Favorite Quotes 

  

Read one a day, and memorize the best ones. 

  

Or you could print out this list, cut up each quote, and put the scraps of paper in a jar, and every day, take a new one out and live by it. 

  

  

  

AGING 

  

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. 

  

-- Madeleine L'Engle, writer (1918- ) 

  

  

AMERICANISM 

  

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. 

  

-- James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987) 

  

  

"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life.  If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within." 

  

-- Joseph Stalin, Soviet communist tyrant (1878-1953) 

  

  

Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. 

-- John Jay, president of the U.S. Continental Congress,  

co-writer of the Federalist Papers, 

and first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1745-1829) 

  

  

ANGER

 

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. 

  

-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, philosopher (4 BC-65 AD) 

 

 

BILINGUALISM

 

We have room for but one language here, and that is the
English language . .. and we have room for but one sole loyalty
and that is a loyalty to the American people."

-- Theodore Roosevelt, 26^th U.S. President (1858-1919)

  

  

BOOKS

  

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. 

  

-- Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman 

(1561-1626) 

  

  

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. 

  

-- Mortimer J. Adler, philosopher, educator and author (1902-2001) 

  

  

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. 

  

-- Gilbert Highet, writer (1906-1978) 

  

  

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. 

They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print. 

  

-- Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860) 

  

  

BULLIES

 

I am malicious because I am miserable. . . . If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them a hundred and a hundred fold (words of Frankenstein monster). 

  

-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author (1797-1851) 

 

 

CHANGE

 

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. 

  

-- William Somerset Maugham, writer (1874-1965) 

 

  

CHARACTER

  

Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, riches take wings, those who cheer today may curse tomorrow, and only one thing endures - character. 

  

--Harry S Truman, 23^rd U.S. President (1884-1972) 

  

  

"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy."   

  

-- General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander-in-chief in the 1991 Gulf War (1934-   )  

  

  

In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart. 

  

-- Sigmund Freud, neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis (1856-1939) 

  

  

The virtue of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head. 

-- Noah Webster, lexicographer (dictionary writer),  

"The Father of American Scholarship and Education" (1758-1843)  

  

  

CHARITY

 

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it. 

  

-- John D. Rockefeller, businessman-philanthropist (1839-1937)

 

 

Proportion your charity to the strength of your estate, or God will proportion your estate to the weakness of your charity. 

  

-- Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, 

author, scientist, inventor and diplomat (1706-1790) 

  

  

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. 

  

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd U.S. President (1882-1945) 

  

  

CHILDREN

 

What's done to children, they will do to society. 

  

-- Karl A. Menninger, psychiatrist (1893-1990) 

  

  

There are only two things a child will share willingly: 

communicable diseases, and his mother's age. 

  

-- Benjamin Spock,pediatrician, author and activist (1903-1998) 

  

  

CIVIL RIGHTS

  

The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. 

  

-- Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton),British historian (1834-1902) 

 

 

COMMUNICATION

  

Words are the soul's ambassadors, who go / Abroad upon her errands to and fro. 

  

-- James Howell, writer (c. 1594-1666) 

  

  

The firmest fayth is found in fewest woordes. 

  

-- Edward Dyer, courtier and poet (c. 1540-1607) 

  

  

CONFLICT RESOLUTION

  

Love truth, but pardon error. 

  

-- Voltaire, philosopher and writer (1694-1778) 

  

  

We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. 

  

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christian theologian, 

writer and courageous Nazi opponent (1906-1945) 

  

  

COURAGE

 

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. 

  

-- Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. president (1809-1865) 

 

 

CREATIVITY

  

Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. 

  

-- Arthur Koestler, novelist and journalist (1905-1983) 

  

  

CRITICISM 

  

Do what you feel in your heart to be right, 

for you'll be criticized anyway. 

  

-- Eleanor Roosevel, First Lady and human rights activist (1884-1962) 

  

  

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots. 

  

Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- ) 

  

  

CURIOSITY 

  

Albert Einstein once said, It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. 

  

-- Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist (1879-1953) 

  

  

DEATH 

  

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. 

  

-- Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519) 

  

  

DISSENT 

  

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill. 

  

-- Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988) 

  

  

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. 

