Never confuse motion with action.
The left-handed are precious; they take places which are inconvenient for the rest.
Victor Hugo
Les Misérables, 1862
The key to this whole business is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
Ninety percent of the game is half mental.
Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
Don’t say the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.
It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.
Life is a joke that has only just begun.
There is no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.
If men can run the world, why can’t they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.
Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning.
One today is worth two tomorrows.
If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.
…there is a difference between logic and wisdom.
Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
For every complex problem there is a solution which is straightforward, simple, and wrong.
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
If we can’t convince others that our way is best, maybe we should humbly consider the possibility that it isn’t!
Mary Ruwart
The Liberator Online 18 April 2001
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, 1957
There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, just the way President Clinton did.
Timothy C. May
email signature
The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing everyone he didn’t exist.
Verbal Kint
in The Usual Suspects, 1995
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he’ll be a mile away and barefoot.
Anonymous email signature
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Let others seek what is safe. Utter misery is safe; for the fear of any worse event is taken away.
Ovid
Epistulae ex Ponto, Bk ii, eleg 2, 1 31
A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking.
People seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication.
If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbors.
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
If there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own — that thing is the preservation of their own liberties and institutions.
Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is Force, like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
James Madison
speech in the 1788 Virginia Convention
They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Ben Franklin
Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
God may be subtle, but He isn’t plain mean.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
What a cruel reflection that a rich country cannot long be a free one.
Thomas Jefferson
Travels in France, 1787
In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.
Thomas Jefferson
Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782
Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government.
Thomas Jefferson
to John Adams, 1796
Thomas Jefferson
to John Cartwright, 1824
How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object — the happiness of man — to the selfish interest of kings, nobles, and priests.
Thomas Jefferson
to Ellen W. Coolidge, 1825
Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, they don’t hurt anybody. When they do something, they can be dangerous.
Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves.
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
The idea that ‘the public interest’ supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others.
If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses.
The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all.
…liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power…
James Madison
The Federalist, no. 63, 1788
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy.
Christopher Dawson
The Judgement of the Nations, 1942
No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
Judge Gideon J. Tucker
Final Accounting in the Estate of A.B., 1866
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
Justice William O. Douglas
Public Utilities v. Pollak, 1952
The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
General William Westmoreland
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
V
in V for Vendetta, 2005
Now what liberty can there be where property is taken without consent?
The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.
The fact is that government, like a highwayman, says to a man: “Your money or your life.”
Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.
The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.
Thomas Paine
The Age of Reason, Part I, 1793
Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one…
Thomas Paine
Common Sense, 1776
I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Government, 1849
The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
Henry David Thoreau
Journals
26 September 1859
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Government, 1849
There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
Henry David Thoreau
Resistance to Civil Government, 1849
…he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden (Life in the Woods), 1854
The universe is wider than our views of it.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden (Life in the Woods), 1854
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Thomas Paine
Common Sense, 1776
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
Thomas Paine
The American Crisis, 1776
The rule is perfect; in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
Mark Twain
Christian Science and the Book of Mrs. Eddy, 1899
Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.
Mark Twain
Europe and Elsewhere. Corn Pone Opinions, 1925
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
Mark Twain
The Innocents Abroad, 1869
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly and I did. I said I didn't know.
Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi, 1883
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi, 1883
H’aint we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?
Mark Twain
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889
Adam was but human — this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
Mark Twain
Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn’t.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
It is easier to stay out than to get out.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do.
Mark Twain
Following the Equator, 1897
Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
Mark Twain
The Mysterious Stranger, 1916
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do.
Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate
Government “help” to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.
The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.
I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalize everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalization, and they’re now trying to control everything by other means. They’re progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people.
Margaret Thatcher
5 February 1976
Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things.
Thomas Paine
Common Sense, 1776
Just think how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are even stupider!
The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions.
Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster is a maniac?
The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.
I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.
We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
It's hard to see how you can pay off a multi-trillion dollar debt even if you mug the rich. It's not even clear how we could stop the debt from increasing every year until cannibalism breaks out.
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.
Thomas Sowell
1992
Ships are safe in harbors, but that's not what ships are for…
Unknown
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson (attr)
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
Edward Abbey
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 1990
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Edward Abbey
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 1990
The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.
Edward Abbey
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 1990
The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living, and the get rich quick theory of life.
The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.
Theodore Roosevelt
11 November 1902
Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.
Theodore Roosevelt
August 1912
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism… The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.
Theodore Roosevelt
12 October 1915
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
Theodore Roosevelt
7 May 1918
If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.
Theodore Roosevelt
10 April 1899, The Strenuous Life
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
Lord Acton
letter to Mary Gladstone, 24 April 1881
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.
In history, some of the worst disasters have been caused by idealists trying to force people into “doing what is good for them.” Such idealism not only leads to suffering among its innocent victims, but also to delusion and corruption of the idealists applying the force. I also find idealists prone to ignore experience and experiment that inconveniently clashes with dogma or theory.
Bjarne Stroustrup
The Design and Evolution of C++, 1994
Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
George Washington
Farewell Address (¶27), September 17, 1796
If, in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.—But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.
George Washington
Farewell Address (¶26), September 17, 1796
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.
We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.
Ronald Reagan
July 31, 1968
Without God there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience. … without God there is a coarsening of the society; without God democracy will not and cannot long endure.
Ronald Reagan
August 23, 1984
If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, then error will be. If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendency. If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will. If the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of this land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.
Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.
If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.
I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.
No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm … that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.
Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA — ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the state.
If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege.
Honorable J. A. Williams, Circuit Judge
Wilson v. State, 33 Ark. 557, 34 Am. Rep. 52 (1878)
The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts; not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
Abraham Lincoln
Speech in Cincinnati OH, September 17, 1859
The only way to get from here to there is to go someplace else first.
Almost anything is easier to get into than to get out of.
Allen’s Law
After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.
Farndick’s Corollary
Nobody notices the big errors.
Mayne’s Law
If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that shows you tried.
The most interesting results happen only once.
Tenenbaum’s Law of Replicability
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Harrison’s Postulate
You cannot push a noodle anywhere.
If you call a tail a leg, how may legs does a dog have? Four, just because you call a tail a leg doesn’t make it one!
Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.
Imbesi’s Law of the Conservation of Filth
But you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean.
Freeman’s Extension
The length of a progress report is inversely proportional to the amount of progress.
Sweeney’s Law
There is no job so simple that it cannot be done wrong.
Perrussel’s Law
It requires less energy to take an object out of its proper place than to put it back.
MacPherson’s Theory of Entropy
Fish and a candidate’s promise are worthless after three days.
Fein’s Law of Political Campaigns
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above average drivers.
Grelb’s Reminder
Four-wheel-drive just means getting stuck in more inaccessible places.
Phillip’s Law
Using state-of-the-art software design and development tools just means creating bugs that are more difficult to track down and fix.
Colley’s Corollary to Phillip’s Law
Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
Law of Probable Dispersal
A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
Gourd’s Axiom
The less work an organization produces, the more frequently it reorganizes.
Jacobson’s Law
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what’s for lunch.
It ain’t the things you don’t know what gets you into trouble; it’s the things you know for sure what ain’t so.
The early worm gets eaten first.
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
We have plenty of athletes with the desire to win. We need more athletes with the desire to prepare to win.
A famous football coach
As I get older, I find that my fantasies focus less on improbable situations with Sports Illustrated swimsuit models and more on scenes where I am slamming a software developer’s head against a wall while screaming “IS THIS THE BEST YOU CAN DO!?!”
Jesse Berst, Windows Watcher
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
