Winnowed Wisdom

This compilation Copyright (c) 1998 by Nick Szabo
permission to redistribute without alteration hereby granted
"It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or
poor."
			Edmund Spenser


"We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."

"Difficulties show men what they are. In case of any difficulty remember that God has pitted you against a
rough antagonist that you may be a conqueror, and this cannot be without toil."

"There is nothing good or evil save in the will."

"Only the educated are free."

"It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting."

"Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to
be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life."

"Whoever then wishes to be free, let him neither wish for anything nor avoid anything which depends on
others. If he does not observe this rule, he must be a slave."

			Epicetus

"Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator."

"The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others."

"Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends."

"The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the
other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words."

"Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offence."

"Nor has he spent his life badly who has passed it in privacy."

"In everything satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures."

"If you pursue good with labour, the labour passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with
pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains."

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth
of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?"

"Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without
natural ability."

						Cicero

"Trust, but verify".

"No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as
the will and moral courage of free men and women."

"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one
end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short
phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops
moving, subsidise it."

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to
realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

			Ronald Reagan


"Good order is the foundation of all good things."

"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper."

"Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist."

"The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never
happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time."

"The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders, the purpose
that never wavers - these are the masters of victory."

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

"Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other."

"Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart."

"The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse."

"All government - indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act - is
founded on compromise and barter."

"The march of the human mind is slow."

"The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the
necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered."

"Dangers by being despised grow great."

"Early and provident fear is the mother of safety."

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice
in a contemptible struggle."

					Edmund Burke


"Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other."

"A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle."

"Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing."

"Diligence is the mother of good luck."

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty
nor safety."

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

"Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little
advantages that occur every day."

"There never was a good war or a bad peace."

"Let thy discontents be thy secrets; if the world knows them `t will despise thee and increase them."

"Drive thy Business, or it will drive thee."

"Write with the learned, pronounce with the vulgar."

"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."

"If your Riches are yours, why don't you take them with you to t'other World?"

"Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed."

"If you'd know the value of money, go and borrow some."

"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do."

"Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none."

"Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame."

				Benjamin Franklin

"The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbour."

"Fidelity is the sister of justice."

"Time will bring to light whatever is hidden; it will cover up and conceal what is now shining in splendour."

"Many brave men lived before Agamemnon, but all are weighed down in unending night, unwept and
unknown, because they lacked a sacred bard."

"In Rome you long for the country; in the country - oh inconstant! -you praise the distant city to the stars."

						Horace

"We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by."

"In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can't read. If they could read
their stuff, they'd stop writing."

"There is nothing so stupid as an educated man, if you get off the thing he was educated in."

"I can remember way back when a liberal was one who was generous with his own money."

"I hope we never live to see the day when a thing is as bad as some of our newspapers make it."

"I don't make jokes - I just watch the government and report the facts."

"You can't say civilisation don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way."

"Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects."

"Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things 
they don't want, to impress people they don't like."

"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse 
every time Congress meets."

				Will Rogers

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies 
have guns, why should we let them have ideas."

				Joseph Stalin 

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world 
owes you nothing. It was here first."

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that the only 
distinctly native American criminal class is Congress."

				Mark Twain 

"It's illegal to say to a voter "Here's $100, vote for me." So 
what do the politicians do? They offer the $100 in the form
of Health Care, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Food 
Stamps, tobacco subsidies, grain payments, NEA payments, and jobs 
programs."

			Don Farrar

"Love your country but fear its government."

			New England folk wisdom 

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like 
fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for
a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

			George Washington 

"Where is it written in the Constitution, in what section or clause 
is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and 
parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battle 
in any war in which the folly or the wickedness of government may 
engage it?"

			Daniel Webster 

"If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools."

			William Penn 

"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - 
ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't 
serve the State."

			Heinrich Himmler, head of Nazi SS 

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of
one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that
oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the
beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist
the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

"The military caste did not originate as a party of patriots, but as a party of
bandits."

"The essence of a self-reliant and autonomous culture is an unshakeable
egoism."

"A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears
to the ground."

"It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake."

"A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't
know."

The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is
often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no
limit to oppression."

"Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an
appeal to the unintelligible."

"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
Jackasses."

"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and
wrong."

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a
cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."

"Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an
institution."

"[T]here is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat,
plausible, and wrong."

"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar."

"Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom
worth a damn."

"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity has made them good."

"The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine,
for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war...
The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot
do it any further damage."

"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth
knowing."

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to
the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his
children smart."

"It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or of the American
gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and
completely."

"Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends."

"Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got
as used to it."

"..for a professor must have a theory, as a dog must have fleas."

"...history deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets,
exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men."

"Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other
philosophers are jackasses. He usually proves it..."

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed 
(and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an 
endless series of hobgoblins."

				H.L. Mencken

"Ignorance is the parent of fear"

				Herman Melville

"If people knew how hard I worked to achieve my mastery, it wouldn't
seem so wonderful after all."

				Michelangelo

"A sure sign of a genius is that all of the dunces are in a 
confederacy against him."

				Frank Lloyd Wright 

"When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both."

				James Dale Davidson


"Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so."

"He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that."

				John Stuart Mill

"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can
ever preserve the liberties of any people."

				John Adams

"A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety."

"A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing
or the other, and we then know how to meet him."

"The injuries we do and those we suffer are seldom weighed in the same
scales."

"Thinking to get at once all the gold that the goose could give, he killed it,
and opened it only to find - nothing."

				Aesop

"When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will."

"The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks 
to live at the expense of everyone else."

				Fredric Bastiat

"For every new mouth to feed, there are two hands to produce."

				Peter T. Bauer 

"Too few rejoice at a friend's good fortune."

