Quotes She Loved
One of the nice features about Apple Mail, is the random signature. Michele read an eclectic and varied collection of books and web sites, and delighted in adding quotes that moved her into her Mail program. Without further ado then, here are her favorite quotes.
“In October of 1945 President Truman placed on his desk a plaque which bore the statement: “The buck stops here.” In response to Cidy Sheehan’s request for an audience in August of 2005, President Bush stated: “I have to get on with my life.” I think this about says it.” ~ Michele Nichols
If you live in poverty of spirit you will never have comfort.
If you live in fear of fear you will never have joy.
If you live in denial of self you will never have chocolate.
~ Michele Nichols
“When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
“You cannot simultaneously create peace and prepare for war.” ~ Albert Einstein
“War is only a cowardly scape(by politicians) from the problems of peace.” ~ Thomas Mann, Nobel Prize recipient.
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do no bring forth will destroy you.” ~ Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas
“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” ~ George Washington, Treaty of Tripoli, 1976
“If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier – so long as I’m the dictator.” ~ George W. Bush, December 19, 2000
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president … right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, it is morally treasonable to the American public.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt
“My goals are outside the control of anyone except me.” ~ Michele Nichols
‘They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.” ~ John Stuart Mill
“A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless. All a woman has to do is put you on hold.” ~ Marlo Thomas
“If you think equality is the goal, your standards are too low. It is not enough to be equal to men, when the men are acting like beasts. It is not enough to assimilate. We need to create a world worth assimilating into.” ~ unattributed
“For Europeans, freedom is not found in autonomy but in community. It’s about belonging, not belongings.” ~ Jeremy Rifkin, Common Dreams 8/18/2004
“Many things are not believed because their current explanation is not believed.” ~ Nietzsche
“… the ethic of ‘balanced reporting’ in which two sides, regardless of the evidence or their credibility, are allowed to use the ‘unbiased’ reporter as a stenographer.” ~ David Swanson, August 27, 2004, ILCA Online
“No wonder scoundrels find refuge in patriotism; it offers them immunity from criticism.” ~ Bill Moyers, Address to the Society of Professional Journalists, 9/11/2004
“Serious, careful, honest journalism is essential, not because it is a guiding light but because it is a form of honorable behavior, involving the reporter and the reader.” ~ Mertha Gelhorn
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen…” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” ~ Socrates
“Sure we’ll have fascism in America, but it’ll come disguised as 100 percent Americanism.” ~ huey P. Long.
“Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory. Is it strange or normal, that no major political figure has pointed this out?” ~ Howard Zinn, November 2004 issue of The Progressive
“If there be one principle more deeply written than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
“War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. … the strongest passions, and the most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.” ~ James Madison
“In moments of solitude and quiet we may be able to strip away our carefully constructed artifice and touch the world with our true selves.” ~ Mark Nichols, posting on zanshin.net, 11/1/2004
“Great social inequality creates an ustable equilibrium, The swelling numbers of poor and resentful come to rival the power of the rich. As grievances and restlessness grows, government worsens, becoming tyrannical. Eventually a critical point arrives. Wealth will be redistributed, either by politics, or by revolution.” ~ Julian Edney, ‘Greed An Essay’
“Courage is not the absence of fear, courage is the acceptance of fear.” ~ unattributed
“Reality was on the ballot on November 2. It seems to have lost. ~ Bush’s “Perception Management’ Plan, Robert Parry, 11/18/2004
“There is no freedom without freedom from fear.” ~ Joel Agee, The Price of Fear is Paid in Lost Freedom
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” ~ Upton Sinclair
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerld
“Bush may have claimed that ‘Jesus Christ changed my life,’ but Jesus doesn’t seem to have changed his politics. As the carol reminds us: “And a man at war with man hears not the love song that they bring, O hush the noise ye men of strife and hear the angels sing.” ~ Reverend Dr. Giles Fraser
“Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth.” ~ Teddy Roosevelt
“If you want a really easy way to stop terrorism, it is truly quite simple, stop participating in it.” ~ Noam Chompsky, Power and Terror
“Men: God’s beta version of humans.” ~ Michele Nichols
“The problem with the Bush Administration is that they have their head so far up their ass that it looks like it is on their shoulders where it belongs.” ~ Mark Nichols, 1/28/2005
“What are you going to do today?”
