""The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government." "
— Thomas Jefferson

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
— Isaac Asimov

"Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear."
— William Ewart Gladstone

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
— Margaret Mead

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."
— John Stuart Mill

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

""Reasonable men adapt to the world around them; unreasonable men make the world adapt to them. The world is changed by unreasonable men.""
— Edwin L. Cole

""My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.""
— Sen. Carl Schurz

"If we believe absurdities we shall commit atrocities."
— Voltaire

"The complaints of the privileged are too often confused with the voice of the masses."
— John Kenneth Galbraith

"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."
— George Orwell

"The most violent element in society is ignorance"
— Emma Goldman

"A government afraid of its citizens is a Democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny!"
— Thomas Jefferson

"All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?"
— Edward Abbey

"All war is based on deception."
— Sun Tzu

"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."
— Adlai Stevenson

"Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit."
— Freda Adler

"Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics."
— George J. Mitchell

"In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
— George Orwell

"The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it."
— Edward Dowling

"Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then--we elected them. "
— Lily Tomlin

"The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power."
— Paul Wellstone

"
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
— Thomas Jefferson

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."
— Sandra Day O'Connor

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."
— Albert Schweitzer

"That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it"
— George Carlin

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
— Albert Camus

"The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity."
— Dorothy Parker

"I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it."
— Dorothy Parker

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."
— Dorothy Parker

"Don't look at me in that tone of voice."
— Dorothy Parker

"Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common."
— Dorothy Parker

"I hate writing, I love having written."
— Dorothy Parker

"I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen."
— Dorothy Parker

"I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money."
— Dorothy Parker

"If wild my breast and sore my pride,
I bask in dreams of suicide,
If cool my heart and high my head
I think 'How lucky are the dead.'"
— Dorothy Parker (The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker)