A quotation from Bastiat

When plunder has become a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
 
[Lorsque la Spoliation est devenue le moyen d’existence d’une agglomération d’hommes unis entre eux par le lien social, ils se font bientôt une loi qui la sanctionne, une morale qui la glorifie.]

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) French philosopher, economist, politician
Economic Sophisms [Sophismes Économiques], 2nd Series, ch. 1 “Physiology of Plunder [Physiologie de la Spoliation]” (1848) [tr. Goddard (1964)]

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A quotation from John Flanagan

ROMANA: Please, please, can we do just one thing at a time?
THE DOCTOR: First things first?
ROMANA: Exactly.
THE DOCTOR: But not necessarily in that order.

John Flanagan (b. 1944) English writer, actor
Doctor Who (1963), 18×02 “Meglos,” Part 1 (1980-09-27) [with Andrew McCulloch]

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A quotation from Douglas Adams

   ARTHUR: You know, it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.
   FORD: Why, what did she tell you?
   ARTHUR: I don’t know, I didn’t listen.

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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A quotation from Jane Austen

Nobody who has not been in the interior of a family can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) English author
Emma, Vol. 1, ch. 18 [Emma] (1816)

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A quotation from Bertrand Russell

To ignore our opportunities for knowledge, imperfect as they are, is like going to the theatre and not listening to the play. The world is full of things that are tragic or comic, heroic or bizarre or surprising, and those who fail to be interested in the spectacle that it offers are forgoing one of the privileges that life has to offer.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Conquest of Happiness, Part 2, ch. 15 “Impersonal Interests” (1930)

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A quotation from Thomas Fuller

A courageous Foe is better than a cowardly Friend.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs (compiler), # 56 (1732)

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A quotation from Abraham Lincoln

My note to you I certainly did not expect to see in print; yet I have not been much shocked by the newspaper comments on it. Those comments constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter (1863-11-02) to James H. Hackett

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A quotation from Emerson

We refuse sympathy and intimacy with people, as if we waited for some better sympathy and intimacy to come. But whence and when? To-morrow will be like to-day. Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live. Our friends and fellow-workers die off from us. Scarcely can we say we see new men, new women, approaching us. We are too old to regard fashion, too old to expect patronage of any greater or more powerful. Let us suck the sweetness of those affections and consuetudes that grow near us. These old shoes are easy to the feet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Essay (1841), “Prudence,” Essays: First Series, No. 7

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A quotation from Bill Watterson

CALVIN: Everybody seeks happiness! Not me, though! That’s the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn’t good enough for me! I demand euphoria!

Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1993-10-20)

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A quotation from Ambrose Bierce

OBLIVION, n. The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame’s eternal dumping ground. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Oblivion,” The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

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A quotation from Arendt

The consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity by the new mass leaders springs from more than their natural resentment against everything they cannot understand. Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable. Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
The Origins of Totalitarianism, Part 3, ch. 10 “A Classless Soceity” (1958 ed.)

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A quotation from Herbert Hoover

In the Middle Ages it was the fashion to wear hair shirts to remind one’s self of trouble and sin. Many years ago I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The President differs only from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) American engineer, bureaucrat, US President (1929-33)
Speech (1929-12-14), Gridiron Club, Willard Hotel, Washington, D.C.

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A quotation from A. A. Milne

   “And how are you?” said Winnie-the-Pooh.
   Eeyore shook his head from side to side.
   “Not very how,” he said. “I don’t seem to have felt at all how for a long time.”

A. A. Milne (1882-1956) English poet and playwright [Alan Alexander Milne]
Winnie-the-Pooh, ch. 4 “Eeyore Loses a Tail” (1926)

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A quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt

In the democracies of the world, the passion for freedom of speech and of thought is always accentuated when there is an effort anywhere to keep ideas away from people and to prevent them from making their own decisions. One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education and thus make it impossible for them to understand what is going on in the world as a whole. […] The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books, but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1943-05-11), “My Day”

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A quotation from John Adams

Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics. There must be a possitive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power, and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real Liberty. And this public Passion must be Superiour to all private Passions. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions, and Interests, nay their private Friendships and dearest Connections, when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society.

