Lisa's quotes

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"I simply state that I'm a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation-with every reason to throw my mind and pen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were all blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones. I've thought I was right about life at various times, but faith is difficult. One thing I know. If living isn't seeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise)

5 people liked it

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see things that are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

14 people liked it

"Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

1 person liked it

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
— Mark Twain

tags: education
3,163 people liked it

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
— Mark Twain

tags: humor
2,053 people liked it

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."
— Mark Twain

tags: books, truth
1,123 people liked it

"Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it."
— Mark Twain

tags: politics
973 people liked it

"You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?"
— Mark Twain

tags: bible, books
497 people liked it

"We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents."
— Mark Twain

tags: satan
37 people liked it

"The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them."
— Mark Twain

tags: government
44 people liked it

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it."
— Voltaire

205 people liked it

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."
— Voltaire

58 people liked it

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

947 people liked it

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
— Albert Einstein

tags: science
1,574 people liked it

"Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler."
— Albert Einstein

tags: einstein, science, systems
514 people liked it

"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think"
— Niels Bohr

8 people liked it

"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough."
— Niels Bohr

6 people liked it

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: belief, death, ideals, martyr, truth
780 people liked it

"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."
— Malcolm X (By Any Means Necessary)

tags: philosophy, politics
442 people liked it

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
— Thomas Jefferson

tags: politics
77 people liked it

"A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?"
— George Washington

tags: education, government, liberty, politics, youth
61 people liked it

"I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well-administred; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administred for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
— Benjamin Franklin

tags: politics
24 people liked it

"Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

tags: america, history, immigration, politics, revolution, united-states, usa
46 people liked it

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."
— Edward R. Murrow

tags: government, media, news, politics
65 people liked it

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

tags: budget, government, guns, military, politics, poverty, war, weapons
93 people liked it

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
— Sinclair Lewis

tags: fascism, freedom, politics, religion
330 people liked it

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
— Thomas Jefferson

tags: atheism, philosophy, religion
308 people liked it

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
— Thomas Jefferson

190 people liked it

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
— Thomas Jefferson

66 people liked it

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. "
— Thomas Jefferson

81 people liked it

"If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions."
— Thomas Jefferson

13 people liked it

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
— H.L. Mencken

tags: democracy, politics
23 people liked it

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
— H.L. Mencken (Prejudices: First Series)

tags: diplomacy, love, nurse, romance
48 people liked it

"After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relatives."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: family, food
104 people liked it

"Anything is good if it's made of chocolate."
— Jo Brand

tags: chocolate, food
78 people liked it

"An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them."
— Stephen Fry

tags: humor, originality
64 people liked it

"I am a lover of truth, a worshiper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance."
— Stephen Fry

tags: turth
22 people liked it

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