"I have tamed men of iron in my day, shall I not easily crush these men of butter?"

Ferdinand Alvarez De Toledo, Duke of Alba on conquest   

"This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul."

Whitman, Walt on life
5 fans of this quote   

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)."

Whitman, Walt on contradiction
4 fans of this quote   

"Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception."

Orwell, George on nationalities and nationalism
6 fans of this quote   

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever."

Orwell, George on oppression
4 fans of this quote   

"never before have we had so little time in which to do so much."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on time   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"The truth is found when men are free to pursue it."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on truth
4 fans of this quote   

"Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on vanity
9 fans of this quote   

"Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. "

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on uncategorised   

"The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward through the ranks. "

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on uncategorised   

"There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny. "

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on uncategorised   

"There can't be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."

Kissinger, Henry on crisis   

"Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other."

Ameringer, Oscar on politics
7 fans of this quote   

"The greatest art of a politician is to render vice serviceable to the cause of virtue."

Bolingbroke, Henry on politics   

"An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought."

Cameron, W. J. on politics   

"I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another."

Byron, Lord on politics   

"People say I'm indecisive, but I don't know about that."

Bush, George on politics   

"Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious."

Certeau, Michel De on politics   

"If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem."

Chapman, John Jay on politics
3 fans of this quote   

"Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen."

Churchill, Winston on politics
8 fans of this quote   

"Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party."

Churchill, Winston on politics
8 fans of this quote   

"I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. I am President of the United States, and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli."

Bush, George on food and eating   

"The ablest man I ever met is the man you think you are."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on self-esteem   

"When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on perseverance
6 fans of this quote   

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

Orwell, George on past
7 fans of this quote   

"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals."

Orwell, George on perfection
5 fans of this quote   

"Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing left but quietism -- robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it."

Orwell, George on submission   

"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."

Orwell, George on war
7 fans of this quote   

"There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction."

Orwell, George on war   

"In every one of those little stucco boxes there's some poor bastard who's never free except when he's fast asleep and dreaming that he's got the boss down the bottom of a well and is bunging lumps of coal at him."

Orwell, George on work   

"For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity."

Orwell, George on writers and writing
3 fans of this quote   

"The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything to live for. Only child life is real life."

Orwell, George on youth   

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

Orwell, George on liberty
4 fans of this quote   

"Reactionary: A man walking backwards with his face to the future."

Bevan, Aneurin on action   

"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on freedom
4 fans of this quote   

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on giving
6 fans of this quote   

"This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on america
4 fans of this quote   

"Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrations and revolutionists."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on ancestry
5 fans of this quote   

"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel in order to be tough."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on kindness
3 fans of this quote   

"The moment a mere numerical superiority by either states or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights -- that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system."

Roosevelt, Franklin D. on majority