Mark Mortensen > Mark's Quotes

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“I can never be anything else but an American, and I must think of the United States first, and when I think of the United States first in an arrangement like this I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails the best hopes of mankind fail with it.”
― Henry Cabot Lodge

“For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost

“to disagree one doesnt have to be disagreeable”
― Barry Goldwater

“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.”
― Walt Disney

“Retreat, hell we just got here!”
― Captain Lloyd Williams, USMC

“Who said I was dead. Send me the mortars and a thousand hand grenades.”
― George W. Hamilton

“Nature is a part of our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

“Then the carousel started, and I watched her go round and round...All the kids tried to grap for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she's fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it is bad to say anything to them.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“A nation that fails to recognize and appreciate history is destined for decay.”
― Mark Mortensen

“A nation that does not honor its heroes will not long endure.”
― President Abraham Lincoln

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.”
― Barry Goldwater

“Research, of course, is no substitute for wisdom. The sum of a million facts is not the truth.”
― William Manchester

“Those who stand for nothing fall for everything.”
― Alexander Hamilton, Writings

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“The general policy of the press had been stated by a famous editor five years ago. “There are no objective facts,” he had said. “Every report on facts is only somebody’s opinion. It is, therefore, useless to write about facts.” A”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson