Common natures pay with what they do, noble ones with what they are.
Friedrich von Schiller
Many who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lamppost.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
Henry Louis Mencken
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
Bertrand Russell
The law is reason, free from passion.
Aristotle
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
George Santayana
Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.
Winston Churchill
Society is divided into two classes: the shearers and the shorn. We should always be with the former against the latter.
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Woody Allen
He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
Aristotle
In some lands exile is the greatest punishment; in others, the greatest humanitarians should fight for it.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Henry Louis Mencken
Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.
Joseph Conrad
If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Anatole France
When smashing monuments, save the pedestals - they always come in handy.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
Blaise Pascal
Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.
Albert Einstein
What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
Henry Louis Mencken
Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.
Socrates
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
Napoleon
All of us do not have the same talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop our talents.
John F. Kennedy
An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
Henry Louis Mencken
Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.
Albert Camus
When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
Albert Camus
Hell is other people.
Jean Paul Sartre
It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.
Michel de Montaigne
Everyone rises to his level of incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter
Taste is to literature what bon ton is in society.
Germaine de Stael
Power without abuse loses its charm.
Paul Valery
Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.
George Orwell
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
Eric Hoffer
Man is by nature a political animal.
Aristotle
In a world of hunchbacks a fine figure becomes a monstrosity.
Honore de Balzac
It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
Anatole France
When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.
Heinrich Heine
Society is no comfort to one not sociable.
William Shakespeare
I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Thomas Carlyle
A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone.
Paul Valery
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
Winston Churchill
You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Never expect women to be sincere, so long as they are educated to think that their first aim in life is to please.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
The men of action are, after all, only the unconscious instruments of the men of thought.
Heinrich Heine
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.
Henry David Thoreau
The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
When a man`s stomach is full it makes no difference whether he is rich or poor.
Euripides
Of every ten persons who talk about you, nine will say something bad, and the tenth will say something good in a bad way.
Antoine de Rivarol
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
Abraham Lincoln
If you are not in fashion, you are nobody.
Philip Chesterfield
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
Robert Louis Stevenson
An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.
Thomas Jefferson
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
John Locke
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
Dwight David Eisenhower
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
It is the public scandal that offends; to sin in secret is no sin at all.
Moliere
If the art of conversation stood a little higher we would have a lower birthrate.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
What is a rebel? A man who says no.
Albert Camus
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
No nation was ever ruined by trade.
Benjamin Franklin
Society is composed of two great classes those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Nicolas de Chamfort
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Albert Einstein
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
Eric Hoffer
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
John F. Kennedy
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
Honore de Balzac
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France
The price of greatness is responsibility.
Winston Churchill
Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
Aristotle
If you`d know the value of money, go and borrow some.
Benjamin Franklin
As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.
Albert Camus
The reputation of a man is like his shadow, gigantic when it precedes him and pygmy in its proportions when it follows.
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
Albert Einstein
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
George Bernard Shaw
Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.
Blaise Pascal
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
Plato
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Eric Hoffer
Uncommon expressions are a disfigurement rather than an embellishment of discourse.
David Hume
The hope of becoming rich is one of the most widespread causes of poverty.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Plato
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.
John Davison Rockefeller
And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
John F. Kennedy
The causes of events are ever more interesting than the events themselves.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
The love of justice in most men is only the fear of themselves suffering by injustice.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
Nicolas de Chamfort
Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.
George Sand
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren`t.
Margaret Thatcher
I place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
Thomas Jefferson
Whenever books are burned, men also in the end are burned.
Heinrich Heine
You cannot pretend freedom!
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
A man`s own good breeding is the best security against other people`s ill manners.
Philip Chesterfield
A precedent embalms a principle.
Benjamin Disraeli
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.
Bertrand Russell
When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.
Otto von Bismarck
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
Henry Louis Mencken
Marriage is an institution necessary to the maintenance of society but contrary to the laws of nature.
Honore de Balzac
The poor don`t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.
Jean Paul Sartre
To be feared is much safer than to be loved.
Niccolo Machiavelli
The Tree of Liberty must, from time to time, be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson
Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
Bertrand Russell
Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
Anatole France
When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Under a government, which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
Henry David Thoreau
In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don`t know, and who don`t know us.
Nicolas de Chamfort
I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the Earth might be killed, but enough men capable of thinking, and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be restored.
Albert Einstein
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Winston Churchill
Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
Kin Hubbard
People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
Ogden Nash
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
Isaac Asimov
Man is fatally slow on the uptake; it always takes him until the next generation to understand what`s going on.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
A free society is a place where it`s safe to be unpopular.
Adlai E. Stevenson
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
Sigmund Freud
Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
Plato
The enemy is anybody who`s going to get you killed, no matter which side he`s on.
Joseph Heller
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Bertrand Russell
Don`t talk about yourself; it will be done when you leave.
Wilson Mizner
The safety of the people shall be the highest law.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.
George Santayana
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell
Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
George Orwell
City life: millions of people being lonesome together.
Henry David Thoreau
One must be a fox in order to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten off wolves.
Niccolo Machiavelli
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Isaac Asimov
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
Blaise Pascal
All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.
Rudyard Kipling
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau
Privilege is the greatest enemy of right.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
Honore de Balzac
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
Aldous Huxley
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire
Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
Anton Chekhov
No one gossips about other people`s secret virtues.
Bertrand Russell
If clothes make the man, then naked men should have little or no impact on society.
Mark Twain
Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.
William Somerset Maugham
Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Benjamin Disraeli
Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made.
Otto von Bismarck
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw
A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.
Voltaire
Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
Edgar Watson Howe
If you want total security, go to prison. There you`re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.
Dwight David Eisenhower
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don`t do anything about it.
Albert Einstein
The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.
Gustave Flaubert
I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire
Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.
Winston Churchill
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
Lao Tzu
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Niccolo Machiavelli
When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty.
Thomas Paine
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy
Every time I appoint someone to a vacant position, I make a hundred unhappy and one ungrateful.
Louis XIV
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
Thomas Carlyle
Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
Charles de Gaulle
Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
Napoleon
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Henry Louis Mencken
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Albert Einstein
Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father.
Jean de La Bruyere
When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
Benjamin Disraeli
I don`t know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein
Poverty does not bring unhappiness; it brings degradation.
George Bernard Shaw
Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
George Bernard Shaw
You can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it.
Napoleon
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn`t mean politics won`t take an interest in you.
Pericles
Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.
Jeremy Bentham
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
John Acton
Authority doesn`t work without prestige, or prestige without distance.
Charles de Gaulle
The first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not a trade; character, not technicalities. We want a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we don`t want a world of engineers.
Winston Churchill
Everything secret degenerates; nothing is safe that does not bear discussion and publicity.
John Acton
Wherever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
Harry S. Truman
Every nation has the government it deserves.
Joseph de Maistre
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
Laurence J. Peter
A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.
Ogden Nash
A political man can have as his aim the realization of freedom, but he has no means to realize it other than through violence.
Jean Paul Sartre
When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
Theodore Roosevelt
There are times and countries when the only place for an honest man is in jail.
Thomas Mann