A farewell gift

This is my backlog of quotes for "Quote of the Week." Perhaps you'll find something of interest among these.

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Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress had been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. - Oscar Wilde

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When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril. - Harry Truman

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I'm often amazed at the way politicians, who spend hours poring over opinion poll results in a desperate attempt to discover what the public thinks, are certain they know precisely what God's views are on everything. - Simon Hoggart

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How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take? - Adin Ballou

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It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt. - John Philpot Curran

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If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. - James Madison

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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin

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Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington - regardless of who wins the Presidency. - James Bovard

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A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

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The tyranny of a principal in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. - Montesquieu

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It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt

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There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. - John Adams, 1772

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There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. - Elie Wiesel

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Noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good. - Gandhi

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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)

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Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. - Winston Churchill

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One man with courage makes a majority. - Andrew Jackson

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The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to always be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. - Thomas Jefferson

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The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. - Dante

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All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing. - Dwight Eisenhower

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A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain. - Anatole France, pseudonym for Jacques Anatole Thibault

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When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings. - Sogyal Rinpoche

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Another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one's own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard - every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals, which they serve. - Eric Fromm

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In the struggle of Good against Evil, it's always the people who get killed. - Eduardo Galeano

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The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad. - James Madison

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What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty and democracy? - Mohandas Gandhi.

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Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction! - Helen Keller

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Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure. If today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability of the British invading us" but he will say to you, "Be silent; I see it, if you don't." - Abraham Lincoln

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Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty. - Simone Weil

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You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it. - Malcolm X

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Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative. - John Stuart Mill

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Laws, like the spider's web, catch the fly and let the hawk go free. - Spanish proverb

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It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. - Sydney Smith

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Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it. - Gloria Steinam

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There is more to life than increasing its speed. - M. K. Gandhi

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Principles do not begin and end. - R. Buckminster Fuller

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Each of us is the other to the others. - R. D. Laing

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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

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Indeed it is part of the general pattern of misquided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete ureliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war. - Douglas MacArthur

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I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments on those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation. - James Madison

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The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. - Frederick Douglass

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War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. - John F. Kennedy

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Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein

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In matter of conscience, the law of majority has no place. - Gandhi

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The time comes when silence is betrayal. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active. The conditions upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt. - John Philpot Curran

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No man survives when freedom fails/The best men rot in filthy jails/And those who cry "appease, appease"/Are hanged by those they tried to please. - Hiram Mann

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In times of peace the authority of the assembly, the dignity of the magistrates, the force of the laws stand in the way to some extent of the ruler doing what he likes. But once war is declared then the whole business of state is subject to the will of a few ... They demand as much money as they like. Why say more? - Erasmus of Rotterdam

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One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence. - Charles Austin Beard

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It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. - Edmund Burke

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Action is the antidote to despair. - Joan Baez

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The most commom way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. - Alice Walker

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We Americans have no commission from God to police the world. - Benjamin Harrison, address to Congress, 1888

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Unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations. - Andrew Jackson

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Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex. - Frank Zappa

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To fight evil one must also recognize one's own responsibility. The values for which we stand must be expressed in the way we think of, and how we deal with, our fellow humans. - Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands

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Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends. - J.R.R. Tolkien

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As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. - Josh Billings

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Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt

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Everything, everything in war is barbaric - but the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being. - Ellen Key

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We used to have a War Office, but now we have a Ministry of Defence, nuclear bombs are now described as deterrents, innocent civilians killed in war are now described as collateral damage and military incompetence leading to US bombers killing British soldiers is cosily described as friendly fire. Those who are in favour of peace are described as mavericks and troublemakers, whereas the real militants are those who want the war. - Tony Benn

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Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it. - William Shakespeare

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As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only doing their duty, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil. - George Orwell, London, UK, 1941

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Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease, He makes a solitude and calls it peace! - Lord Byron in "The Bride of Abydos"

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A vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action changes the world. - Unknown

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War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that "tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die," like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder. - Alexander Berkman

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It seems that "we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory"; we have the word of a president for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people, and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had "territorial aggrandizement" been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations. - Ambrose Bierce

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When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing. - Dwight David Eisenhower

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The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells. - John Flynn

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It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs. - Albert Einstein

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War is the symptom, not the disease. — L. M. Heroux

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The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. - H. L. Mencken

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Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong. - James Bryce

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Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury. - William Lloyd Garrison

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Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace. - Charles Sumner

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War is a waste of time. - old French proverb

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Reporter: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a very good idea.

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War begets poverty; poverty begets war. - Henry Burke

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The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. - Dwight Eisenhower

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The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. - Steven Biko

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You can build a throne of bayonets but you can't sit on it long. - Boris Yeltsin

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Memories are short and appetites for power and glory are insatiable. Old tyrants depart. New ones take their place. Old differences are composed, new differences arise. Old allies become the foe. The recent enemy becomes the friend. It's all very baffling and confusing. - Harry S Truman

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The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

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The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice. - Mohandas Gandhi

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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin

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The coward wretch whose hand and heart / Can bear to torture aught below, / Is ever first to quail and start / From the slightest pain or equal foe - Bertrand Russell

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Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism - Thomas Jefferson

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In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us. - Thich Nhat Hanh

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The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance - Thomas Paine

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The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few to ride them. - Thomas Jefferson

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All that talk about "liberation" twenty, thirty years ago, all the plotting, all the bodies, produced this, this impoverished broken-down country led by a gang of cruel and paternalistic half-educated theorists. - Former Vietcong General Pham Xuan An

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I cannot tell anyone else how to live his or her life but I have determined how I want to live mine: by not participating in war any longer. - Monica Benderman