Avery > Avery's Quotes

“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
― John Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife

“That's the thing. I don't think I believe in deep down. I kinda think that all you are is just the things that you do.”
― Diane from Bojack Horseman

“Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

Inaugural Adress, January 20, 1961”
― John F. Kennedy

“Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.”
― Rick and Morty

“Temptations cannot but come, but woe to those through whom they come.”
― Matthew the Apostle, The Book of Matthew

“Wise men argue causes; fools decide them.”
― Anacharsis

“A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.”
― Gustave Le Bon, سيكولوجية الجماهير

“It goes without saying that a civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.”
― Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

“If you should chance to strike up a conversation with an articulate, English-speaking Russian in, say, the restaurant of one of the luxury hotels along Lake Geneva, and he is wearing a $3,000 suit and a pair of Gucci loafers, and he tells you that he is an executive of a Russian trading company and wants to talk to you about a joint venture, then there are four possibilities. He may be what he says he is. He may be a Russian intelligence officer working under commercial cover. He may be part of a Russian organized crime group. But the really interesting possibility is that he may be all three—and that none of those three institutions have any problem with the arrangement.”
― James Woolsey

“The debacle of Buckley’s and Wambaugh’s testimony illustrates a truth that many of us learn as children: the invariable inefficacy of the “Don’t blame me—everybody does it” defense. Society mediates between the extremes of, on the one hand, intolerably strict morality and, on the other, dangerously anarchic permissiveness through an unspoken agreement whereby we are given leave to bend the rules of the strictest morality, provided we do so quietly and discreetly. Hypocrisy is the grease that keeps society functioning in an agreeable way, by allowing for human fallibility and reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable human needs for order and pleasure. When Buckley and Wambaugh said bluntly that it’s all right to deceive subjects, they breached the contract whereby you never come right out and admit you have stretched the rules for your own benefit. You do it and shut up about it, and hope you don’t get caught, because if you are caught no one—or no one who has any sense—will come forward and say he has done the same thing himself.”
― Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer

“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. ... in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest.”
― John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Wow, if I had a nickel for every time I was doomed by a puppet, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?”
― Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension

“People love talking, and I have never been a huge talker. I carry on an inner monologue, but the words often don't reach my lips.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
― George S. Patton Jr.

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

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless as Nature.”
― H. G. Wells

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.”
― Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

“The man may be the head of the household. But the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head whichever way she pleases.”
― Nia Vardalos

“Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint.”
― Markus Herz

“In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”
― Anatole France

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

“Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it time runs out.”
― Oliver Wendall Holmes

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

“Between love and the automatic garbage chute, young people everywhere have made their choice and prefer the garbage chute. [Entre l'amour et le vide-ordure automatique la jeunesse de tous les pays a fait son choix et préfère le vide-ordure.]”
― Ivan Chtcheglov

“Да, человек смертен, но это было бы еще полбеды. Плохо то, что он иногда внезапно смертен, вот в чем фокус! И вообще не может сказать, что он будет делать в сегодняшний вечер.”
― Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков