A quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because, you know, you can’t give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Sermon (1967-12-24), “A Christmas Sermon on Peace,” Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta

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A quotation from Victor Hugo

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
(Attributed)

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A quotation from Jean Kerr

The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.

Jean Kerr (1922-2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
Essay (1957), “How to Get the Best of Your Children,” Please Don’t Eat the Daisies

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A quotation from Wendell Berry

It is impossible not to notice how little the proponents of the ideal of competition have to say about honesty, which is the fundamental economic virtue, and how very little they have to say about community, compassion, and mutual help.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Essay (1988), “Economy and Pleasure,” What Are People For? (1990)

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

VELLUM: There is nothing more requisite in business than dispatch.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Drummer, Act 5, sc. 1 (1716)

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A quotation from Walter Raleigh

O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far stretchèd greatness, all the pride, cruelty and ambition of man, and covered it all over with those two narrow words, Hic jacet!

Walter Raleigh (c. 1552-1618) English statesman, soldier, writer, explorer
The Historie of the World, in Five Bookes, Book 5, ch. 6, sec. 12 (1614)

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A quotation from Shakespeare

GLOUCESTER: We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
King Lear, Act 1, sc. 2, l. 118ff (1.2.118-121) (1606)

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A quotation from Aldous Huxley

All propaganda directed against an opposing group has but one aim: to substitute diabolical abstractions for concrete persons. The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. By robbing them of their personality, he puts them outside the pale of moral obligation. Mere symbols can have no rights — particularly when that of which they are symbolical is, by definition, evil.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
Essay (1936), “Words and Behaviour,” The Olive Tree, and Other Essays

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A quotation from Terry Pratchett

You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless, and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape — the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes — we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 8, Guards! Guards! (1989)

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A quotation from Adlai Stevenson

I am not sure that, historically, there has been another powerful nation that has been trusted as the United States is trusted today. It is something new under the sun when the proudest nations on earth have not only accepted American leadership in the common defense effort, but have also welcomed our troops and bases on their territory.

Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech (1952-08-27), “The Nature of Patriotism,” American Legion Convention, Madison Square Garden, New York City

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A quotation from Mark Twain

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
(Attributed)

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A quotation from C. C. Colton

The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.

Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, § 443 (1820)

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A quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. It seems a pity to sit, like the Lady of Shalott, peering into a mirror, with your back turned on all the bustle and glamour of reality.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1877-07), “An Apology for Idlers,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 36

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A quotation from Orwell

One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognises the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilisation it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1941-02-19), “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius,” Part 1 “England Your England,” sec. 1, The Searchlight Books [ed. Fyvel and Orwell]

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A quotation from Eisenhower

Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 143,000,000 followers, it will no longer be America. Truly American leadership is not of any one man. It is of multitudes of men — and women.

Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Essay (1948-10), “An Open Letter to America’s Students,” Reader’s Digest

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A quotation from Abraham Lincoln

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.” When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter (1854-08-24) to Joshua Speed

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A quotation from Kerry Greenwood

Neither struck her as particularly experienced. The night would degenerate into the usual problems with an orgy: where to put what and where and when, and how to find room for one’s elbows.

Kerry Greenwood (b. 1954) Australian author and lawyer
Phryne Fisher No. 10, Death Before Wicket, ch. 7 (2003)

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A quotation from Christopher Marlowe

FAUSTUS: Tell me what is that Lucifer thy lord?
MEPHISTOPHILIS: Arch-regent and commander of all spirits.
FAUSTUS: Was not that Lucifer an angel once?
MEPHISTOPHILIS: Yes, Faustus, and most dearly lov’d of God.
FAUSTUS: How comes it, then, that he is prince of devils?
MEPHISTOPHILIS: O, by aspiring pride and insolence;
   For which God threw him from the face of heaven.

Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (1564-1593) English dramatist and poet
The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Act 3, sc. 3 (sc. 3), l. 306ff (1594; 1604 “A” text)

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A quotation from Teddy Roosevelt

Life can mean nothing worth meaning, unless its prime aim is the doing of duty, the achievement of results worth achieving.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901–1909)
Speech (1903-09-07), “The Square Deal,” Labor Day, New York State Agricultural Association, New York State Fair, Syracuse

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A quotation from Thomas Carlyle

His Religion is not an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not “succeed by being an easy religion.” As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, could succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense, — sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Lecture (1840-05-08), “The Hero as Prophet,” Home House, Portman Square, London

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A quotation from Cicero

Those very philosophers even in the books which they write about despising glory, put their own names on the title-page. In the very act of recording their contempt for renown and notoriety, they desire to have their own names known and talked of.
 
[Ipsi illi philosophi etiam illis libellis, quos de contemnenda gloria scribunt, nomen suum inscribunt; in eo ipso in quo praedicationem nobilitatemque despiciunt, praedicari de se, ac nominari volunt.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Pro Archia Poeta [For Archia the Poet], ch. 11 / sec. 26 (62 BC) [tr. Yonge (1856)]

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A quotation from Josh Billings

Old dorgs nuss their grudges, but yung purps fite, and then frolick.
 
[Old dogs nurse their grudges, but young pups fight and then frolic.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1870-06 (1870 ed.)

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A quotation from Eric Hoffer

The real persuaders are our appetites, our fears, and above all our vanity. The skillful propagandist stirs and coaches these internal persuaders.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 218 (1955)

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A quotation from Benjamin Franklin

Keep thou from the Opportunity, and God will keep thee from the Sin.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1744 ed.)

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A quotation from C. S. Lewis

   No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
   At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Grief Observed, ch. 1 (1961)

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A quotation from John Adams

Every Man must seriously set himself to root out his Passions, Prejudices and Attachments, and to get the better of his private Interest. The only reputable Principle and Doctrine must be that all Things must give Way to the public.

John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Letter (1776-04-16) to Mercy Otis Warren

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A quotation from Thoreau

No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Walden; or, Life in the Woods, ch. 1 “Economy” (1854)

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A quotation from Franklin Roosevelt

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Speech (1945-04-13), Jefferson Day (undelivered)

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A quotation from Montaigne

There are few men, that would dare to publish the secret requests they make to God.
 
[Il est peu d’hommes qui ozassent mettre en evidence les requestes secrettes qu’ils font à Dieu.]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 1, ch. 56 (1.56), “Of Prayers [Des prieres]” (1572-1580) [tr. Florio (1603)]

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A quotation from Heinlein

Vox Populi, Vox Dei translates as “My God! How did we get in this mess!”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Glory Road, ch. 17 (1963)

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A quotation from Marc Platt

THE DOCTOR: It’s very, very old. Perhaps even older.

Marc Platt (b. 1953) British novelist and playwright
Doctor Who (1963), 26×02 “Ghost Light,” Part 2 (1989-10-11)

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A quotation from Douglas Adams

NARRATOR: This planet has, or had, a problem which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English author, humourist, screenwriter
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Phase 1, “Fit the 2nd” (BBC Radio) (1978-03-15)

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