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Political theory22 quotes
The happiness of society is the end of government. — John Adams · 1776The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression, even though that cost be blood. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1909Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds. — Henry Adams · 1907Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. — Henry Adams · 1907Every project has been found to be no better than committing the lamb to the custody of the wolf, except that one which is called a balance of power. — John Adams · 1789We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. — John Adams · 1798All 22 quotes →Politics18 quotes
I agree with you, that in Politicks the Middle Way is none at all. — John Adams · 1776The happiness of society is the end of government. — John Adams · 1776The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People. — John Adams · 1818Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds. — Henry Adams · 1907Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. — Henry Adams · 1907In Politicks the Middle Way is none at all. — John Adams · 1776All 18 quotes →Man and nature9 quotes
Come out of your warm, angular house, resounding with few voices, into the chill, grand, instantaneous night, with such a Presence as a full moon in the clouds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1838If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down! — Henry David Thoreau · 1862Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it. — Buckminster Fuller · 1969The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. — Henry Beston · 1928We can never have enough of nature…. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854The sky is the daily bread of the eyes. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1843All 9 quotes →Marriage8 quotes
In the true marriage relation, the independence of the husband and wife is equal, the dependence mutual and their obligations reciprocal. — Lucretia Mott · 1880The legal theory is, that marriage makes the husband and wife one person, and that person is the husband. — Lucretia Mott · 1849In every house of marriage
there's room for an interpreter. — Stanley Kunitz · 1930Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond. — Thomas Love Peacock · 1817You can bear your own Faults, why not a Fault in your Wife? — Benjamin Franklin · 1750In Marriage without love, there will be Love without Marriage. — Benjamin Franklin · 1734All 8 quotes →American politics7 quotes
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. — John F. Kennedy · 1961Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. — John F. Kennedy · 1961Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage. — John F. Kennedy · 1961The judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and the executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both should be checks upon that. — John Adams · 1776The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. — Robert F. Kennedy · 1968We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. — John Adams · 1797All 7 quotes →Law7 quotes
A government of laws, and not of men. — John Adams · 1775The truth is, that the law is always approaching, and never reaching, consistency. It is forever adopting new principles from life at one end, and it always retains old ones from history at the other, which have not yet been absorbed or sloughed off. It will become entirely consistent only when it ceases to grow. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1880It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1897The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1880The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1880The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1919All 7 quotes →Men and women7 quotes
In the true marriage relation, the independence of the husband and wife is equal, the dependence mutual and their obligations reciprocal. — Lucretia Mott · 1880Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850It will need more than the Nineteenth Amendment to convince me that there are no differences between men and women, or that legislation cannot take those differences into account. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1923Man has his will,—but woman has her way! — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1857Where is my John Wayne?
Where is my prairie song?
Where is my happy ending?
Where have all the cowboys gone? — Paula Cole · 1996In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. — Abigail Adams · 1776All 7 quotes →Personal growth7 quotes
How few there are who have courage enough to own their Faults, or resolution enough to mend them! — Benjamin Franklin · 1743All experience is an arch, to build upon. — Henry Adams · 1907Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1831It is never too late to give up our prejudices. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841All 7 quotes →America6 quotes
Freedom of thought and the right of private judgment, in matters of conscience, driven from every other corner of the earth, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum. — Samuel Adams · 1776Let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans... If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description. — Henry Cabot Lodge · 1888Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. — John Quincy Adams · 1821America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy. — Samuel Eliot Morison · 1965I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth. — John Adams · 1765America is a nation created by all the hopeful wanderers of Europe, not out of geography and genetics, but out of purpose. — Theodore H. White · 1961Freedom6 quotes
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. — Benjamin Franklin · 1755The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression, even though that cost be blood. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1909The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible to destroy, the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing. — John Adams · 1765Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right... and a desire to know-but besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded, and envied kind of knowledge. I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers. — John Adams · 1765Where Slavery is, there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is, there Slavery cannot be. — Charles Sumner · 1864In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. — John F. Kennedy · 1961Friendship6 quotes
The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841Be slow in chusing a Friend, be slower in changing. — Benjamin Franklin · 1735It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1838One friend in a life-time is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim. — Henry Adams · 1907When I communicate my thought and my sentiments to a friend with whom I am in full sympathy, so that my feelings pass into him and I am conscious of what he feels, do I not live in his brain as well as in my own-most literally! — Charles Sanders Peirce · 1966Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1864Legal theory6 quotes
It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1897The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1880Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. — Henry Billings Brown · 1896The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1880General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgement or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1905The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1919Progress6 quotes
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. — John Adams · 1780All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. — John F. Kennedy · 1961What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind. — Wendell Phillips · 1864Can authority be more amiable and respectable when it descends from accidents or institutions established in remote antiquity than when it springs fresh from the hearts and judgments of an honest and enlightened people? — John Adams · 1797Revolution6 quotes
The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People. — John Adams · 1818Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. — John F. Kennedy · 1977Revolutions are not made; they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back. — Wendell Phillips · 1852What a glorious morning is this. — Samuel Adams · 1775All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. — Henry David Thoreau · 1848Taking risks6 quotes
Always do what you are afraid to do. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841Great Estates may venture more;
Little Boats must keep near Shore. — Benjamin Franklin · 1751A short life in the saddle, Lord!