  

-- Archibald MacLeish, poet and librarian (1892-1982) 

  

  

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought - not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. 

  

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., U.S. Supreme Court justice (1841-1935) 

  

  

DIVERSITY 

  

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities. 

 
-- Theodore Roosevelt, 26^th U.S. President (1858-1919)

  

  

EDUCATION 

  

True education makes for inequality; 

the inequality of individuality, the inequality of success; 

the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; 

for inequality, not mediocrity, 

individual superiority, not standardization, 

is the measure of the progress of the world. 

  

-- Felix Emmanuel Schelling, American educator and scholar (1858-1945) 

  

  

One of these days they are going to remove so much of the 'hooey' and the thousands of things the schools have become clogged up with, and we will find that we can educate our broods for about one-tenth of the price and learn 'em something that they might accidentally use after they escape.  

-- Will Rogers, cowboy, comedian, social commentator, actor (1879-1935)  

  

  

EFFORT

 

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

 

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer (1749-1832)

 

 

Everyone confesses that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us; but most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to do. 

  

-- Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (1811-1896) 

  

  

EVIL

 

For every ten people who are clipping at the branches of evil, you're lucky to find one who's hacking at the roots. 

  

-- Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) 

 

 

FAILURE

 

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. 

  

-- George Baker, Christian evangelist and racial equality activist (1877-1965)  

 

  

FORGIVENESS

 

If you devote your life to seeking revenge, first dig two graves. 

  

-- Confucius, Chinese philosopher and teacher (c. 551 BC-479 BC) 

 

 

FREEDOM

 

The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion. 

  

-- Edmund Burke, Irish statesman and writer (1729-1797) 

  

  

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree. 

  

-- Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali philosopher, author, 

songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941) 

  

  

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. 

  

-- James Madison, fourth U.S. president (1751-1836) 

  

  

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, American Founding Father, author and radical (1737-1809) 

 

 "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of freedom."  

  

-- John F. Kennedy, 35^th U.S. President (1917-1963) 

  

General Douglas MacArthur, a leader I deeply respected, is said to have written
that no man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in
its preservation and vigorous in its defense. Well, it's all up to us now. We are the
heirs of MacArthur, Pershing, Jefferson, and Washington — and of those Americans
who put their lives on the line from Bunker Hill to Belleau Wood, from Normandy to
Khe Sanh. We will be vigilant in the preservation of freedom and vigorous in its defense because we will not let down those who came before us or those who will follow. 

 
-- Ronald Reagan, 40^th U.S. President (1911-2004)  

  

 

GLOBALISM

 

For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. 

  

-- David Rockefeller, American banker, globalist (1915-   ) 

 

 

GOOD VS. EVIL

  

Shadow owes its birth to light. 

  

-- John Gay, poet and dramatist (1685-1732) 

  

  

GOSSIP

 

If you wouldn't write it and sign it, don't say it. 

  

-- Earl Wilson, columnist (1907-1987) 

  

  

GOVERNMENT

  

The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts. 

  

-- Baruch Spinoza, philosopher (1632-1677) 

  

  

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight. 

  

-- Horace, poet and satirist (65 BC - 8 BC) 

  

  

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. 

  

-- John Quincy Adams, 6^th U.S. President (1767-1848) 

  

  

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,
the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to
control the governed, and next oblige it to control itself. 

-- James Madison, 4^th U.S. President  

and author of the U.S. Constitution (1751-1836) 

  

  

Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are torpor and imbecility. . .  " 

  

-- William Godwin, English journalist, author and political philosopher (1756-1836) 

   

  

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. 

-- Thomas Jefferson, polymath and 3^rd U.S. President (1743-1826)  

  

If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have. 

-- Gerald Ford, 38^th U.S. President (1913-2006) 

  

 

HAPPINESS

 

If we were happy, the less diverted we would need to be. 

  

-- Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist 

and Christian philosopher (1623-1662) 

 

 

HISTORY

  

  

A people without a heritage are easily persuaded. 

-- Karl Marx, German philosopher, revolutionary and  

"father of communism" (1818-1883) 

  

  

HUMAN NATURE

  

You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you. 

  

-- Rwandan Proverb 

  

 

HUMILITY

  

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.