“At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, ‘either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.’” Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, Forbidden Truth (this threat was made in July of 2001)

“United we stand, unless you're gay or nonviolent or progressive or sexually secure or from San Francisco. Really makes the heart swell with all-American pride.”
– Mark Morford, SF Gate, June 14, 2002

“Those who say [Joseph] Padilla should get a civilian trial are essentially saying that if you reject the rules of civilized nations, like those inscribed in the Geneva Convention, you therefore deserve to be treated better, not worse, than those rules require.”
– Jonah Goldberg, conservative columnist (When is it wrong to do the right thing? — Moi)

“Those who seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings, call this a New Order. It is not new and it is not order.”
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“He who is unaware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.”
– Richard Whately

“‘Our country, right or wrong!  When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right!”
– Carl Schurz, in a U.S. Senate speech, 1872

“The class of those who have the ability to think their own thoughts is separated by an unbridgeable gulf from the class of those who can not. ”
– Ludwig von Mises

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. ”
– Galileo Galilei

“We do not inherit the land, we borrow it from our children. ”
– Native American Proverb

“If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.”
– Voltaire

“Life is what happens to us while we're making other plans. ”
– John Lennon

“Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out. ”
– John Wooden

“If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting. ”
– Steven Covey

“If you have tried to do something and failed, you are vastly better off than if you had tried to do nothing and succeeded. ”
– Unknown

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.”
– Bertrand Russell

“There is no way to peace: Peace is the way.”
– A.J. Muste

“Hope is not a plan.”
– Saying among military planners

“He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.”
 – Michel de Montaigne  

“Civil liberties aren't in any grave danger. We all need to relax about this.”
— jurist Robert Bork, Village Voice interview, June 14, 2002

“There are people so poor that they only have money.”
– Anonymous

"Silence is the voice of complicity"
– Author unknown

“Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.”
– Charles Bradlaugh

“The queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting, ‘Off with his head!’ or ‘Off with her head!’ about once in a minute.”
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“There is one ray of hope. It seems to me that today the responsible leaders of the several peoples have, in the main, the honest will to abolish war.”
– Albert Einstein, Berlin, September 4, 1931

“I shall give a propagandist cause for starting the war, never mind whether it be true or not. The victor shall not be asked later on whether he told the truth or not. In starting and making a war, not the right is what matters, but victory the strongest has the right.”
– Adolf Hitler, as quoted by Sir Hartley Shawcross, Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom at the Nuremberg Trials

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein

“He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.”
– Michel de Montaigne

“We bought the son of a bitch and then he didn't stay bought!”
– Steel baron Henry Clay Frick, speaking of Theodore Roosevelt

“I suppose the advocates of unreason think that there is a better chance of profitably deceiving the populace if they keep it in a state of effervescence.”
– Bertrand Russell

“Today the White House admitted that President Bush was warned last summer that Al Qaeda may have been planning hijackings in the U.S. Of course now Congress is demanding answers. They want to know what did George Bush know, and when did Dick Cheney explain it to him.”
— Jay Leno

“If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched.”
— George H.W. Bush, cited in the June, 1992 Sarah McClendon Newsletter

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Be a flame ...or be a spark.
“Be a candle in the dark.
“Be a sunbeam or a star.
“Be the shining light you are.”
– Anonymous

“‘I read the report put out by the bureaucracy,’ Bush said dismissively today when asked about the EPA report, adding that he still opposes the Kyoto treaty.”
– ABC News, June 4, 2002

“Many people assumed Bush misspoke and intended to ‘secure’ the nuclear material. Presumably he did not mean the literal definition of ‘securitize,’ which is to turn a commodity into a stock that can be traded -- Russian nukes on the Chicago Board of Trade.”
The Washington Post, May 28, 2002

“Bush can talk quite clearly on the subjects that most interest him: baseball, football, campaign tactics, putting men to death.  On the other hand, our president is extraordinarily tongue-tied when he’s trying, off the cuff, to sound a note of idealism, magnanimity or—especially—compassion.”
– Mark Crispin Miller, The Bush Dyslexicon

“Even the few defenders of the administration's Mideast zigzag admit that it looks like an incoherent response to each day's events.” – National Review, May 6, 2002, issue

“Asked whether the administration now recognizes Mr. Chávez as Venezuela's legitimate president, one administration official replied, ‘He was democratically elected,’ then added, ‘Legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters, however.’”
– The New York Times, April 16, 2002

“In pulling the plug on Dr. Laura Schlessinger, WLS-AM (890) will accomplish more than just ridding the airwaves of a shrill, judgmental, hypocritical know-it-all whose star has been falling as fast as her ratings.” – Chicago Sun-Times, April 2002.  Interesting that they didn’t mind her shrill, judgmental, hypocritical ways when her ratings were high.

