . . . It is [our] duty . . . to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon . . ."
- Justice Bradley, (1886)
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
- Justice Louis Brandeis (1928
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent . . . The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
- Justice Louis Brandeis
"A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her."
- David Brinkley
"It's the constant and determined effort that breaks down all resistance, sweeps away all obstacles."
- Claude M. Bristol
"Once the *what* is decided, the *how* always follows. We must not make the *how* an excuse for not facing and accepting the *what.*"
- Pearl S. Buck
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense."
- Buddha
"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."
- Buddha
"The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"I look to the future, because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life."
- George Burns
"The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously."
- Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902)
"Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself."
- Samuel Butler
"Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast; you also miss the sense of where you are going and why."
- Eddie Cantor
"What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books."
- Thomas Carlyle
"Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were."
- Cherie Carter Scott
"Grasp the subject, the words will follow."
- Cato the Elder
"The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
"No road to happiness or sorrow... Find them in yourself."
- Chinese Proverb
"As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan."
- Count Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries
"Peace is liberty in tranquillity."
- Marcus T. Cicero (c 106-43 BC)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke 1917-, British Science Fiction Writer
"Unswerving loyalty to duty, constant devotion to truth and a clear conscience will overcome every discouragement and surely lead the way to usefulness and high achievement."
- Grover Cleveland
"All attempts to tinker or tamper with trial by jury in civil causes should be discouraged as disastrous to the public welfare."
- ABA President Joseph Coate (1898)
"Trial by jury is a wise distribution of power which exceeds all other modes of trial."
- Edward Coke, Chief Justice of Common Pleas (1628)
"Success doesn't come to you...you go to it."
- Marva Collins
"The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does the reverse."
- Confucious
"Seek respect mainly from thyself, for it comes first from within."
- Steven H. Coogler
"Freedom is a contagious blessing."
- Stephen Covington
"There is no future in any job. The future lies in the [wo]man who holds the job. "
- George Crane
"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt."
- John Philpot Curran
"Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance."
- Anthony J. D'Angelo
"Sleep is the best meditation."
- Dalai Lama
"It is a very good plan every now and then to go away and have a little relaxation; for when you come back to the work your judgment will be surer, since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose the power of judgment."
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)
"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society."
- Angela Y. Davis (1944)
"It is a far, far better thing that I do than anything I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
- Charles Dickens
"Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts."
- Charles Dickens
"I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained."
- Walt Disney
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."
- Frederick Douglass
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos."
- Will Durant (1885 - 1981)
"If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."
- Thomas Alva Edison
"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."
- ThomasAlva Edison
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
- Albert Einstein, (1879 - 1955)
"It is appallingly obvious that our technology exceeds our humanity."
- Albert Einstein
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
- Albert Einstein
"A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."
- Albert Einstein
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
- Albert Einstein
"Try not to become a man of success, but rather to become a man of value."
- Albert Einstein
"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact."
- George Eliot
"Those who trust us educate us."
- T.S. Eliot
"For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning."
- T.S. Eliot
"As soon as there is life, there is danger."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Every man has his own courage and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"No great man ever complains of want of opportunity."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him."
- Epictetus (ca. 55–ca. 135)
"Read first the best books. The important thing for you is not how much you know, but the quality of what you know."
- Desiderius Erasmus
"Remember that if the opportunities for great deeds should never come, the opportunities for good deeds are renewed day by day. The thing for us to long for is the goodness, not the glory."
- F.W. Faber
"The mountain of so-called 'tort reform' legislation sponsored each year by the captains of commerce and industry is 'but the forerunner of a system of dangerous attacks upon the free institutions and ancient rights of [Americans in order to] rob the people of the best and firmest securities for the due administration of justice'."
- J. Kendall Few (1993), quoting J. Sydney Taylor (1839)
"Trial by jury must be preserved: not as a mere formality, stripped of its discretion by arbitrary and inflexible rules dictated by the captains of commerce and industry for the furtherance of their own selfish interest, but free to search out and find the truly essential justice of each individual case."