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 Henry Commager

If government, or those in positions of power and authority, can silence criticism by the argument that such criticism might be misunderstood somewhere, there is an end to all criticism, and perhaps an end to our kind of political system. For men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998) American historian, writer, activist
Essay (1965-12-18), “The Problem of Dissent,” Saturday Review

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A quotation from Montesquieu

As useless laws weaken necessary laws, those that can be evaded weaken legislation.
 
[Comme les lois inutiles affaiblissent les lois nécessaires, celles qu’on peut éluder affaiblissent la législation.]

Charles-Lewis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) French political philosopher
Spirit of Laws [The Spirit of the Laws; De l’esprit des lois], Book 29, ch. 16 (1748) [tr. Cohler/Miller/Stone (1989)]

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A quotation from Hyman Rickover

Somehow, things just didn’t work out the way the books on administration and on leadership said they should, and I early became aware that I could never qualify as a leader, if it were really necessary that I possess the twenty or so qualities most books or articles on leadership claimed to be necessary. So far, I have found no one in the Navy or in industry who possesses more than a few of these qualities, and so I have regretfully come to the conclusion that the only person who ever possessed all of them died some 1900 years ago.

Hyman Rickover (1900-1986) American naval engineer, submariner, US Navy Admiral
Speech (1954-03-16), “Administering a Large Military Development Project,” US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California

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A quotation from Victor Hugo

God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.
 
[Dieu se manifeste à nous au premier degré à travers la vie de l’univers, et au deuxième degré à travers la pensée de l’homme. La deuxième manifestation n’est pas moins sacrée que la première. La première s’appelle la Nature, la deuxième s’appelle l’Art.]

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
William Shakespeare, Part 1, Book 2, ch. 1 (1864) [tr. Anderson (1886)]

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A quotation from Thomas De Quincey

For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of the time.

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) English writer, essayist, literary critic
Essay (1839-11), “Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 289

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A quotation from Wendell Berry

We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Essay (1970-01-01), “Compromise, Hell!” Orion Magazine

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A quotation from Joseph Addison

Though a man has all other perfections, and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
Essay (1711-11-17), The Spectator, No. 225

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A quotation from Judith Martin

It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
(Attributed)

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A quotation from Shakespeare

KING: Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 3, sc. 1, l. 203ff (3.1.203) (c. 1600)

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A quotation from Peter De Vries

One dreams of the goddess Fame and winds up with the bitch Publicity.

Peter De Vries (1910-1993) American editor, novelist, satirist
The Mackerel Plaza, ch. 12 (1958)

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A quotation from Terry Pratchett

You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Discworld No. 31, Monstrous Regiment [Vimes] (2003)

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A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power.
 
[Nul ne mérite d’être loué de bonté, s’il n’a pas la force d’être méchant: toute autre bonté n’est le plus souvent qu’une paresse ou une impuissance de la volonté.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶237 (1665-1678) [tr. Tancock (1959)]

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A quotation from Henri Estienne

If youth knew; if age could.
 
[O si jeunesse scavoit,
O si vieillesse pouvoit.]

Henri Estienne (1528 or 1531-1598) French printer and classical scholar [a.k.a. Henricus Stephanus]
Les Prémices, ou Le I livre Des Proverbes epigrammatizez [The First Fruits, or the First Book of Epigrammatized Proverbs], ch. 4, ep. 4 (1594)

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A quotation from Mark Twain

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Quoted in Merle Johnson, ed., More Maxims of Mark (1927)

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A quotation from C. C.; Colton

Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.

Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer, aphorist
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Vol. 1, § 554 (1820)

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A quotation from Herb Stein

If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

Herb Stein (1916-1999) American economist
Stein’s Law (1980s)

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