Howard L. Nations Law Firm - History of Quotes
- Archive of Quotes by Author
- Complete History of Quotes
Alpha by Author: A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y
A
It's a Party
(Click here to view Slideshow "Eagle 1a" 2.5mb)
Abigail Adams
"We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them."
John Adams (1735-1826)
"Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."
"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!"
- April 26, 1777
"Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty."
- (1774)
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
"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."
Aeschylus
"Wrong must not win by technicalities."
- The Eumenides, 458 B.C.
Louisa May Alcott (1832 1888)
"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."
Alan Alda
"Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you."
Maya Angelou (1928 - )
"Nothing will work unless you do."
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again."
Robert Anthony
"When you blame others, you give up your power to change."
Aristotle
"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."
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
"Every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger or appetite."
Isaac Asimov
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
Brooks Atkinson
"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."
W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (1907 - 1973)
"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."
David Augsburger
"An open ear is the only believable sign of an open heart."
St. Augustine of Hippo
"The world is a great book, of which they who never stir from home read only a page."
B
Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
"Knowledge is power [Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est]."
Roger Nash Baldwin
"The smallest deed is better than the grandest intention."
J.G. Ballard
"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."
- 1930
Bruce Barton
"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."
W.L. Bateman
"If you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you've always got."
Henry Ward Beecher
"Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things."
Ludwig van Beethoven
"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."
Alexander Graham Bell
"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."
Ingrid Bengis
"For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change."
Irving Berlin
"Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it."
Justice Hugo Black
"Morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless."
- 1970
Justice William Blackstone
"[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."
- 1765
William Blake
"When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree."
Napoleon Bonaparte
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."
Justice Bradley
"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 . . ."
- 1886
Justice Louis Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
"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."
David Brinkley
"A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her."
Claude M. Bristol
"It's the constant and determined effort that breaks down all resistance, sweeps away all obstacles."
Pearl S. Buck
"Once the *what* is decided, the *how* always follows. We must not make the *how* an excuse for not facing and accepting the *what.*"
Buddha
"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."
"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"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."
"Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed."
George Burns
"I look to the future, because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life."
"You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old."
Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902)
"The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously."
"Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself."
C
George Canning
"When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?"
Eddie Cantor
"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."
Thomas Carlyle
"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."
Cato the Elder
"Grasp the subject, the words will follow."
Gilbert K. Chesterton
"The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see."
Count Galeazzo Ciano
"As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan."
- The Ciano Diaries
Marcus T. Cicero (c 106-43 BC)
"Peace is liberty in tranquillity."
Arthur C. Clarke, British Science Fiction Writer (1917 - 2008)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Grover Cleveland
"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."
ABA President Joseph Coate (1898)
"All attempts to tinker or tamper with trial by jury in civil causes should be discouraged as disastrous to the public welfare."
Paul Coelho
"The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love."
Edward Coke, (1552 – 1634) - Chief Justice of Common Pleas (1628)
"Trial by jury is a wise distribution of power which exceeds all other modes of trial."
Marva Collins
"Success doesn't come to you...you go to it."
Confucious
"The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does the reverse."
Steven H. Coogler
"Seek respect mainly from thyself, for it comes first from within."
Stephen Covington
"Freedom is a contagious blessing."
George Crane
"There is no future in any job. The future lies in the [wo]man who holds the job. "
John Philpot Curran
"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."
D
Anthony J. D'Angelo
"Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance."
Dalai Lama
"Sleep is the best meditation."
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)
"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."
Angela Y. Davis
"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society."
- (1944)
Charles Dickens
"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."
"Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts."
Walt Disney
"I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained."
Frederick Douglass
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
John Foster Dulles
"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year.
Will Durant (1885 - 1981)
"Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos."
E
Thomas Alva Edison
"If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."
"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."
Albert Einstein, (1879 - 1955)
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
"It is appallingly obvious that our technology exceeds our humanity."
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
"A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
"Try not to become a man of success, but rather to become a man of value."