Mark: “I am going to throw three bricks into the Grand Canyon.”
“What are you going to do tomorrow?”
Mark: “I am going to throw three bricks into the Grand Canyon. Then in about one hundred years I might be able to see the pile.” ~ conversation with Mark, 1/28/2005
“Certainly, history has taught us the lengths that people will go for order and the boundless will of the power to create scapegoats to exploit this fact. ~ Makani Themba-Nixon, ColorLines, 3/1/2005
“I refuse to accept the concept of reality anymore. After all what is reality, nothing more than a collective hunch.” ~ Jane Wagner, ‘The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”
“The price of greatness is responsibility” ~ Sir Winston Churchill
“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” ~ Sir Winston Churchill
“When the eagles are quiet, the parrots begin to jabber. ~ Sir Winston Churchill
“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” ~ Sir Winston Churchill
“Who is so blind as not to see that the right of the legislature to abolish the judges at pleasure destroys the independence of the judicial department and swallows it up in the impetuous vortex of legislative influence?” ~ Alexander Hamilton
“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” ~ Benito Mussolini, Enclopedia Italiana
“Amy idiot can make war, a single person can cause chaos. But making peace, that’s where you need moral giants, real generals — and there are few few.” ~ Jeffery Mapendere, Monterey Institute for International Studies, Inaugural Conference of Global Majority
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” ~ Albert Einstein
“All the leaders of groups tend to be frauds. If they were not, it would be impossible for them to retain the allegiance of their dupes…” ~ H. L. Mencken
“I would say nothing is going as planned if I thought anything actually has been planned.” ~ Chuck Van Way, “America’s Im-pyrrh-ail Nightmare, BushWatch
“I would remind Colin Powell that once we ‘broke’ Vietnam it pretty much stayed broken – until it broke us.” Chuck Van Wey, “America’s Im-pyrrh-ial Nightmare” on BushWatch
“The Soviets were a superpower until, quite suddenly, everyone realized that they weren’t…” ~ Chuck Van Wey
“As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” ~ H. L. Mencken
“News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.’ ~ Bill Moyers
“See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” ~ George W. Bush
“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.” ~ Andre Gide
“Not only is life a bitch, it has puppies.” ~ Adrienne E. Gusoff
“The world is round, it has no point.’ ~ Adrienne E. Gusoff
“The only difference between us (the military) and the Boy Scouts was, at least they (the BS) had adult leadership…” ~ MausMasher, posted on AlterNet, 6/27/2005
“Those who cast the votes decided nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” Communist tyrant and mass murderer, Joseph Stalin
“Cats are smarted than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.” ~ Jeff Valdez
“In the beginning there was nothing. God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.” ~ Ellen DeGeneres
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
“All war is deception” ~ Lao Tzu
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” ~ Samuel Johnson
“For those who think prayer in school is the answer, remember that the generation in power now had it, and look where we are now. ~ Michele Nichols
“Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we’ve been bombing over the years been complaining?” ~ George Wallace
“When Nazis where Nazis do you think they knew they were Nazis?” ~ Michele Nichols
“I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.” ~ Bruce Grocott
“Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” ~ Napolean Bonaparte, French general & politician (1769 – 1821)
“Our scientific power as outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Nothing succeeds like hubris, and nothing fails like hubris.” ~ Michele Nichols
“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past i.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard
“We don’t know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it.” ~ Will Rogers
“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.” ~ Bertrand Russell
“The scientific name for an animal that doesn’t either run from or fight its enemies is lunch” ~ Michael Friedman
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” ~ Voltaire
“I’d rather die a martyr than live a slave!!” ~ stoney13 response to an article on WalMart on Alternet, 9/20/2005
“The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.” ~ Lord Acton
“It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.” ~ David Brin
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” ~ Albert Einstein
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.’ ~ Blaise Pascal
And finally, one that was added just three days before her death:
“Things are not true because they are in the Bible. There were put in the Bible because they were spiritually true.” ~ Tom Harpur, ‘The Pagan Christ’, page 152