Some Quotes of Note for Those Who Vote
A few thoughts about politicians…
“To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.”
— author unknown
“If you think an expert’s expensive, wait until you hire an amateur.”
— Red Adair, veteran oil-well firefighter
“Wise men talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something.”
— Plato
“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
— Albert Einstein
“There’s no idea so good you can’t ruin it with a few well-placed idiots.”
— Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert
“One should never be corrupt and dreary.”
— Henry James
“There are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.”
— Indira Ghandi
“I am irresponsible for this mess.”
— Buck Buchanan
“Reputation is character, minus what you’ve been caught doing.”
— Michael Iapoce
“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it’s the only one we have.”
— Alain (philosopher)
“None are so empty as those who are full of themselves.”
— Benjamin Whichcote
“What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
“We have nothing to fear but fearmongers themselves.”
— Lynn Yost
“It’s not that power corrupts, but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”
— Frank Herbert (in Dune)
“Beware of advice from experts, pigs, and members of Parliament.”
― Jim Henson
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
— Voltaire
“If you can’t be a good example, you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.”
— Catherine Aird
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
— Oscar Wilde
A few thoughts about being a voter…
“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”
— John Cage
“Men can always be blind to a thing, so long as it is big enough.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us in trouble. It’s the things we know that ain’t so.”
— Artemus Ward
“See you to it that no institution, no political party, no social circle, no religious organization, [and] no pet ambitions put such chains upon you as would tempt you to sacrifice one iota of the moral freedom of your conscience or the intellectual freedom of your judgement.”
— Issac Sharpless, President of Haverford College, commencement speech 1888
“The fastest way to deprive a person of personal power is to convince him that someone else is responsible for his problems.”
— Christopher Kent
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”
— Henry Ford
“Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us get busy on the proof.”
— John Kenneth Galbraith
“The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”
— Muhammad Ali
“Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”
— Mark Twain
“A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have enlightened him with ours.”
— Malcolm Forbes
“People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.”
— Neil Postman
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”
— Mark Twain
“If Jesus came back today, you wouldn’t be able to hear him talk over the sound of Christians calling him a socialist.”
— Comedian John Fugelsang
“The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world.”
— Physicist Max Born
“I fundamentally believe that we as human beings are not defined by the conditions we face, no matter how hopeless they seem—we are defined by how we respond to them.”
— Raj Ranjabi
A few thoughts about where we find ourselves today…
“How can one tell when one is living in the dark ages?”
— Albert Jay Nock
If we don’t change the direction we’re going in, we’re going to end up where we’re headed.
— Chinese proverb
“Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.”
— Heinrich Heine
“A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.”
— Edgar J. Mohn
“America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way around. Human rights invented America.”
— Jimmy Carter
“Justice may be blind, but she has very sophisticated listening devices.”
— Edgar Argo
“A minority group has ‘arrived’ only when it has the right to produce some fools and scoundrels without the entire group paying for it.”
— Carl T. Rowan
“You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long.”
— Boris Yeltsin
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
— Winston Churchill
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
— Mark Twain
“Our mothers and forefathers all came to this great land in different ships. But we’re all in the same boat now.”
— A. Philip Randolph, civil rights champion
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
A few thoughts about changing the status quo….
“Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.”
— Longfellow
“In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience.”
— W. B. Prescott
“The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.”
— Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
“Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.”
— Slovenian proverb
“Organize your reality according to your strength, your playfulness, your dreams, your hopes; then you can help those who organize their reality according to their fears.”
— Jane Roberts
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
“If the energy generated through anger is applied in the direction of your highest ideals, it can achieve miracles.”
— Mark Thurston and Christopher Fazel
“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 reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw
And last but not least, a few thoughts from Kent M. Keith, written in 1968:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.