George Eliot
"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact."
T.S. Eliot
"Those who trust us educate us."
"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."
"The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are always asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"As soon as there is life, there is danger."
"Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great."
"Every man has his own courage and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons."
"No great man ever complains of want of opportunity."
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not."
"You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong."
"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
"We must be our own before we can be another's."
Epictetus (ca. 55 - ca. 135)
"Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him."
Desiderius Erasmus
"Read first the best books. The important thing for you is not how much you know, but the quality of what you know."
F
F.W. Faber
"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."
J. Kendall Few
"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'."
- (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."
- In Defense of Trial by Jury (1992)
B.C. Forbes
"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."
Henry Ford
"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."
Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice of the King's Bench (1468)
"Trial by jury is the most rational and effective method for discovering the truth."
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)
"Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have."
John W. Foster
"One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire."
- Emmet Fox
"You are not happy because you are well. You are well because you are happy. You are not depressed because trouble has come to you, but trouble has come to you because you are depressed. You can change your thoughts and feelings and then the outer things will come to correspond. Indeed, there is no other way of working."
"You are not happy because you are well. You are well because you are happy. You are not depressed because trouble has come to you, but trouble has come to you because you are depressed."
Anatole France
"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."
Brendan Francis
"Many of our fears are tissue paper thin and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them."
Benjamin Franklin
"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors and let each new year find you a better man."
"Lost time is never found again."
Sigmund Freud
"One day in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."
James A. Froude
"You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one."
Dr. Thomas Fuller
"All things are difficult before they are easy."
"Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him."
- 18th century English proverb, collected in Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)
G
John W. Gardner
"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."
James A. Garfield (1831 - 1881)
"If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old."
Shakti Gawain
"You create your opportunities by asking for them."
"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
Mohandas 'Mahatma' Ghandi (1869 - 1948)
"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well."
"Truth never damages a cause that is just."
"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong."
Khalil Gibran
"I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."
"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."
"Generosity is giving more than you can and pride is taking less than you need.
Jean Giraudoux
"Only the mediocre are always at their best."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
"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!"
Full Text from Faust - Lose This Day Loitering
“If you treat a person as she appears to be, you make her worse than she is. But if you treat a person as if she already was what she potentially could be, you make her what she should be.”
"Of freedom and of life he only is deserving
Who every day must conquer them anew."
Bobcat Goldthwait
"America's one of the finest countries anyone ever stole."
Baltasar Gracian
"A prudent man will think more important what fate has conceded to him than what it has denied."
Katharine Graham
"A mistake is simply another way of doing things."
H
Barbara Hall
"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."
Alexander Hamilton
"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."
- (1788)
Paul Hawken
"All is connected ... no one thing can change by itself."
Friedrich August von Hayek (1899 - 1992)
"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."
William Hazlitt
"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be."
Patrick Henry (1736 - 1799)
"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."
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel."
- (1788)
"You ought to be extremely cautious, watchful, jealous of your liberty; for instead of securing your rights, you may lose them forever . . . "
"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!"
- (March 23, 1775)
Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Self respect is the root of discipline. The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself."
Napoleon Hill
"Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit."
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1921)
"A page of history is worth a volume of logic."
"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."
Thomas Hood
"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."
Horace
"Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it."
Bertrand Hubbard
"I've had a hard life, but my hardships are nothing against the hardships that my father went through in order to get me to where I started."
Elbert Hubbard
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)
"Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive."
"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."
Hubert Horatio Humphrey
"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."
Aldous Huxley
"Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts."
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
"Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you."
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 - 1895)
"Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely."
I
- Lee Iococca
"The ability to concentrate and to use time well is everything."
Eugene Ionesco
"Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together."
J
William James (1842 - 1910)
"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."
"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."
See all Thomas Jefferson quotes here.
Kimberly Johnson
"Never ruin an apology with an excuse."
Lyndon B. Johnson
"Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose."
Samuel Johnson
"The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are."
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections [obstacles] must first be overcome."
