Quotes For You

Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy... - Abraham Lincoln

Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. - Sir Winston Churchill

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. - Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice

The essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income. - Ludwig von Mises

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The winds that blow our billions away return burdened with themes of scorn and dispraise. - Garet Garrett

The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics... - Simone Weil

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die. - Mary Roberts Rinehart

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses... - Harry Emerson Fosdick

The chain reaction of evil - wars producing more wars must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence. - Mahatma Gandhi

What's driving the conflict is the radical inequality between the Jewish minority, that rules all of the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and the disenfranchised Palestinian majority, who are paying the price for the luxury that Israel lives in...But what pays for that normality for Israelis is the total dispossession of the majority population. And Israel believes that it can hide them behind walls, in ghettos, as was done to Jews in Europe in the 1930s and '40s. - Ali Abunimah, Activist, Author

[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. - Yitzak Rabin, Former PM of Israel

The partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized... Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And, forever. - Menachem Begin, Former Israeli PM

You don't simply bundle people onto trucks and drive them away. I prefer to advocate a positive policy, to create, in effect, a condition that in a positive way will induce people to leave. - Ariel Sharon, former Israeli PM - Aug 24, 1988

There's no such thing as a Palestinian people. It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist. - Golda Meir, Former PM of Israel

It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands. - Ariel Sharon, Agence France Presse, 11/15/1998

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. - John Stuart Mill

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything. - Napoleon Hill

A human being is a single being. Unique and unrepeatable. - Eileen Caddy, Spiritual guide and author

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies. - Caroll Quigley, Author of Tragedy & Hope

Laughter is the brush that sweeps away the cobwebs of the heart. - Mort Walker

One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence. - Charles A. Beard, historian (1874-1948)

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. - Oliver Wendell Holmes .

Intelligence is of the essence in warfare it is what the armies depend upon in their every move. - Sun Tzu

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. - Ludwig Wittgenstein .

Go some distance away because the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony of proportion is rapidly seen. - Leonardo da Vinci .

Some people will like me and some won't. So I might as well be myself, and then at least I'll know that the people who like me, like me. - Hugh Prather.

You see things: you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were: and say 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw

The miserable have no other medicine but only hope. - William Shakespeare , Act III, Scene I, Measure for Measure

In joining battle, seek the quick victory. If battle is protracted, your weapons will be blunted and your troops demoralized. If you lay siege to a walled city, you exhaust your strength. If your armies are kept in the field for a long time, your national reserves will not suffice. Where you have blunted your weapons, demoral ized your troops, exhausted your strength and depleted all available resources, the neighboring rulers will take advantage of your adversity to strike. And even with the wisest of counsel, you will not be able to turn the ensuing consequences to the good. There never has been a state that has benefited from an extended war. - Sun Tzu

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals. - Brian Tracy , Author and Speaker

The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. - Napoleon Hill

Do not take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. - Socrates

When a finger points to the moon the imbecile looks at the finger. - Chinese proverb

The greater the emphasis on perfection the further it recedes. - Haridas Chaudhuri

As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might. - Marian Anderson

The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed my men. - Ortega Y Gassett.

Someone once said that for every problem there is a solution that is simple, attractive ... and wrong. - Arthur C. Clarke

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. - Erica Jong .

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do notsometimes tyrannize him and thus force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability. - Samuel Johnson

Launching a breakthrough idea is like shooting skeet. People's needs change, so you must aim well ahead of the target to hit it. - Raymond Kurzweil

If at first, the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it. - Albert Einstein

Instead o pouring knowledge into people's heads, we need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so that we can see the world in a new way. - J S Brown

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. - Franklin P Jones

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. - Douglas Adams

...at present the race is advancing with a giant's pace, eradicating everything in its progress, first the buffalo and next the Indians; substituting for the unpretending barbarity of nature, the artificial government of meum and tuum, with the improvements in fraud and vice that are attendant upon those reasoning powers which make him so superior to the naked savage. - George Williamm Featherstonhaugh, 1835

