Cool Quotes

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.

I never ponder counterfactuals.

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

I grow daily to honor facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing — a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

Faction

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.

Failure

Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.

In your code, never check for an error condition you don't know how to handle.

Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure.

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure — which is: Try to please everybody.

The doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

[After an appendectomy and a devastating electoral loss, Churchill found himself] without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix.

Experience, n. A series of failures. Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time.

Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.

Three failures denote uncommon strength. A weakling has not enough grit to fail thrice.

The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it.

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

It is hard to fail; but is worse never to have tried to succeed.

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks.

In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.

Failure in a great enterprise is at least a noble fault.

Fairness

[Tests] are not unfair. Life is unfair and tests measure the results.

Faith

Those of little faith are of little hatred.

Failure of faith almost always arises from lack of humility. Pride destroys faith, and pride is the déformation professionnelle of the theologian.

He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

Faith has to do with things that are not seen, and hope with things that are not in hand.

Faith is a knowledge of the benevolence of God toward us, and a certain persuasion of His veracity.

How many things that were articles of faith yesterday are fables today.

To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy.

'Twas an unhappy division that has been made between faith and works. Tho' in my intellect I may divide them, just as in the candle I know there is both light and heat; but yet put out the candle, and they are both gone; one remains not without the other: So 'tis betwixt faith and works. Nay, in a right conception, fides est opus; if I believe a thing because I am commanded, that is opus.

I hear the message well enough; what I lack is faith.

All tragedies are finished by a death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage;
The future states of both are left to faith.

Faithfulness

"Do you cheat on your wife?" asked the psychiatrist.

"Who else?" answered the patient.

"Before we get married," said the young woman to her fiance, "I want to confess some affairs that I've had in the past."

"But you told me all about those a few weeks ago," her young man replied.

"Yes, darling," she explained, "but that was a few weeks ago."

Semper fidelis [Ever faithful].

I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.

Fall

He that lies upon the ground can fall no lower.

He that is fallen cannot help him that is down.

Fallacy

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

Fame

Now when I bore people at a party, they think it's their fault.

In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.

Fame may last a minute, but infamy lasts a lifetime.

Fame due to the achievements of the mind never perishes.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame.

If fame is to come only after death, I am in no hurry for it.

The desire for fame tempts even noble minds.

For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next ages.

The fame of men ought always to be estimated by the means used to acquire it.

What a heavy burden is a name that becomes famous too soon.

All fame is dangerous: good bringeth envy; bad, shame.

From fame to infamy is a beaten road.

If we look back into past times, we find innumerable names of authors once in high reputation, read perhaps by the beautiful, quoted by the witty, and commented on by the grave; but of whom we now know only that they once existed.

I awoke one morning and found myself famous.

Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame — to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell.

Fame is the beauty-parlor of the dead.

Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.

… and as he that once miscarries does not easily persuade mankind to favour another attempt, an ineffectual struggle for fame is often followed by perpetual obscurity.

Fame cannot spread wide or endure long that is not rooted in nature, and matured by art.

Familiarity

Few men have been admired by their own households.

Family

… the threat to the family posed by modern radical collectivism is in the long run no less grave, and far more stealthy and difficult to fight. Nor is it a theoretical or distant threat. It is real and imminent, especially in the America of the 1980s. I can sum it up in one sentence: the United States is in the process of establishing a social and legal system in which marriage has no legitimate status and the family no natural role.

If the family structure breaks down, you'll need the government welfare state to expand to take care of the women and children, and you'll need the police state to expand to take care of the young men.

There's no family but there's a whore or a knave of it.

The larger your family, the more disgrace is in store for you.

The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another; they maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and everyone always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed ill-feeling.

Famine

African famine is not a visitation of fate. It is largely man-made, and the men who made it are largely Africans.

Fanatic

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Recluse fanatics have few ideas or sentiments to communicate …

The fiercest fanatics are often selfish people who were forced, by innate shortcomings or external circumstances, to lose faith in their own selves. They separate the excellent instrument of their selfishness from their ineffectual selves and attach it to the service of some holy cause.

