Quotes to inspire and reflect

There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans...Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.

A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

I am eternally grateful. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal independence - these are the features of Jewish tradition that make me thank my stars that I belong to it.

Our own acts are isolated and one act does not buy absolution for another.

Never be bored, and you will never be boring.

We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.

Have not all races had their first unity from a mythology that marries them to rock and hill?

A child only educated at school is an uneducated child.

Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.

Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get them, get them right, or they will get you wrong. Dr.

Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him. Dr.

Money is the sinew of love as well as war. Dr.

With foxes we must play the fox. Dr.

Be gentle with the young.

I can take any amount of criticism as long as I can consider it unqualified praise.

For there is no question but a just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.

Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else.

Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.

It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.

Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.

All is ephemeral--fame and the famous as well.

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.

Somewhere between the Angels and the French lies the rest of humanity.

Better to rely on one powerful king than on many little princes.

The more laws, the less justice.

I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.

Since the dawn of time there have been those among us who have been willing to go to extraordinary lengths to gain access to that domain normally reserved for birds, angels, and madmen. Steven B.

Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood.

Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.

Never let your inferiors do you a favor - it will be extremely costly

Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

Do pleasant things yourself, but unpleasant things through others.

It is well enough that the people of this nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves.

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed: for everyone thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgement upon anything new.

There are two ways of resisting war: the legal way and the revolutionary way. The legal way involves the offer of alternative service not as a privilege for a few but as a right for all. The revolutionary view involves an uncompromising resistance, with a view to breaking the power of militarism in time of peace or the resources of the state in time of war.

It is characteristic of the military mentality that nonhuman factors (atom bombs, strategic bases, weapons of all sorts, the possession of raw materials, etc.) are held essential, while the human being, his desires, and thoughts - in short, the psychological factors - are considered as unimportant and secondary...The individual is degraded...to "human materiel".

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

The aim (of education) must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.