QOTD category archive

Charles Dickens, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Otto von Bismarck, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.

James A. Michener, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Germaine Greer:

Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.

James A. Michener:

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

Lewis Carroll:

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Booth Tarkington:

There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.

Ida Tarbell:

Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists – with it all things are possible.

Robert Doisneau:

The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.

Ray Bradbury:

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Learned Hand, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

The mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion.

Harry Truman, from PoliticalProf.

Supporter: “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!”

Harry Truman: “I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.”

Corazon Aquino, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

Francis Bacon, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

Nicholas D. Kristoff:

Random violence is incredibly infectious.

George Orwell, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Karl Kraus, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.

H. L. Mencken, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

At the bottom of a good deal of the bravery that appears in the world there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they cannot face public opinion.