Michael Eiland > Michael's Quotes

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#1

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: attributed-no-source, books, simile, soul

135656 likes

#2

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

tags: humor, life

119210 likes

#3

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

tags: intelligence, self-deprecation

71726 likes

#4

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

tags: individuality, majority, minority, pause, reflect, wisdom

43928 likes

#5

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

177471 likes

#6

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

34477 likes

#7

“No more good must be attempted than the nation can bear”
― Solon

52 likes

#8

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
― Thomas Jefferson

tags: banks, debt, deficit-spending, government, loans, political-science, politics

1023 likes

#9

“I write nothing for publication, and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion. On the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Were I to enter on that arena, I should only add an unit to the number of Bedlamites.

[Letter to Mathew Carey, 11 November 1816]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

tags: dogma, religion, religious-violence

216 likes

#10

“He always considered death an unavoidable professional hazard.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold

tags: war

112 likes

#11

“War...is ugly and brutalizing, and the nobility is in doing it without becoming ugly and brutalizing.”
― Dana Kramer-Rolls, Way of the Cat: Nap, Do Nothing and Stretch Your Way to a Blissful Life

tags: activism, war

18 likes

#12

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

3867 likes

#13

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
― Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays, Vol. II: 1926-1929

tags: fact, ignorance, truth

10558 likes

#14

“They sicken of the calm who know the storm.”
― Dorothy Parker, Sunset Gun: Poems

tags: calm, excitement, storm, women

889 likes

#15

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Mark Twain

tags: death, life

16782 likes

#16

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
― Oscar Wilde

tags: belief, death, ideals, martyr, truth

8195 likes

#17

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

tags: inspirational, politics, presidential

8537 likes

#18

“In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.”
― Ambrose Bierce

tags: humor, intelligence, politics

141 likes

#19

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. ”
― Pericles

tags: politics

767 likes

#20

“The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary. ”
― Wilhelm Reich

tags: bubonic-plague, church, ideologies, love, orgasm, politics, psychoanalysis, psychology, psychotherapy, wilhelm-reich

87 likes

#21

“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”
― H.L. Mencken

tags: politics

251 likes

#22

“Americans, though apparently impressed by ghastly sentimentality and outrageous hypocrisy, are by nature much more politically cynical than Canadians. In their longer history they have had much more to be cynical about. They demand a vulgar show, enjoy it, guffaw, and forget it the next morning. When a new U.S. President takes office all bets are off and his campaign platform is dismantled and stored away. ”
― Gordon Donaldson, Eighteen Men : The Prime Ministers of Canada

tags: politics

16 likes

#23

“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

tags: humor, politics, stupidity

1647 likes

#24

“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: liberty, political-philosophy, politics

698 likes

#25

“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”
― David Foster Wallace, Up, Simbal!: 7 Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate

tags: politics, voting

1239 likes

#26

“It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”
― Mark Twain

tags: humor, politics

248 likes

#27

“The White House usually followed the seagull theory of management: fly in, squawk and flap and shit, and fly away.”
― John Frohnmayer, Leaving Town Alive

tags: art, law, politics

20 likes

#28

“Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

-Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

tags: government, nations, politics

248 likes

#29

“Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them”
― William F. Buckley

tags: politics

61 likes

#30

“The Seven Social Sins are:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.

From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.”
― Frederick Lewis Donaldson

tags: character, commerce, conscience, happiness, humanity, knowledge, misattributed-to-gandhi, money, morality, pleasure, politics, principle, sacrifice, science, sin, sins, wealth, work, worship

13167 likes

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