- J. Kendall Few, In Defense of Trial by Jury (1992)
"History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats."
- B.C. Forbes
"Trial by jury is the most rational and effective method for discovering the truth."
- Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice of the King's Bench (1468)
"Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have."
- Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)
"One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire."
- John W. Foster
"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't."
- Anatole France
"Many of our fears are tissue paper thin and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them."
- Brendan Francis
"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors and let each new year find you a better man."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Lost time is never found again."
- Benjamin Franklin
"One day in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."
- Sigmund Freud
"You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one."
- James A. Froude
"Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him."
- 18th century English proverb, collected in Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)
Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.
- John W. Gardner
"If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old."
- James A. Garfield (1831 - 1881)
"You create your opportunities by asking for them."
- Shakti Gawain
"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."
- Mohandas 'Mahatma' Ghandi (1869 - 1948)
"Truth never damages a cause that is just."
- Gandhi
"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
- Gandhi
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong."
- Gandhi
"I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."
- Khalil Gibran
"And stand together, and yet not too near together. For even the pillars of the temple must stand apart; and the oak tree and the cypress will not grow in each other's shadow."
- Khalil Gibran
"Generosity is giving more than you can and pride is taking less than you need.
- Kahlil Gibran
July 4th, 2002
"Of freedom and of life he only is deserving
Who every day must conquer them anew."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
- from Faust -- Lose This Day Loitering
"Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or dream you can --begin it! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated -- Begin it, and the work will be completed!"
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Full Text from Faust Lose This Day Loitering
"Lose this day loitering - 'twill be the same story Tomorrow -- and the next more dilatory; Each indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days! Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or dream you can --begin it! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated -- Begin it, and the work will be completed!"
"America's one of the finest countries anyone ever stole."
- Bobcat Goldthwait
"A prudent man will think more important what fate has conceded to him than what it has denied."
- Baltasar Gracian
"The path to our destination is not always a straight one. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark."
- Barbara Hall
"The friends and adversaries of the plan of the convention . . . concur . . . in the value they set upon the trial by jury; the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty; the latter represent it as the very palladium of free government."
- Alexander Hamilton (1788)
"I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice."
- Friedrich August von Hayek (1899 - 1992)
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain
the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the
government, lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."
- Patrick Henry (1736 - 1799)
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel."
- Patrick Henry (1788)
"You ought to be extremely cautious, watchful, jealous of your liberty; for instead of securing your rights, you may lose them forever . . . "
- Patrick Henry
"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 (March 23, 1775)
"Self respect is the root of discipline. The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself."
- Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit."
- Napoleon Hill
"Memorial Day is much more than a three-day weekend that marks the beginning of summer. To many people, especially the nation's thousands of combat veterans, this day, which has a history stretching back all the way to the Civil War, is an important reminder of those who died in the service of their country."
The History Channel
"A page of history is worth a volume of logic."
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1921)
"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"And ye, who have met with Adversity's blast,
And been bow'd to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass'd
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury -
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen."
- Thomas Hood
"Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it."
- Horace
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
- Elbert Hubbard
"Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive."
- Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)
"To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do."
- Victor Hugo
"The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped."
- Hubert Horatio Humphrey
"Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts."
- Aldous Huxley
"Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely."
- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 - 1895)
"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together."
- Eugene Ionesco
"There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking."
- William James (1842 - 1910)
"Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them."
- William James
"When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends."
- Japanese Proverb
See all Thomas Jefferson quotes here.
"The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are."
- Samuel Johnson
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
- Samuel Johnson
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections [obstacles] must first be overcome."
- Samuel Johnson
"Problems are only opportunities in work clothes."
- Henry J. Kaiser
"A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together."
- Garrison Keillor (b. 1942)
"No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars or sailed to an unchartered land or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."
- Helen Keller
"The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse."
- Helen Keller
"Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light."
- Helen Keller
"The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment, but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy."