“You read the papers and you watch television, so you know the kind of spider-brained, commercially poisoned piece-of-crap reporting you get in America." 
- Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

“Mr. Chairman, there are some of us who remember this world in the 1930s, when Hitler suspended the Bundestag to promulgate conservative ideology and not let people speak. It is a shame that the Republicans in the House, Mr. Chairman, have taken up that same ideology and are denying a chance for debate and open discussion of a budget. It does smack of fascism.”
– California Rep. Pete Stark, Congressional Record, March 20, 2002

"No, but it can be rented."
— Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), asked if his Senate vote could be bought – The 267 Stupidest Things Republicans/Democrats ever said, by Ted Rueter (Pg.10-Democrat section)

“At a certain point, don't accusers have to come up with something more concrete than the hypothesis that all of the most knowledgeable witnesses are lying, and that all of the corroborating documents are counterfeit?” – Roger Parloff, The American Lawyer, May 31, 2000

“Even though George W. Bush is president, Neil Bush can still see in him the 16-year-old who gave him and his younger brother 10 seconds to start running down the hall before firing BB pellets at them.”
– Utah County Daily Herald, March 2, 2002

“Our children deserve a world free of the terror of hunger, free of the terror of poor health care, free of the terror of homelessness, free of the terror of ignorance, free of the terror of hopelessness, free of the terror of policies which are committed to a world view which is not appropriate for the survival of a free people, not appropriate for the survival of democratic values, not appropriate for the survival of our nation, and not appropriate for the survival of the world.” - Dennis Kucinich, A Prayer for America

“Adam Smith's theory is incomplete. Self-interest alone can lead to disaster for all, [mathematician John] Nash demonstrated mathematically. Self-interest coupled with concern for the good of the group is most likely to benefit everyone.” – Marjorie Kelly, February 24, 2002  

“So what's next?  Support tax cuts or we'll break your legs?”
– Paul Krugman, The New York Times, February 19, 2002

“The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace.”
— General of the Army William T. Sherman, 20 July 1865 (Cited in U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda, December 1999, by General Henry H. Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff)

“This is terrible.” – Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, November 7, 2000, upon hearing that the television networks predict that Al Gore would win the election.

“It's the man in the suite, not the man in the street, who gets Republican attention.”
Mary McGrory, Boston Globe, February 9, 2002

“Fascism [is] ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as quoted by Norman Solomon, February 11, 2002

“The trouble with communism is communism, but the trouble with capitalism is capitalists.”
— Anonymous

"Money to get power, power to protect money." 
— Motto of the Medici family

"Whoever wants to fight lies and ignorance today, whoever wants to speak truth, must surmount at least five difficulties. He must have

     the courage to speak the truth when it is everywhere stifled;
          the intelligence to recognize it when it is everywhere hidden;
               the art to make it manageable like a weapon;
                    the judgment to choose who will know how to make it effective;
                          and finally the guile to make them understand it."

— Bertold Brecht, 1935

“People react to fear, not love - they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.”
— Richard M. Nixon

“Government by organized money is just as bad as government by organized mob.”
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“For those who worry about how I say things, my attitude is, ‘Too bad.’”
— George W. Bush, January 23, 2002

“Nobody cares about national security. It's all a money game. This is directly pursuant to what George [H.W.] Bush said in 1992 about the continuous ‘consolidation of power and money into higher, tighter, and righter hands.’ This stems from the belief that the people are nothing more than fodder for the schemes and ambitions of those that govern them. Keep the people simple Keep the people stupid.” [Emphasis added.]
— Al Martin

“[The Enron collapse] will remind everyone -- some conservatives, painfully -- that a mature capitalist economy is a government project. A properly functioning free market system does not spring spontaneously from society's soil as dandelions spring from suburban lawns. Rather, it is a complex creation of laws and mores that guarantee, among much else, transparency, meaning a sufficient stream -- torrent, really -- of reliable information about the condition and conduct of corporations.”
— George F. Will, January 14, 2002  

“To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“All in all, it's been a fabulous year for Laura and me.”
— George Bush, December 21, 2001

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
—Benito Mussolini (cited by Lewis Lapham in Harper's, January 2002)

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?”
— Joseph Welch, special counsel in the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings.

“To those . . . who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of goodwill to remain silent in the face of evil.”
— Attorney General John Ashcroft, December 6, 2001

“It may have seemed meaningless at the time, but now we know why 7,000 people sacrificed their lives -- so that we'd all forget how Bush stole a presidential election.”
— Ted Rall, September 27, 2001

“We're at war with whoever Bush decides is our enemy. Not only won't he tell us how or why they're our enemies, he won't tell us how or why we're attacking them or how or why our citizens are getting killed trying to do it. Welcome to 'cause-I-said-so-ocracy.”
— Ted Rall, September 27, 2001

“I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch;
“Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear,
“Its echo in my heart.”
— Lord Byron  

“Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
— Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
— George W. Bush, December 18, 2000

"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it."
— George W. Bush, July 26, 2001

“Who cares what you think?”
— George W. Bush, July 4, 2001

"I wouldn't put it past me."  
— George W. Bush, October 23, 2001

“Bush promised during the presidential campaign to avoid tapping Social Security except in cases of war, recession or a national emergency. ‘Lucky me. I hit the trifecta,’ Bush told Daniels shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the budget director.”
— Miami Herald, November 29, 2001

“When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall... Think of it ... always.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it ."
— Edward R. Murrow

Peace

If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.