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. - Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965)

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hope is always available to us. When we feel defeated, we need only take a deep breath and say, "Yes," and hope will reappear. - Monroe Forester

Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. - Mahatma Gandhi

It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow. - Robert H. Goddard

Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down. - Charles F. Kettering

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer. - Albert Einstein

But the moment you turn a corner you see another straight stretch ahead and there comes some further challenge to your ambition. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. - G.B. Shaw, Mrs. Warren's Profession, 1893

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. - Helen Keller

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there. - Josh Billings

Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves. - Dale Carnegie

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Within each of us is a hidden store of energy. Energy we can release to compete in the marathon of life. Within each of us is a hidden store of courage. Courage to give us the strength to face any challenge. Within each of us is a hidden store of determination. Determination to keep us in the race when all seems lost. - Roger Dawson

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself. - Mark Caine

Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again. - Sarah Ban Breathnach

Believe it is possible to solve your problem. Tremendous things happen to the believer. So believe the answer will come. It will. - Norman Vincent Peale

Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage. - Samuel Johnson

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes, and seeing them gratified. He that labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope, and afterwards rewarded by joy... To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity. - Samuel Johnson

America continues to remain the enigma it has always been – a curiously insular people administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government. - Robert Jensen

It is amazing that our souls--our eternal essences, with all their hopes and dreams and visions of an eternal world--are contained within these temporal bodies. No wonder suffering is part of the human condition. - Marion Woodman from the essay "Soul Moments"

The news and truth are not the same thing. - Walter Lippmann

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. - Samuel Ullman

The U.S. record of war crimes has been, from the 19th century to the present, a largely invisible one, with no government, no political leaders, no military officials, no lower-level operatives held accountable for criminal actions. Anyone challenging this mythology is quickly marginalized, branded a traitor or Communist or terrorist or simply a lunatic beyond the pale of reasonable discussion. - Carl Boggs

Not every one of our desires can be immediately gratified. We've got to learn to wait patiently for our dreams to come true, especially on the path we've chosen. But while we wait, we need to prepare symbolically a place for our hopes and dreams. - Sarah Ban Breathnach

Expect people to be better than they are; it helps them to become better. But don't be disappointed when they are not; it helps them to keep trying. - Merry Browne

A spiritually optimistic point of view holds that the universe is woven out of a fabric of love. Everything that is happening is ultimately for the good if we're willing to face it head-on and use our adversities for soul growth. - Joan Borysenko, Ph.D.

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. - Martin Luther King Jr.

True hope dwells on the possible, even when life seems to be a plot written by someone who wants to see how much adversity we can overcome. True hope responds to the real world, to real life; it is an active effort. - Walter Anderson, The Confidence Course: 7 Steps to Self-Fulfillment

Progress is the activity of today and the assurance of tomorrow. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We judge of man's wisdom by his hope. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, and courage, so long are you young. When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, and then only, are you grown old. - General Douglas MacArthur

Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. - William Shakespeare (1564-1616); Hamlet, Act 3, scene 1

Our society does a horrible job of teaching boys how to be men and that virtually every problem we face can somehow be traced back to this failure. - Jeffrey Marx, explaining Joe Ehrmann's philosophy

The International Coalition Against Terror is largely a cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, and they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction-chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modem history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. -Arundhati Roy, author and activist

It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream ...It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin. - Benjamin Elijah Mays, American educator (1895-1984)

The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly. - Noam Chomsky

Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set naught at books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fact is... that when totalitarian nations... play ball with U.S. business interests, we like them just fine. But when Venezuela's freely elected president threatens powerful corporate interests, the Bush administration treats him as an enemy. - Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times

Most Americans do not yet realize that a war is being waged - not against Iraq but against each of us. It is not the Republican Party that is charge in this administration but a small cadre who seized executive branch power and converted it to their own uses. Most Republicans are experiencing a deer-in-the-headlights moment right now. Their Party has been hijacked, their president has been hijacked, and they do not know what to do. I remain a registered Republican working for an effective coalition. - Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