- John F. Kennedy
"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."
- John F. Kennedy
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
- Robert F. Kennedy
"He who angers you conquers you."
- Elizabeth Kenny
"Just as your fortune depends upon how your money is invested, so the success of your life depends upon how your time is invested."
- Leone Kester
"I find that it is not the circumstances in which we are placed, but the spirit in which we face them, that constitutes our comfort."
- Elizabeth T. King
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"All progress is precarious and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."
- Martin Luther King Jr.
"The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers."
- Arthur Koestler
"To succeed, we must first believe that we can."
- Michael Korda
"No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam."
- Charles Lamb
"New Year's Day is every man's birthday."
- Charles Lamb
"Of the hundreds I knew, I kick myself for remembering so few. Especially on this Memorial Day when I should be able to remember each and every one. They are the ones who paid for this Memorial Day. This is their day. I will not spoil it by forgetting even one of their number."
- James E. Leiker (Veteran) -- What I'll Be Doing For Memorial Day
"The best thing about the future is that is comes only one day at a time."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Remember, in the end, the significance of our lives will be measured by the value we place on the lives of others."
- From The Life of David Gayle
"Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, - act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!"
- Psalm of Life by Longfellow Full Text A Psalm of Life
"Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
'Life is but an empty dream!'
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
'Dust thou art, to dust returnest,'
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Finds us further than today.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Success is that old ABC -- ability, breaks, and courage."
- Charles Luckman
"Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace."
- Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)
"Trial by jury in civil cases is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature."
- James Madison 1789
"The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone."
- Orison Swett Marden
"The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race."
- Don Marquis
"Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow."
- Edward Sandford Martin
"The jury system is the handmaid of freedom. It catches and takes on the spirit of liberty, and grows and expands with the progress of constitutional government. Rome, Sparta and Carthage fell because they did not know it, let not England and America fall because they threw it away."
- Charles S. May (1875)
". . . Progress, reform, judicial reform - these are good and admirable things, but we should take care to know what we do in their name. . . . To abolish the trial by jury . . . would be a terribly destructive and radical measure, a direct impeachment of the wisdom of the past and a bold and hazardous experiment upon the future."
- Charles S. May
"We may never have tyrants, . . . but if we should have them, they will seek to accomplish the downfall of free government, not by directly overriding the Constitution, but by using the forms of law to strangle and subvert its spirit."
- Charles S. May
"Trial by jury is our fence and protection against all frauds and surprises and against all storms of power."
- Sir John Maynard, Sergeant at Law (1689)
"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
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."
- Michelangelo (1475 - 1564)
"One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things."
- Henry Miller
The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.
- Moliere
"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it."
- George Moore (1852-1933)
"The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety."
- George Mueller
"Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts."
- Edward R. Murrow
"A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
- Anais Nin
"Civilization is built on a number of ultimate principles...respect for human life, the punishment of crimes against property and persons, the equality of all good citizens before the law...or, in a word: justice."
- Max Nordau (1849 - 1923)
"As for courage and will - we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead."
- Andre Norton
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."
- George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903 - 1950)
"Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be."
- George Orwell
"In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
- George Orwell
"But where, says some, is the king of America? I'll tell you. . . . let a crown be placed . . . , by which the world may know, . . . that in America the law is king. For in absolute governments the king is the law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other . . . "
- Thomas Paine (1776)
"The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power . . . "
- Thomas Paine (1777)
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
- Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809)
"These are the times that try men's souls. 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 conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated."
- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis: December 23, 1776
"It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."
- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Parker, Chief Prosecutor for the United States of America at the Nurnberg Trials
October 2001 -- Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar:
"The situation where we are now, there are two things: either death or victory. To those who are fighting and bombarding us, they should understand the Afghan man is a fighter willing to die for jihad."
June 1944 -- General George S. Patton:
"I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country..."
"In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind."
- Louis Pasteur - 1854
"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
- George S. Patton
Please see above for another George S. Patton quote
"Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning."