— Lao-Tse

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that!”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before dinner.”
— Lewis Carroll , Through the Looking Glass

“What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they  are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say  about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.”
— Robert Kennedy

“There are things for which an uncompromising stand is worthwhile.”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Communication leads to community—that is, to understanding, intimacy, and mutual valuing.”
— Rollo May

“Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.”
 — Italian Proverb

“If you don't take chances, you can't do anything in life.”
– Michael Spinks

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country...Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
— Abraham Lincoln, November 12, 1864

“First they ignore you.
“Then they laugh at you.
“Then they fight you.
“Then you win.”
— Gandhi

“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”
— Victor Hugo

“If you once cede to the Court the power to decide elections, let alone even the power to halt counting of the votes, then you have ceded it everything.”
— Renata Adler, “Irreparable Harm”, The New Republic, July 30, 2001

“Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”
— John Paul Stevens, December 12, 2000

“It is a position not to be controverted, that the earth ... was and ever would have continued to be, the COMMON PROPERTY OF THE HUMAN RACE.”
— Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice, 1797

“If everyone lit just one little candle, what a bright world this would be.”
— The Christophers

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”
— Abraham Lincoln

“I never gave them hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it is hell.”
— Harry Truman

"If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”
— Adlai Stevenson

 “I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”
— Will Rogers

Reminder

First they came for the Communists,
  and I didn’t speak up,
    because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
  and I didn’t speak up,
    because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
  and I didn’t speak up,
    because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
  and by that time there was no one
    left to speak up for me.

by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

"You must do the things you think you cannot do."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

“We can only be what we give ourselves the power to be.”
— A Cherokee Feast of Days

"Most ignorances are vincible, and in the greater number of cases stupidity is what the Buddha pronounced it to be, a sin. For, consciously, or subconsciously, it is with deliberation that we do not know or fail to understand—because incomprehension allows us, with a good conscience, to evade unpleasant obligations and responsibilities, because ignorance is the best excuse for going on doing what one likes, but ought not, to do."
— Aldous Huxley

“Talk to people about what our real choices are…  Our way works better…  Stick with us, keep talking and think how much better it will be if we keep going forward together.”
— Bill Clinton, Democratic Business Council 20th Anniversary Dinner, June 28, 2001

“A man who is not liberal at sixteen has no heart. A man who is not conservative at sixty has no head.”
— Benjamin Disraeli

“A woman knows that we must have both heart and head, no matter what our age.”
— Moi

“Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.” [Current-day conservatives worship certain parts of antiquity.]
— Benjamin Disraeli

“Party is organized opinion.” [The Democratic Party is disorganized opinion.]
— Benjamin Disraeli

“Hasn't America seen enough of the exclusionary, prejudicial, vote-suppressing, racial -profiling, inner city-ignoring, confederate flag-waving, Bob Jones University -loving attitudes of the radical right?"
— Patrick Kennedy

"Our society has facilitated wealth-building by creating order, protecting freedom, creating laws to govern property relations and our marketplace, and investing in an educated work force. What's wrong with the most successful people putting one-quarter of their wealth back into the place that made their wealth and success possible? Many people repay their universities this way. Why not their country?"
— Bill Gates, Sr.

"Liberalism is the only mature political philosophy of our time. That is, it is the only philosophy suited both to humanity’s virtues and to its inevitable flaws, to its aspirations and its desires."
 — Kevin Baker, in “A Buried Life”, Harper’s Magazine, May 2001

 “Mind your own business, so you won’t be minding mine”
— Steve Goodman

"Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?"
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"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

"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." 
— Adolf Hitler

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing.  Those who count the votes decide everything."
— Attributed to Josef V. Stalin, though the attribution is disputed  

“...I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
–  Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (Letter to Col. William F. Elkins)

Ancient Chinese proverb: "Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause."

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
— Edmund Burke

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
— Winston Churchill, June 4, 1940

“In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity; in peace, goodwill.”
— Winston Churchill

“Bush calls to mind Churchill's line, when told that a certain person he didn't like was nonetheless a modest man, that ‘he has much to be modest about.’”
— Harold Myerson, Los Angeles Weekly, January 26, 2001

“If we are going to allow somebody to request a recount, the intent obviously is that you expect a recount to be included.”
– Tom Brown, an author of Florida's election laws, quoted in The New York Times , November 15, 2000

“If you walk backwards, you’ll find out you can go forwards and people won’t know if you’re coming or going.”
— Casey Stengal

“I do not think that winning is the most important thing.  I think winning is the only thing.”
— Bill Veeck

“Winning is not the most important thing; it's everything.”
— Vince Lombardi

“If winning is the only thing, does that make 99.9% of us losers?”
— Moi

Yogi Berra

On the tight 1973 National League pennant race: "It ain't over 'til its over."

“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

“It’s déjà vu all over again.”

"You can observe a lot by watching."

Lefty Gomez, pitcher:  "I'd rather be lucky than good."

Leo Durocher, manager:  "Nice guys finish last."

Dizzy Dean, pitcher:  "It ain't braggin' if you can back it up."

Satchel Paige, pitcher:

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

“Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it don't matter.”

“Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.”

Last changed: December 13, 2009