In the beginning a patriot is a scarce man, hated and feared and scorned. But in time when his cause succeeds, the timid join him, because then it costs nothing to be patriot. -Mark Twain

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. - Albert Einstein

Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves. -Helen Keller

To criticize one's country is to do it a service. Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism – a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation. - J. William Fulbright, US Senator

To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them. - Michael Parenti

If fascism ever came to the United States, it would be wrapped in an American flag. - Huey Long

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

The problem the United States faces is that almost all of its invasions violate international law, and sometimes, as in the case of Iraq, in a blatant manner. So how do the political elite and the news media reconcile this contradiction? Simple: They ignore it. It is virtually unthinkable for a mainstream U.S. reporter to even pursue this issue. - John Nichols and Robert McChesney

The point of public relations slogans like 'Support our troops' is that they don't mean anything...That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about. - Noam Chomsky

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men. - Abraham Lincoln

Family life is full of major and minor crises -- the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce -- and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul. -Thomas Moore, Psychotherapist and Author

But violence quickly grows old. And it has lost confidence in itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally--since violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies--all loyalty lies in that. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn

From 1945 to 2003, the US attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist- nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair. - William Blum, Author of Killing Hope

The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominate political mythology. - Michael Parenti

We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness-embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television. - Howard Zinn, Historian

How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply refuse to do the master's bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to atoms and even kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience. Ultimately, therefore, it is I who am the victor and not he, for he has failed in getting me to do what he wanted done. Non-cooperation is directed not against...the Governors, but against the system they administer. The roots of non-cooperation lie not in hatred but injustice. -Mahatma Gandhi

War, at first, is the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off. -Karl Kraus, writer (1874-1936)

Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim. -Betty Friedan, Feminist, author

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group. -Franklin D. Roosevelt

If you shut up the truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way. - Emile Zola

When you've got a few gigantic transnational corporations, each one loaded down with debt, competing madly for as much shelf space and brain space as they can take, they are going to do whatever they think works the fastest and with the most people, which means that they will drag standards down. They're not going to be too nice about what they choose to do. They'll go directly for the please center. They're going to try to get you watching and buying right away, and what this means is that they are going to do as much trash as they can, because that will grab people. - Mark Crispin Miller, Media Critic, professor and author

Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretense that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth. - Mark Crispin Miller, Media Critic, professor and author

Television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation... Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information – misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing. - Neil Postman, media critic (1933 -2003)

Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world. In a democracy, even one as corrupted as ours, ultimate authority rests with the people. We empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence. If we are passive in the face of America's official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them. - Mark Hertzgaard, Journalist for The Nation

Americans are too broadly under-informed to digest nuggets of information that seem to contradict what they know of the world... Instead, news channels prefer to feed Americans a constant stream of simplified information, all of which fits what they already know. That way they don't have to devote more air time or newsprint space to explanations or further investigations. - Tom Fenton, former CBS News Foreign Correspondent

Show me thy company, and I'll tell thee who thou art. - Cervantes

The American press, with a very few exceptions, is a kept press. Kept by the big corporations the way a whore is kept by a rich man. - Theodore Dreiser, 1871-1945

The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. - Alex Carey

The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -Edward Abbey, author

You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead. - Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. --Edward Bernays, father of the PR Industry

All democracies turn into dictatorships - but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea...That's the issue that I've been exploring: How did the Republic turn into the Empire... and how does a democracy become a dictatorship? - George Lucas, Star Wars Filmmaker

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? --Patrick Henry

Forgiving means to pardon the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. And hoping means to hope when things are hopeless. -G.K. Chesterton

We do not exhort ourselves. We have not sufficiently matured to march into the squares and shout the truth out loud or to express aloud what we think. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Semantic slight of hand] begins with something as simple as inventing a euphemism to linguistically sanitize and obscure the horror and brutality of things as they actually are in real world. --Muhammad Abed, Philosopher/activist