Quotes by Writers - Page 150

There are many who think a wise prince ought, when he has the chance, to foment astutely some enmity, so that by suppressing it he will augment his greatness.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Whether for good or for bad, the Iran that ultimately rises out of the ashes of last summer's uprising will be unlike the Iran we know today, and for that we can thank the Green Movement, not another round of useless sanctions.
Reza Aslan
People Power is too often an inverted fairy story - the triumph of innocence coming at the start and the Ugly Sisters of intrigue and ambition coming on stage in triumph for the final curtain.
Mark Almond
One of the benefits of aligning yourself with an indistinct cluster of people is that claiming to feel their pain is often enough.
Charlie Brooker
People who write about politics, whether on the left or the right, have a consistent bias: they take politics seriously.
Paul Graham
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.
Hilary Mantel
It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Those who believe that where great personages are concerned new favors cause old injuries to be forgotten deceive themselves.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Without an opportunity, their abilities would have been wasted, and without their abilities, the opportunity would have arisen in vain.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Henry KissingerHow I'm missing yerYou're the Doctor of my dreamsWith your crinkly hair and your glassy stareAnd your Machiavellian schemesI know they say that you are very vainAnd short and fat and pushyBut at least you're not insaneHenry KissingerHow I'm missing yerAnd wishing you were hereHenry KissingerHow I'm missing yerYou're so chubby and so neatWith your funny clothes and your squishy noseYou're like a German parakeetAll right so people say that you don't careBut you've got nicer legs than HitlerAnd bigger tits than CherHenry KissingerHow I'm missing yerAnd wishing you were here
Graham Chapman
As we look over the list of the early leaders of the republic, Washington, John Adams, Hamilton, and others, we discern that they were all men who insisted upon being themselves and who refused to truckle to the people. With each succeeding generation, the growing demand of the people that its elective officials shall not lead but merely register the popular will has steadily undermined the independence of those who derive their power from popular election. The persistent refusal of the Adamses to sacrifice the integrity of their own intellectual and moral standards and values for the sake of winning public office or popular favor is another of the measuring rods by which we may measure the divergence of American life from its starting point.
James Truslow Adams
Why is there never a headline that says "Government program ends as its intended goal has been achieved"?
Oleg Atbashian
The millions of human beings who were shot, tortured, starved, treated like animals and made the object of a conspiracy of ridicule, can sleep in peace in their communal graves, for at least the struggle in which they died has enabled their descendants, isolated in their air-conditioned apartments, to believe, on the strength of their daily dose of television, that they are happy and free. The Communards went down, fighting to the last, so that you too could qualify for a Caribbean cruise.
Raoul Vaneigem
Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.'"Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?""Sun readers don't care *who* runs the country - as long as she's got big tits.
Antony Jay
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
Frederick Douglass
These opportunities, then, gave these men the chance they needed, and their great abilities made them recognize it.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Your enemies hate you more than they hate your ideas. Should you want a project to be undone propose it. Even if it were as useful as a bishop's mire it would be rejected. Once you are defeated let the humblest-looking among you sponsor it and your enemies to humble you will approve it.
José Rizal
But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the crazymaking games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A politician is a politician whether he's wearing a suit or a funny hat.
Reza Aslan
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
Frederick Douglass
The Government is making a fool of itself by attributing all terrorism and acts against the government only to one single patriot
Carlos Marighella
He who causes another to become powerful ruins himself, for he brings such a power into being either by design or by force, and both of these elements are suspects to the one whom he has made powerful.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Why could you not have left me as I was, in the sea of being?""Because the world has need of your humility, your piety, your great teaching and your Machiavellian scheming.
Roger Zelazny
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
White men have screwed this country up! I would like a black, female…. everything all rolled into one.I want something different. I want a real change. People, I want a president who speaks well, who has a sense of humor. This guy is such a moron! It's beyond the point where it's a joke. He's an idiot.
Denis Leary
You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and society adds to your power; but with my will, sir, you can do nothing.
George Sand
There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Many years ago I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
I can concede that the government has no knowledge of the people, but I believe the people know less of the government. There are useless officials, evil, if you like, but there are also good ones, and these are not able to accomplish anything because they encounter an inert mass, the population that takes little part in matters that concern them.
José Rizal
If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington D.C.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
How did sex come to be thought of as dirty in the first place? God must have been a Republican.
Will Durst
In conclusion, the arms of others either fall from your back, or they weigh you down, or they bind you fast.
Niccolò Machiavelli
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
Charles de Gaulle
If this is the price to be paid for an idea, then let us pay. There is no need of being troubled about it, afraid, or ashamed. This is the time to boldly say, “Yes, I believe in the displacement of this system of injustice by a just one; I believe in the end of starvation, exposure, and the crimes caused by them; I believe in the human soul regnant over all laws which man has made or will make; I believe there is no peace now, and there will never be peace, so long as one rules over another; I believe in the total disintegration and dissolution of the principle and practice of authority; I am an Anarchist, and if for this you condemn me, I stand ready to receive your condemnation.
Voltairine de Cleyre
What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender.
Terry Jones
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
John Adams
While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice our local destination. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world.
John Adams
Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable 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. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
Abigail Adams
Every society has the criminals it deserves.
Emma Goldman
He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command
Niccolò Machiavelli
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.
Niccolò Machiavelli
The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.
Niccolò Machiavelli
No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.
Frederick Douglass
How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?
Charles de Gaulle
It was a red-flannel chest-protector, one of those large quasi-hygienic objects that with pills and medicines take the place of beneficial relics and images among the Protestant peoples of Christendom.
H.G.Wells
...if you want to add a little spice to your life, plant some dill. And learn to salsa.
Ellen DeGeneres
I wish you all the best in life. Hell, I will even write your obituary for free.
Fakeer Ishavardas
Furious and wild with fear, the potatoes flailed the air with their leaves and stamped their roots, but obviously this got them nowhere.
Stanisław Lem
I guess what I'm trying to say is, there are a lot of self righteous people out there. And if you try to adjust your life to please them - by the way you dress, your sexuality, or the ass faces you like to make - you are just going to go crazy and risk being as unhappy as these self righteous kooks are. So enjoy your life. God gave us our bodies as a gift.(Granted, to some of us it's kind of a gag gift, but that's okay too.) Wear what you want, love who you want, and have fun.
Ellen DeGeneres
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which is a pity because this week the National Association of Beholders wrote to tell me that I've got a face like a rucksack full of dented bells.
Charlie Brooker
And she gave him a melting smile, the glutinous sweetness of which he devoured with the avidity of a diabetic who swallows a fatal spoonful of jam.
John Collier
Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.
Voltaire
So I figured I'd leave the area, because I had no ties there anyway except for this girl I was seeing. We had conflicting attitudes: I really wasn't into meditating and she wasn't really into being alive. I told her I knew when I was going to die because my birth certificate has an expiration date.
Steven Wright
Having a kid is like an industrial revolution of the emotions. Suddenly you can mass produce worry, and guilt.
S.K. Tremayne
Busty’ Roberts had joined the Royal Artillery in 1914 and since then had steadily risen to the rank of Gunner. Now the crunch: someone with a perverted sense of humour made him a Lance Bombardier. Roberts went insane with power. The war now consisted of two people, him and Hitler.
Spike Milligan
Some people live a nothing life: the most important thing they ever do is die. Thank God for eccentrics! Take Gunner Octavian Neat. He would suddenly appear naked in a barrack room and say, “Does anybody know a good tailor?”, or “Gentlemen – I think there’s a thief in the battery.” He was the bane of the Regiment.
Spike Milligan