- Octavio Paz (1914)
"Time is the wisest counselor of all."
- Pericles
"Necessity is the plea for every abridgment of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, the creed of slaves."
- William Pitt, Prime Minister of England (1783)
"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."
- Plato
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
- Plato
"The law must be stable, but it must not stand still."
- Roscoe Pound Introduction to the Philosophy of Law 1922
"The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!"
- Edward Payson Powell
"Lawyers are the soldiers for freedom and democracy in the country. Law, like war, resolves conflicts. And where a person’s liberties, person or properties are threatened, there must be a battle in the courts to protect them."
- Mark E. Price, J.D., Attorney at Law
"You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing."
- Michael Pritchard
"When you walk with wise men, you will become wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed."
- Proverbs 13:20
"Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand."
- Putt's Law
"People don't start wars, governments do."
- Ronald Reagan
"There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult."
- Ranier Maria Rilke
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions."
- Ranier Maria Rilke
"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place."
- Ranier Maria Rilke
"I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature."
- John D. Rockefeller
"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 - 1945)
"We, too, born to freedom, and believing in freedom, are willing to fight to maintain freedom. We, and all others who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country."
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858 – 1919)
"Believe you can and you're halfway there."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose."
- Elisabeth Kubler Ross
"Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word."
- Joseph Roux
"The present is a point just passed."
- David Russell
"A traveler without observation is a bird without wings."
- Moslih Eddin Saadi
"A man's feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world."
- George Santayana 1863-1952
"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
- Jean Paul Sartre
"Every true genius is bound to be naive."
- Friedrich Schiller
"Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
"What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
"Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity."
- Helen Schucman
"For every mountain, there is a miracle."
- Robert H. Schuller
"Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility."
- Albert Schweitzer
"Fools look to tomorrow; wise men use tonight."
- Scottish Proverb
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."
- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
"At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows,
But like of each thing that in season grows."
- William Shakespeare
"To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou can't not then be false to any man."
- William Shakespeare
"You will never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"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."
- George Bernard Shaw
"The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself."
- George Bernard Shaw
"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797 - 1883)
"Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance, but lost time is gone forever."
- Samuel Smiles
"Happiness is mostly a by product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled."
- Dr. Benjamin Spock
"Power resides not in he who votes but in he who counts the votes."
- Joseph Stalin - 1938
"The New Year is the season in which custom seems more particularly
to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments.
People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form and concern which they seldom feel."
- Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694-1773)
"Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one."
- Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
"Each time you are honest and conduct yourself with honesty, a success force will drive you toward greater success. Each time you lie, even with a little white lie, there are strong forces pushing you toward failure."
- Joseph Sugarman
"For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time."
- Justice George Sutherland (1937)
"The first ten amendments to the Constitution safeguard [those] fundamental rights . . . [that] the framers of the Bill of Rights regard[ed as] certain liberties . . . so vital that legislative denial of them should be specifically foreclosed . . ."
- Justice George Sutherland
"Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple."
- Barry Switzer
"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."
- Publilius Syrus, first century B.C.
"No single institution that the wisdom of man has ever devised is so well calculated to preserve a people free, or make them so, as trial by jury."
- J. Sydney Taylor (1838)
". . . They select instances of verdicts of a perverse or absurd character, and present them to the public as specimens of the working of the jury system. They prove nothing so conclusively as their own incapacity to take a more comprehensive view of a great subject . . . Yet such is the sort of logical process by which the deprecators of trial by jury arrive at the conclusion, that the administration of justice would be reformed . . ."
- J. Sydney Taylor
". . . Trial by jury cannot be corrupted unless the whole body of the people be corrupt. . . . Instances of perverse or dishonest verdicts there will be, because the attribute of perfection does not belong to any human institution. . . . [Reformers] see only those blemishes which are the casual specks of a glorious institution."
- J. Sydney Taylor
"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live."
- Dorothy Thompson
"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"
- Henry David Thoreau
"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."