Not long life by the fire. — Louise Imogen Guiney · 1893And I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak. — James Russell Lowell · 1848American Revolution5 quotes
The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People. — John Adams · 1818In Politicks the Middle Way is none at all. — John Adams · 1776What a glorious morning is this. — Samuel Adams · 1775This is the most significant movement of all! There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity, in this last effort of the patriots, that I greatly admire. The people should never rise without doing something to be remembered, something notable and striking. This destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important consequences, and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it as an epocha in history. — John Adams · 1773If the British went out by water, to show two lanterns in the North Church steeple; and if by land, one as a signal, for we were apprehensive it would be difficult to cross the Charles River or get over Boston Neck. — Paul Revere · 1775Cold War5 quotes
Ich bin ein Berliner. — John F. Kennedy · 1963All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner!" — John F. Kennedy · 1963Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. — John F. Kennedy · 1961We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth--but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced...I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations...He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction. — John F. Kennedy · 1962To those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. — John F. Kennedy · 1961Education5 quotes
Genius without Education is like Silver in the Mine. — Benjamin Franklin · 1750What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. — Henry David Thoreau · 1850Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. — Edward Everett · 1837Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts. — Henry Adams · 1907To trust your intuition is exactly the opposite of any sort of formal education. — Chris Burden · 1993Freedom of speech and expression5 quotes
That if all Printers were determin’d not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed. — Benjamin Franklin · 1731The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible to destroy, the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing. — John Adams · 1765When people talk of the Freedom of Writing, Speaking or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists: but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more. — John Adams · 1817And I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak. — James Russell Lowell · 1848The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1919Life5 quotes
Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1911That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions. — George Santayana · 1905Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1847Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH... — Jack Kerouac · 1962Nature5 quotes
The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. — Henry Beston · 1928In Wildness is the preservation of the World. — Henry David Thoreau · 1851I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. — Henry David Thoreau · 1851I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. — Henry David Thoreau · 1851The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. — Henry Beston · 1928Oppression of women5 quotes
Women have been called queens a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling. — Louisa May Alcott · 1869In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. — Abigail Adams · 1776Patriotism in the female Sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honours and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Goverment from having held a place of Eminence...Yet all History and every age exhibit Instances of patriotick virtue in the female Sex; which considering our situation equals the most Heroick of yours. — Abigail Adams · 1782Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken-and notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to be free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet. — Abigail Adams · 1776It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to... Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne. — Abigail Adams · 1778Self-awareness5 quotes
How few there are who have courage enough to own their Faults, or resolution enough to mend them! — Benjamin Franklin · 1743Wink at small faults-remember thou hast great ones. — Benjamin Franklin · 1738E’er you remark another’s sin, bid your own conscience look within. — Benjamin Franklin · 1741Who has deceiv’d thee so oft as thy self? — Benjamin Franklin · 1738You can bear your own Faults, why not a Fault in your Wife? — Benjamin Franklin · 1750Self-criticism5 quotes
Many complain of their Memory, few of their Judgment. — Benjamin Franklin · 1745Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart!
What jailer so inexorable as one's self! — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851E’er you remark another’s sin, bid your own conscience look within. — Benjamin Franklin · 1741Search others for their Virtues, thyself for thy Vices. — Benjamin Franklin · 1738Self-improvement5 quotes
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past! — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1858Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout. — Benjamin Franklin · 1738How few there are who have courage enough to own their Faults, or resolution enough to mend them! — Benjamin Franklin · 1743All experience is an arch, to build upon. — Henry Adams · 1907I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854Simple living5 quotes
Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship; three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1837That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. — Henry David Thoreau · 1856The human condition5 quotes
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. — George Santayana · 1922Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace. — George Santayana · 1925Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything. — Henry Adams · 1907These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1864Wealth5 quotes
Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it. — Benjamin Franklin · 1736Who is rich? He that rejoices in his Portion. — Benjamin Franklin · 1744He who multiplies Riches multiplies Cares. — Benjamin Franklin · 1744A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854I say you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich... Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it! You ought because you can do more good with it than you could without it. — Russell H. Conwell · 1882American experiment4 quotes
Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency, but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes! — Benjamin Franklin · 1789A republic, if you can keep it. — Benjamin Franklin · 1787We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. — John Adams · 1798It is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me to observe that the great result of this experiment upon the theory of human rights has at the close of that generation by which it was formed been crowned with success equal to the most sanguine expectations of its founders. — John Quincy Adams · 1825Being present4 quotes
With the Past as past I have nothing to do, nor with the Future as future. I live now. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1839Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. — Henry David Thoreau · 1853And when they played they really played. And when they worked they really worked. — Dr. Seuss · 1939I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1837