Quotations

My true religion is kindness.
-- Dalai Lama

Politicians in government should be changed regularly, like diapers, for the same reason.
-- Richard Davies

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.
-- Robertson Davies

But what can just one of us do?
Against all that money and power
Trying to crush us into roaches?
We can start by not lying so much
And treating other people like dirt
It's easy not to base our lives
On how much we can scam
And you know
It feels good to lift that monkey off our backs.
--Dead Kennedys, "Stars and Stripes of Corruption"

Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
-- Charles de Gaulle

I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep.
-- J. M. De Maistre

Knowledge of means without knowledge of ends is animal training.
-- Everett Dean

I did not realize that similarity was required for the exercise of compassion.
-- Delenn, from Babylon5

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
-- Vine Deloria, Jr.

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain any more so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure.
-- "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel C. Dennett

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.
-- Denis Diderot

Each battle has 3 parts: the plan, which is forever changed by contact with the enemy; reality, which is never what it seems; and the memory of what took place, which evolves to meet current needs. Successful officers trust none of them.
-- William C. Dietz

If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behavior?
-- New York State Senator James Donovan, speaking in support of capital punishment

Violence has no constitutional sanction; and every government from the beginning has moved against it. But where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the Establishment, violence may be the only effective response.
-- William O. Douglas

Beware the fury of a patient man.
-- Dryden

In defense, you hush your voices and obliterate your tracks, hidden as ghosts and spirits beneath the earth, invisible to anyone. On the attack, your movement is swift and your cry shattering, fast as thunder and lightning, as though coming from the sky, impossible to prepare for.
-- Du Mu, commentaries on The Art of War

The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war their finest qualities.
-- John Foster Dulles

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
-- Will Durant

When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a six-year-old. "It is always so," my mother said. "You do things together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ... Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.
-- Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope"

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