K
Henry J. Kaiser
"Problems are only opportunities in work clothes."
Garrison Keillor (b. 1942)
"A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together."
Helen Keller
"No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars or sailed to an unchartered land or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."
"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."
"Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light."
John F. Kennedy
"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."
"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."
"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."
Robert F. Kennedy
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
Elizabeth Kenny
"He who angers you conquers you."
Leone Kester
"Just as your fortune depends upon how your money is invested, so the success of your life depends upon how your time is invested."
Elizabeth T. King
"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."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
"All progress is precarious and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."
"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."
Arthur Koestler
"The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers."
Michael Korda
"To succeed, we must first believe that we can."
L
Charles Lamb
"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."
"New Year's Day is every man's birthday."
Michael Leboeuf
"Waste your money and you're only out of money, but waste your time and you've lost part of your life."
James E. Leiker (Veteran) -- What I'll Be Doing For Memorial Day
"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."
Sam Levenson
"There are more important things in life than money. The trouble is, they all cost money."
Abraham Lincoln
"The best thing about the future is that is comes only one day at a time."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"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."
"Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody."
"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done."
Charles Luckman
"Success is that old ABC -- ability, breaks, and courage."
Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)
"Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace."
M
James Madison 1789
"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."
Nelson Mandela
"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."
Edouard Manet
"There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another."
Orison Swett Marden
"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."
Don Marquis
"The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race."
Edward Sandford Martin
"Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow."
Charles S. May (1875)
"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."
". . . 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."
"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."
Sir John Maynard, Sergeant at Law (1689)
"Trial by jury is our fence and protection against all frauds and surprises and against all storms of power."
Margaret Mead
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has."
Michelangelo (1475 - 1564)
"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."
"Genius is eternal patience."
Henry Miller
"One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things."
Moliere
"The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit."
George Moore (1852-1933)
"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it."
Mother Teresa
"Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home."
George Mueller
"The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety."
Edward R. Murrow
"Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts."
N
Thich Nhat Hanh
"Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive - that you can touch the miracle of being alive - then that is a kind of enlightenment."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us."
"We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us."
"There are no facts, only interpretations."
Anais Nin
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
Max Nordau (1849 - 1923)
"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."
Andre Norton
"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."
O
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..."
[please see below for George S. Patton]
George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903 - 1950)
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."
"Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be."
"In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
P
Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809)
"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 . . . "
- (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 . . . "
- (1777)
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
"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."
- The American Crisis: December 23, 1776
Robert H. Parker, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Chief Prosecutor for the United States of America at the Nurnberg Trials
"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."
Blaise Pascal
"Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed."
Louis Pasteur
"In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind."
- 1854
George S. Patton
"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
Please see above (Omar) for another George S. Patton quote
Octavio Paz
"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."
- (1914)
Norman Vincent Peale
"Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities. Always see them, for they're always there."
Pericles
"Time is the wisest counselor of all."
Phillipians 1:6
"Be confident of this. He who began a good work in you will continue to perform it until it's perfectly complete."
William Pitt, Prime Minister of England (1783)
"Necessity is the plea for every abridgment of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, the creed of slaves."
Plato
"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."
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
Roscoe Pound
"The law must be stable, but it must not stand still."
- Introduction to the Philosophy of Law 1922
Colin Powell
"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure."
Lawrence Clark Powell
"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow."
Edward Payson Powell
"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!"
Mark E. Price, J.D., Attorney at Law
"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."
J.B. Priestly
"I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning."
Michael Pritchard
"You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing."
"When you walk with wise men, you will become wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed."
- Proverbs 13:20
"If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice how he acts when he loses money."
- New England Proverb
"When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends."
- Japanese Proverb
"No road to happiness or sorrow... Find them in yourself."
- Ancient Chinese Proverb
"The one who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the one who is doing it."
- Ancient Chinese Proverb
Putt's Law
"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."
Q
Robert Quillen
"If you count all your assets, you always show a profit."
