Quotes to inspire and reflect

The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearnings after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.

It is hard to fight against impulsive desire; whatever it wants it will buy at the cost of the soul.

A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.

Other people’s appetites easily appear excessive when one doesn’t share them.

There are mornings when all men experience with fatigue a flush of tenderness that makes them horny.

If you desire many things, many things will seem but a few.

Make us, not fly to dreams, but moderate desire.

Mankind, why do ye set your hearts on things / That, of necessity, may not be shared?

Are you pro- or anti-macassar?

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

We often have to put up with most from those on whom we most depend.

Hegel held that the two sexes were of necessity different, the one being active and the other passive, and of course the female would be the passive one.

Actually I only wanted to have my tartar removed, though I had my suspicions: He’s sure to find something. They always find something.

Dentist, n. A prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coins out of your pocket.

We are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few.

The essence of a republican government is not command. It is consent.

Self-criticism is the secret weapon of democracy, and candor and confession are good for the political soul.

If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters.

Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.

Democracy is not a static thing. It is an everlasting march.

The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.

Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows.

The blind lead the blind. It’s the democratic way.

Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is everybody’s equal.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

What democracy needs most of all is a party that will separate the good that is in it theoretically from the evils that beset it practically, and then try to erect that good into a workable system.

Democracy is the superior form of government, because it is based on a respect for man as a reasonable being.

Self-government requires qualities of self-denial and restraint.

You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.

Modesty and reverence are no less virtues of freemen than the democratic feeling which will submit neither to arrogance nor to servility.

My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest. This can never happen except through non-violence.

The evils of popular government appear greater than they are; there is compensation for them in the spirit and energy it awakens.

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be.

The most may err as grossly as the few.

Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.

When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.

All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy. Because everybody’s mind is capable of true knowledge, you don’t have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.

It’s characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.

Where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up.

Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers.

Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.

By-and-by is easily said.

Define, define, well-educated infant.

Delay always breeds danger and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.

The core of our defense is the faith we have in the institutions we defend.

Diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another. Either alone would fail.

It may well be that we shall by a process of sublime irony have reached a state in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

Each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilisation, more marvelous and more splendid than any that has gone before.