- Henry David Thoreau
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
- Henry David Thoreau
"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost."
- John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"The right of trial by jury cannot be guarded with too much vigilance, nor defended with too much ardor. If the people surrender it, their other rights will inevitably follow."
- Joseph Towers (1764)
"A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it."
- Harry S. Truman (1884 - 1972)
"Justice remains the greatest power on earth. To that tremendous power alone will we submit."
- Harry S. Truman
"I come to the office each morning and stay for long hours doing what has to be done to the best of my ability. And when you've done the best you can, you can't do any better."
- Harry S. Truman
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
- Mark Twain
"Keep away from the people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great."
- Mark Twain
"It is best to read the weather forecasts before we pray for rain."
- Mark Twain
"Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you."
- Lao Tzu
"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals."
- Samuel Ullman
"The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money."
- Unknown
"Technology does not drive change -- it enables change."
- Unknown
"One who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints."
- Unknown
"A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other."
- Unknown
"When we're down to nothing, God is up to something."
- Unknown
"Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny."
- Unknown
"I may forget what someone may say or do, but I do not forget how they made me feel."
- Unknown
"Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
- John Updike
"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves."
- Bill Vaughan
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
- Voltaire
"Being defeated is often only a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent."
- Marilyn vos Savant
"America's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness, is our belief in second chances, our belief that we can always start over, that things can be made better."
- Anthony Walton
"Those who serve upon our juries have maintained a standard of fairness and excellence and demonstrated a vision toward the administration of justice that is a wellspring of inspiration."
- U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren (1962)
"I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions and not upon our circumstances."
- Martha Washington
"[Here] rests the soul of our nation - here also should be our conscience."
- Caspar W. Weinberger, US Secretary of Defense -- Veterans Day address at Arlington National Cemetery, NY Times 11 Nov 86
"I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own."
- H. G. Wells
"We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery."
- H. G. Wells
"Trial by jury must and shall be preserved! Amidst the throng of crude sacrilegisms . . . that assail us nowadays in the legal sanctuary, none is more shortsighted, none more dangerous, than the proposal to abolish trial by jury."
- John Henry Wigmore (1925)
"Law and justice are from time to time inevitably in conflict. . . . The jury . . . adjusts the general rule of law to the justice to the particular case. Thus the odium of inflexible rules of law is avoided, and popular satisfaction is preserved . . . That is what jury trial does. It supplies that flexibility of legal rules which is essential to justice and popular contentment."
- John Henry Wigmore (1929)
"Trial by jury must be preserved. It is the best system ever invented for a free people in the world's history."
- John Henry Wigmore (1929)
"The grand solid merit of jury trial is that the jurors . . . are selected at the last moment from the multitude of citizens. They cannot be known beforehand, and they melt back into the multitiude after each trial."
- John Henry Wigmore (1924)
". . . The popular attitude toward the administration of justice should be one of respect and confidence. Bureaucratic, purely official justice, can never receive such confidence. The one way to secure it is to give the citizen-body itself a share in the administration of justice. And that is what jury-trial does."
- John Henry Wigmore (1929)
"We are good friends of jury trial. We believe in it as the best system of trial ever invented for a free people in the world's history."
- John Henry Wigmore (1924)
"To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live. To be lulled into security is to die."
- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
"As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular."
- Oscar Wilde
"We are all of us living in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
- Oscar Wilde
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
- Oscar Wilde
"You pile up enough tomorrows and you'll be left with nothing but a bunch of empty yesterdays. I don't know about you, but I'd like to make today worth remembering."
- Meredith Wilson
"Trial by jury is essentially a child of freedom. . . . It is the greatest safeguard of liberty, and the greatest protector of its privileges."
- Sam M. Wolfe, A Defense of the Jury (1911)
"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure."
- George Edward Woodberry
"To begin, begin."
- William Wordsworth
"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."
- William Butler Yeats
"The truth is that there is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self."
- Whitney Young