R
Ronald Reagan
"People don't start wars, governments do."
Ranier Maria Rilke
"There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult."
"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."
"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."
John D. Rockefeller
"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."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 - 1945)
"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds."
"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."
Theodore Roosevelt (1858 – 1919)
"Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country."
"Believe you can and you're halfway there."
"Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster."
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
Elisabeth Kubler Ross
"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose."
Joseph Roux
"Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word."
David Russell
"The present is a point just passed."
S
- Moslih Eddin Saadi
"A traveler without observation is a bird without wings."
Carl Sandburg
"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way."
George Santayana 1863-1952
"A man's feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world."
Jean Paul Sartre
"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
Friedrich Schiller
"Every true genius is bound to be naive."
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
"Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost."
"What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others."
Helen Schucman
"Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity."
Robert H. Schuller
"For every mountain, there is a miracle."
Albert Schweitzer
"Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility."
Cherie Carter Scott
"Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were."
Scottish Proverb
"Fools look to tomorrow; wise men use tonight."
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."
"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."
"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."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"You will never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race."
"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."
"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."
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797 - 1883)
"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
Samuel Smiles
"Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance, but lost time is gone forever."
Dr. Benjamin Spock
"Happiness is mostly a by product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled."
Joseph Stalin
"Power resides not in he who votes but in he who counts the votes."
- 1938
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694-1773)
"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."
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
"Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one."
Joseph Sugarman
"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."
Justice George Sutherland (1937)
"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."
"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 . . ."
Barry Switzer
"Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple."
Eric Sykes
""I had lunch with a chess champion the other day. I knew he was a chess champion because it took him 20 minutes to pass the salt."
Publilius Syrus, first century B.C.
"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."
T
J. Sydney Taylor
"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."
- (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 . . ."
". . . 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."
Margaret Thatcher
"I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end."
Dorothy Thompson
"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live."
Henry David Thoreau
"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"
"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
"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."
"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend."
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."
"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."
"There is no remedy for love but to love more."
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost."
Joseph Towers
"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."
- (1764)
Harry S. Truman (1884 - 1972)
"A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it."
"Justice remains the greatest power on earth. To that tremendous power alone will we submit."
"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."
Mark Twain
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
"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."
"It is best to read the weather forecasts before we pray for rain."
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
Lao Tzu
"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."
U
Samuel Ullman
"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals."
Quotes of Unknown Authors
"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."
"He who has health has hope and he who has hope, has everything.
"The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money."
"Technology does not drive change -- it enables change."
"One who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints."
"A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other."
"When we're down to nothing, God is up to something."
"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."
"I may forget what someone may say or do, but I do not forget how they made me feel."
"What you are afraid to do is a clear indicator of the next thing you need to do."
"Procrastination: The art of keeping up with yesterday."
John Updike
"Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."
V
Bill Vaughan
"An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves."
Voltaire
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
"Common sense is not so common."
"The secret of being boring is to tell everything."
Marilyn vos Savant
"Being defeated is often only a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent."
W
Anthony Walton
"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."
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren
"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."
- (1962)
Martha Washington
"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."
Caspar W. Weinberger, US Secretary of Defense --
"[Here] rests the soul of our nation - here also should be our conscience."
- Veterans Day address at Arlington National Cemetery, NY Times 11 Nov 86
- H. G. Wells
"I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own."
"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."
John Henry Wigmore
"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."
- (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."
- (1929)
"Trial by jury must be preserved. It is the best system ever invented for a free people in the world's history."
- (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."
- (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."
- (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."
- (1924)
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
"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."
"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."
"We are all of us living in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
Meredith Wilson
"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."
Sam M. Wolfe
"Trial by jury is essentially a child of freedom. . . . It is the greatest safeguard of liberty, and the greatest protector of its privileges."
- A Defense of the Jury (1911)
George Edward Woodberry
"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure."
William Wordsworth
"To begin, begin."
Y
William Butler Yeats
"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."
Whitney Young
"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."
