We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.
Remember, remember, the 5th of November The Gunpowder Treason and plot; I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot.
It should be the privilege of every worker to take advantage of all the improved methods of working that relieve him from the tedium and fatigue of purely mechanical toil, for by this means he gains leisure for the thought necessary to working out his designs, and for the finer touches that the hand alone can give. So long as he remains master of his machinery it will serve him well, and his power of artistic expression will be freed rather than stifled by turning over to it work it is meant to do. The trouble is that we have allowed the machine to master us. [“The Use and Abuse of Machinery, and Its Relation to the Arts and Crafts” The Craftsman , November 1906, p. 205.]
If I were to be given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.
Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind then that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?
When I die, my money's not gonna come with me. My movies will live on for people to judge what I was as a person. I just want to stay curious. - Interview for London's Sunday Telegraph magazine, November 2007
Power and Property can be separated for a time by force or fraud — but divorced, never. For as soon as the pang of separation is felt…Property will purchase Power, or Power will take over Property. [Speech on November 3, 1829, Proceedings and debates of the Virginia State Convention of 1829-1830 , Volume 1, New York: DeCapo Press, 1971, p. 156; also quoted by Salvador Araneta in Bayanikasan — The Effective Democracy For All , Manila, Philippines: AIA Press, 1976, pp. 57-58]
The Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.
Hello. My name is Iñigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence; live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues.
It is not earthly rank, nor birth, nor nationality, nor religious privilege, which proves that we are members of the family of God; it is love, a love that embraces all humanity.
I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages: (i) this is worthless nonsense; (ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view; (iii) this is true, but quite unimportant; (iv) I always said so.
An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.
Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory.
Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world.
T'his darkness will not last forever. There will some day come a Fifth of November — or another date, it doesn't matter — when fires will burn in a chain of brightness from Land's End to John O' Groats. The children will dance and leap about them as they did in the times before. They will take each other by the hand and watch the rockets breaking, and afterwards they will go home singing to the houses full of light…
Necessity is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil wisdom.
I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun.
He has paid dear, very dear, for his whistle.
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but restraint.
It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily.
From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.
You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.
We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities.
One must be very naïve or dishonest to imagine that men choose their beliefs independently of their situation.
Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.
This darkness will not last forever. There will some day come a Fifth of November — or another date, it doesn't matter — when fires will burn in a chain of brightness from Land's End to John O' Groats. The children will dance and leap about them as they did in the times before. They will take each other by the hand and watch the rockets breaking, and afterwards they will go home singing to the houses full of light...
The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.
No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation.
Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future.
Our Bill of Rights, the most precious part of our legal heritage, is under subtle and pervasive attacks…In the struggle between our world and Communism, the temptation to imitate totalitarian security methods must be resisted day by day…When the rights of any individual or group are chipped away, the freedom of all erodes. [ Fortune , November, 1955.]
(Professor of Sociology, University of Notre Dame). We looked at a number of plans, but most were old and conventional, including the one [the Family Assistance Program] that was chosen by the majority. A plan to which the Commission did not give due consideration is that proposed as the Second Income Plan…. Anyone seriously interest in income maintenance programs must give the Second Income Plan thorough consideration. [Supplementary Statement to Poverty Amid Plenty: The American Paradox , Report of the President’s Commission on Income Maintenance Programs, November 12, 1969.]
Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out Neither side is glorious On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing Not to lie under the earth but to walk upon it without crutches
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755. [This quotation, slightly altered, is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”]
Do not be deceived by the way men of bad faith misuse words and names ...Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade.
It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.
The wayfarer, Perceiving the pathway to truth, Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds. "Ha," he said, "I see that none has passed here In a long time." Later he saw that each weed Was a singular knife. "Well," he mumbled at last, "Doubtless there are other roads."
When chill November's surly blast Made fields and forests bare.
Art is a revolt against fate.
By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. It is a right to be exercised in subordination to the Constitution and in conformity to it. One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression.
We express again our sympathy for labor and we appreciate the difficulties of maintaining family life with the mounting cost of living. In union with the Holy See, we have on many occasions condemned the evils of unrestrained capitalism. At the same time, in union with the Holy See, we hold that “our first and most fundamental principle, when we undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.” [Statement, Crisis of Christianity , New York Times, November 18, 1941.]
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.
Well, General, we have not had many dead cavalrymen lying about lately.
As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately.
Me, I shall be an autocrat: that is my trade; and The Good God will forgive me: that is His.
We believe that “Kelsonian economics”… constitutes a revolution in economic thinking, and a possible channel for the real American revolution that needs to be undertaken.… The economic emancipation of the vast majority of citizens not through redistributing other people’s wealth…but through the creation of new wealth and new ownership…. The real revolution in the United States economically is to make operative the promise of capitalism for the masses instead of building the wealth of a few at the expense of the many. [Editorial, “For A REAL Berkeley Revolution — Individual Ownership for All,” November 23, 1970.]
