Quotes
Quotes about Wit
A right without an attendant responsibility is as unreal as a sheet of paper which has only one side.
No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: "But what would you replace it with?" When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?
The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to "help.".
War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars.
Intelligence has nothing to do with politics.
Crime, like disease, is not interesting; it is something to be done away with by general consent, and that is all about it.
The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.
The love of their country is with them only a mode of flattering its master; as soon as they think that master can no longer hear, they speak of everything with a frankness which is the more startling because those who listen to it become responsible.
Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.
Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?
I can see clearly now ... that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate...
I gave 'em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I'd have done the same thing.
It's better to waste one's youth than to do nothing with it at all.
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.
A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.
Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.
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).
The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future.
Equality of the general rules of law and conduct, however, is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty and the only equality which we can secure without destroying liberty. Not only has liberty nothing to do with any other sort of equality, but it is even bound to produce inequality in many respects. This is the necessary result and part of the justification of individual liberty: if the result of individual liberty did not demonstrate that some manners of living are more successful than others, much of the case for it would vanish.
Ever since the beginning of modern science, the best minds have recognized that "the range of acknowledged ignorance will grow with the advance of science." Unfortunately, the popular effect of this scientific advance has been a belief, seemingly shared by many scientists, that the range of our ignorance is steadily diminishing and that we can therefore aim at more comprehensive and deliberate control of all human activities. It is for this reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom.
The American people have a right to air that they and their children can breathe without fear.
