Quotes
Quotes about Gain
So far as business and money are concerned, a country gains nothing by a successful war, even though that war involves the acquisition of immense new provinces.
If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.
This case is wholly without merit both factually and legally. (US District Judge in commenting on the Fox network lawsuit against Al Franken's book).
What doth it profit a man if he gains the who world and loses his own soul?
...the argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.
The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny.
Exclusive property is a theft against nature. [Fr., La propriete exclusive est un vol dans la nature.]
This is the truth as I see it, my dear, Out in the wind and the rain: They who have nothing have little to fear, Nothing to lose or to gain.
He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.
Solid pudding against empty praise.
I preached as never sure to preach again, And as a dying man to dying men.
The things that mount the rostrum with a skip, And then skip down again, pronounce a text, Cry hem; and reading what they never wrote Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, And with a well-bred whisper close the scene!
Reasoning against a prejudice is like fighting against a shadow; it exhausts the reasoner, without visibly affecting the prejudice.
We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions--bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities.
Cut and come again.
As Love and I late harbour'd in one inn, With proverbs thus each other entertain; "In love there is no lack," thus I begin; "Fair words make fools," replieth he again; "Who spares to speak doth spare to speed," quoth I; "As well," saith he, "too forward as too slow"; "Fortune assists the boldest," I reply; "A hasty man," quote he, "ne'er wanted woe"; "Labour is light where love," quote I, "doth pay"; "Light burden's heavy, if far borne"; Quoth I, "The main lost, cast the by away"; "Y'have spun a fair thread," he replies in scorn. And having thus awhile each other thwarted Fools as we met, so fools again we parted.
Reason's biological function is to preserve and promote life and to postpone its extinction as long as possible. Thinking and acting are not contrary to nature; they are, rather, the foremost features of man's nature. The most appropriate description of man as differentiated from nonhuman beings is: a being purposively struggling against the forces adverse to his life.
Our minds can work for us or against us at any given moment. We can learn to accept and live with the natural psychological laws that govern us, understanding how to flow with life rather than struggle against it. We can return to our natural state of contentment.
The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
Since the social victim has been oppressed by society, he comes to feel that his individual life will be improved more by changes in society than by his own initiative. Without realizing it, he makes society rather than himself the agent of change. The power he finds in his victimization may lead him to collective action against society, but it also encourages passivity within the sphere of his personal life.
Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else.
The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes, almost two genera- a small minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them. The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority, and to the minority only. The majority has no more to do with it than it has to do with ecclesiastic politics on Mars. In so far as that heritage is apprehended, it is viewed with enmity. But in the main it is not apprehended at all.
Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in strength, At first it may be but as a spider's web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.
When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.
The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.
