"Whoever is new to power is always harsh."

Aeschylus "Prometheus Bound"

Authority, Government

Power and Weakness

"We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand."

Pablo Picasso

Art and Culture

Truth and Falsity

"You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too."

John Kenneth Galbraith

Authority, Government

"First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines."

John Brunner

Freedom and Servitude

Knowledge, Ignorance

"Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit."

Henry Brooks Adams "The Education of Henry Adams"

Various

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."

Martin Buber

Various

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty."

Bertrand Russell

Courage and Fear

Good and Evil

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

Abraham Lincoln

Freedom and Servitude

"Love is energy of life."

Robert Browning

Life and Death

Love

"The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation."

George Bernard Shaw "Parents and Children"

Happiness

Work and Laziness

"A conquered nation is like a man with cancer: he can think of nothing else."

George Bernard Shaw "John Bull's Other Island"

Freedom and Servitude

History and Nations

"The two most beautiful words in the English language are "cheque enclosed"."

Dorothy Parker

Richness and Money

"Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money."

Johnny Cash

Richness and Money

Success and Fame

"Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic."

Henry Brooks Adams "The Education of Henry Adams"

Authority, Government

Power and Weakness

"Marriage, like death, is a debt we owe to nature."

Julia Ward Howe

Marriage

Nature and Animals

"Those who love to be feared fear to be loved."

St. Francis de Sales

Courage and Fear

Love

"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."

Will Rogers

Politics and Diplomacy

"A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears."

Honoré De Balzac

Family and Loneliness

Pain and Tears

"Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value."

Albert Einstein

Human

Success and Fame

"A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others."

William Faulkner

Art and Culture

Reality and Imagination

"Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind."

Mikhail Gorbachev

Various

"Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of speading even against it."

Paramahansa Yogananda

Good and Evil

Truth and Falsity

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

Ronald Reagan

Politics and Diplomacy

"One cat in a house is a sign of loneliness, two of barrenness, and three of sodomy."

Edward Dahlberg "Alms for Oblivion"

Nature and Animals

"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles."

George Jean Nathan

Patriotism

"Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness ... It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart."

Mahatma Gandhi

God and Religion

Oration and Silence

"Learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do."

Umberto Eco

Education

Knowledge, Ignorance

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana "The Life of Reason"

History and Nations

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to remain silent."

Victor Hugo

Art and Culture

"How happy would many people live if they cared about other people's affairs as little as about their own."

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Manners and Ethics

"None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear."

Ferdinand Foch

Courage and Fear

"A little learning is a dangerous thing."

English Proverbs

Knowledge, Ignorance

"Any man who does not have his inner world to translate is not an artist."

Théophile Gautier

Art and Culture

Reality and Imagination

"Knowledge is power, if you know it about the right person."

Lewis Mumford

Knowledge, Ignorance

Power and Weakness

"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure."

William Saroyan

Defeates and Mistakes

Good and Evil

Wisdom and Stupidity

"Military power wins battles, but spiritual power wins wars."

George Marshall

Peace and War

Power and Weakness

"What is life without the radiance of love?"

Friedrich von Schiller "Wallenstein"

Life and Death

Love

"A planned life is a dead life."

Lauren Bacall

Life and Death

"When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge."

Confucius "The Confucian Analects"

Knowledge, Ignorance

"Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

Gloria Steinem

Art and Culture

Work and Laziness

"It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organisation upon the natural organisation of the body."

Thomas Henry Huxley "Collected Essays"

Education

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

William Pitt the Younger

Freedom and Servitude

"Appeal: v.t. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw."

Ambrose Bierce "The Devil's Dictionary"

Law and Crime

"Women like silent men. They think they're listening."

Marcel Achard

Oration and Silence

Woman and Man

"They who are of the opinion that money will do everything, may very well be suspected to do everything for money."

George Savile

Richness and Money

"If government were a product, selling it would be illegal."

P.J. O`Rourke

Authority, Government

"Those who cast the Votes, they decide nothing. Those who count the votes, they decide everything."

Joseph Stalin

Authority, Government

Politics and Diplomacy

"Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong."

Terry Pratchett

Reality and Imagination