All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
We need not think alike to love alike.
Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.
"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why me?" And the voice says, "Nothing personal your name just happened to come up."
Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly. … Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.
I am everything — Tonight I'll be your mother — I will Do such things to ease your pain — Free your mind and you won't feel ashamed.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.
Only the brave know how to forgive … A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.
No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.
Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan.
We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.
I see in the near future a crisis approaching which unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption will follow and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until the wealth of the country is aggregated in a few hands and then the Republic is destroyed. [Letter to Col. William F. Elkins dated November 21, 1864. Ref. the Lincoln Encyclopedia , Archer H. Shaw (MacMillan, 1950, NY.]
If we have learned anything at all in this century, it is that all new technologies will be put to use, sooner or later, for better or worse, as it is in our nature to do.
The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.
With the apparent expanding number of citizens at or below the poverty line and, at the same time, the incredible fortunes being established by entertainers, athletes, financiers, investors and the like, it seems to me there has never been a greater need for enabling more citizens to also have a “piece of the action.” Again, what is true in this country is equally true throughout the world. [Letter to Norman G. Kurland, November 16, 1992.]
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour.
We must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions. And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we are only six percent of the world's population, that we cannot impose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.
We must believe in free will — we have no choice.
In a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
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.
The source of justice has necessarily been the fear of injustice, just look through all time and history of the world. ( Iura inventa metu iniusti fateare necesse est, tempora si fastosque velis evolvere mundi. ) [8 December 65—27, November 8 BC Satir?, III. ]
After looking at mothers-in-law and seeing sons-in-law — I always felt that the jokes were on the wrong ones. No sir, you can look through everything I ever did write or say, and you never did hear me tell a joke about any mother-in-law — or any creed, color or religion, either.
All the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
GREAT MOMENTS IN HISTORY (#7): November 23, 1915 Pancake make-up is invented; most people continue to prefer syrup.
I got a hint of things to come when I overheard my boss lamenting, 'The books are done and we still don't have an author! I must sign someone today! -- Tamim Ansary, "Edutopia Magazine, Issue 2, November 2004" on the topic of school textbooks
Periphrasis is the putting of things in a round-about way. "The cost may be upwards of a figure rather below 10m#." is a periphrasis for The cost may be nearly 10m#. "In Paris there reigns a complete absence of really reliable news" is a periphrasis for There is no reliable news in Paris. "Rarely does the 'Little Summer' linger until November, but at times its stay has been prolonged until quite late in the year's penultimate month" contains a periphrasis for November, and another for lingers. "The answer is in the negative" is a periphrasis for No. "Was made the recipient of" is a periphrasis for Was presented with. The periphrasis style is hardly possible on any considerable scale without much use of abstract nouns such as "basis, case, character, connexion, dearth, description, duration, framework, lack, nature, reference, regard, respect". The existence of abstract nouns is a proof that abstract thought has occurred; abstract thought is a mark of civilized man; and so it has come about that periphrasis and civilization are by many held to be inseparable. These good people feel that there is an almost indecent nakedness, a reversion to barbarism, in saying No news is good news instead of "The absence of intelligence is an indication of satisfactory developments." -- Fowler's English Usage
Too Late A large number of turkies [sic] went to San Francisco yesterday by the two o'clock boats. If their object in going down was to participate in the Thanksgiving festivities of that city, they would arrive "the day after the affair," and of course be sadly disappointed thereby. -- Sacramento Daily Union, November 29, 1861
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #32: Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are right now? A: I will be three months November 8th. Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th? A: Yes. Q: What were you and your husband doing at that time?
I always will remember -- I was in no mood to trifle; 'Twas a year ago November -- I got down my trusty rifle I went out to shoot some deer And went out to stalk my prey -- On a morning bright and clear. What a haul I made that day! I went and shot the maximum I tied them to my bumper and The game laws would allow: I drove them home somehow, Two game wardens, seven hunters, Two game wardens, seven hunters, And a cow. And a cow. The Law was very firm, it People ask me how I do it Took away my permit-- And I say, "There's nothin' to it! The worst punishment I ever endured. You just stand there lookin' cute, It turns out there was a reason: And when something moves, you shoot." Cows were out of season, and And there's ten stuffed heads One of the hunters wasn't insured. In my trophy room right now: Two game wardens, seven hunters, And a pure-bred guernsey cow. -- Tom Lehrer, "The Hunting Song"
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY (#17): On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence.
October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate. Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and great effort pushing boulders into a single word. It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow. Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass both Parliament and Party. It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other planets, this may be the first message received from us. -- The Realist, November, 1964.