				Aeschylus

"They [The makers of the U.S. Constitution] conferred, as against the 
government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of 
rights and the right most valued by civilized men."

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect 
liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial ...  the 
greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by 
men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."

				Louis D. Brandeis

We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money 
as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no 
right so to appropriate a dollar of public money."

		David Crockett, U.S. Congressman 1827-35 

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal 
vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at
once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."

		John P. Curran, 1790 

"Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent overeducation 
from happening. The average American (should be) content with their 
humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about 
any other role."

	U.S. Commissioner of Education, William T. Harris, 1889 

"Truth and news are not the same thing."

	Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post 

"Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive 
anachronism in the collective society of the future where
people will be defined by their associations." 

	1896 John Dewey, educational philosopher, proponent of 
	modern public schools. 

"Committee - a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a
group decide that nothing can be done."

"A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known,
then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognised."

				Fred Allen

"There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself - an
enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly."

				Antisthenes

"Beware, the man of one book."

				St. Thomas Aquinas

"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is 
big enough to take it all away."

				Barry Goldwater 

"In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities."

				Janos Arany

"Give me a firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth."

				Archimedes

"You cannot get ahead while you are getting even."

				Dick Armey

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring 
one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their 
own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from 
the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of 
good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our 
felicity."

"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations - entangling 
alliance with none."

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of 
any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics 
or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. 
Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. 
If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go 
there at all."

		Thomas Jefferson


There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the 
people by the gradual and silent encroachment of
those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation."

		James Madison 

"Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. 
Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing 
hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities."

		Robert Nozick

Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires, and animates, is
something celestial, divine, and, consequently, imperishable."

"Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right
person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in
the right way; this is not easy."

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it."

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly
because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because
we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is
not an act but a habit."

"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."

"To be successful, keep looking tanned, live in an elegant building (even if
you're in the cellar), be seen in smart restaurants (even if you nurse one
drink) and if you borrow, borrow big."

"The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward."

"Man is by nature a political animal."

"We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave
to us."

"Youth is easily deceived, because it is quick to hope."

"There was never a genius without a tincture of madness."

			Aristotle

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of
a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"You ought certainly to forgive them, as a Christian, but never to admit
them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing."

"The pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its
propriety."

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of
liking them a great deal."

			Jane Austen

"Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child."

"There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the
senses, intelligent companions, and books."

"Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only
light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals,
deep burning, unquenchable."

"You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are
indispensable to the rich."

"What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin."

			Henry Ward Beecher

"Tones that sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them
down in notes."

			Beethoven

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice
there is."

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." - on a popular restaurant

"The future isn't what it used to be."

			Yogi Berra

"For this thing was not done in a corner."

			Luke (Acts of the Apostles)

"These, having not the law, are a law unto themselves." 

"Let God be true, but every man a liar."

"The wages of sin is death."

"We know that the whole creation groaneth, and travaileth in pain together
until now."

"If God be for us, who can be against us?"

"Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor
things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God."

"My kinsmen according to the flesh."

"Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

"That no man put a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in his brother's
way."

"God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise."

"The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God."

"It is better to marry than to burn."

"The fashion of this world passeth away."

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought
as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now
we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face."

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he also reap."

"The peace of God, which passeth all understanding."

"If any would not work, neither should he eat."

"For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry
nothing out."

"Rich in good works."

"Confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth."

				Paul
	
"Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion,
walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."

"The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed
to her wallowing in the mire."

			Peter

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in
us."

"He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God
whom he hath not seen?"

			John

"PAINTING, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and
exposing them to the critic."

"CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit
without individual responsibility."

"FASHION, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey."

"POSITIVE, adj..... Mistaken at the top of one's voice."

"Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure."

"ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow
from, but not well enough to lend to."

"HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which
are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools."

"Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a
sausage."

"Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the
nature of the Unknowable."

"Impartial, adj.: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage
from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
conflicting opinions."

"Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
opinion."

"Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ..."

"Mythology, n.: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the
true accounts which it invents later."

"An election is nothing more than an advance auction of stolen goods."

			Ambrose Bierce

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer."

			William Blackstone

"When they took the fourth amendment, I was silent because I don't deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment, I kept quiet because I know I'm innocent.
When they took the second amendment, I said nothing because I don't own a gun.
Now they've come for the first amendment, and I can't say anything at all."

			Tim Freeman

"He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer."

"To create a little flower is the labour of ages."

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds
reptiles of the mind."

"No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings."

			William Blake

"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."

			Werner von Braun

"Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain."

"Oh! dreadful is the check - intense the agony -
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain."

			Emily Bronte

"The devil's most devilish when respectable."

"Hopeless grief is passionless."

			Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become
prohibitive."

"I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient
to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths
arrived at yesterday at the voting booth."

"There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and
self-reliance."

"The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists,
cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house."

			William F. Buckley

"The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell."

			Andrew Carnegie

"An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes."

"Those who are serious in ridiculous matters will be ridiculous in serious
matters."

"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise
men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of
the wise."

			Cato the Elder

"Hypocrisy is the homage paid by vice to virtue."

"We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large
ones."

"Everyone complains of his memory, but no one complains of his
judgement."

"The intellect is always fooled by the heart."

"Flattery is false coin that is only current thanks to our vanity."

			La Rouchefocolde

"Gedanken sind zollfrei. - "Thoughts pay no duty."

			Martin Luther

'The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win." -

			Bobby Knight

"And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend."

			H.W. Longfellow

"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When 
the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society 
to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom 
from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."

			Edward Gibbon

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first 
things to be bought and sold are legislators."

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and 
car keys to teenage boys."

			P.J. O'Rourke