Fanaticism

Goose pimples rose all over me, my hair stood on end, my eyes filled with tears of love and gratitude for this greatest of all conquerors of human misery and shame, and my breath came in little gasps. If I had not known that the Leader would have scorned such adulation, I might have fallen to my knees in unashamed worship, but instead I drew myself to attention, raised my arm in the eternal salute of the ancient Roman Legions and repeated the holy words, "Heil Hitler!"

Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles of virtue and veracity.

[Fanaticism] obliterates the feelings of humanity.

There is only one step from fanaticism to barbarism.

We know the crimes that fanaticism in religion has caused; let us be careful not to introduce fanaticism in philosophy.

Farewell

All farewells should be sudden, when forever.

Farm

Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and. your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms, and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

A farm is like a man — however great the income, if there is extravagance but little is left.

Farmer

The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything he produces at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.

It is from the tillers of the soil that spring the best citizens, the staunchest soldiers. Farmers are, of all men, the least given to vice.

A plain country fellow is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lie fallow and untilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be idle or melancholy.

Whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.

Even if a farmer intends to loaf, he gets up in time to get an early start.

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

Fascism

Fascism, before being a party, is a religion.

Fashion

Every generation laughs at the old fashions but religiously follows the new.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

And by my grave you'd pray to have me back
So I could see how well you look in black.

Sweatpants are a sign of defeat.

Old fashions please me best.

Fools may invent fashions that wise men will, wear.

What has been the fashion once will come into fashion again.

Fasting

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

Fasting is a medicine.

Fat

Fat men are more likely to die suddenly than the slender.

I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Cæsar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men, and his aversion to lean ones.

Fate

Fate gives the Wound, and Man is born to bear.

The nobly born must nobly meet his fate.

The best of men cannot suspend their fate:
The good die early, and the bad die late.

Father

When asked why he did not become a father, Thales answered, "Because I am fond of children."

No man is responsible for his father. That was entirely his mother's affair.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

With the growth of modern civilization the role of the father is being increasingly taken over by the state, and there is reason to think that a father may cease before long to be biologically advantageous, at any rate in the wage-earning class.

Becoming a father isn't difficult,
But it's very difficult to be a father.

(Vater werden ist nicht schwer
Vater sein dagegen sehr.)

Fault

If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.

Be to her virtues very kind. Be to her faults a little blind.

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

Neglect mending a small Fault, and 'twill soon be a great one.

He who overlooks one fault invites another.

If a friend tell thee a fault, imagine always that he telleth thee not the whole.

No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.

Favor

Never let your inferiors do you a favor. It will be extremely costly.

Accept a favor, and you sell your liberty.

Almost everyone takes pleasure in repaying small favors, and many people are grateful also for moderate ones, but hardly anyone fails to show ingratitude for great ones.

The feelings of men looking for favors are very different from those of the same men after obtaining them.

Fear

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

[It] was fear that was then making you a good citizen, which is never a lasting teacher of duty.

[The] sentiment of fear is nearly allied to that of hatred.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

I'm saying, if something's scaring you out, don't run from it. Find out everything you can about it. Then it ain't the unknown anymore and it ain't scary … Or I guess it could be a shitload scarier. Mostly the former, though.

I just mean that every time you're uncomfortable and you get the option to sit something out, you sit it out. So all I was saying to you was: when your asshole gets tight, don't listen to your gut, 'cause you've filled it with shit.

When it's asshole-tightening time, that's when you see what people are made of. Or at least what their asshole is made of.

I was scared then, I'm not now. How long do you want me to be scared?

Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared.

All men [in war] are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened. The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on. Discipline, pride, self-respect, self-confidence, and the love of glory are attributes which will make a man courageous even when he is afraid.

Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.

Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

When our actions do not,
Our fears do make us traitors.

He who is feared by many must fear many.

… but fear depends upon an apprehension of punishment, which is never to be dispelled.

The souls of men are full of dread.

There is no medicine for fear.

How often the fear of one evil leads us into a worse!

The first duty of man is that of subduing fear. We must get rid of fear; we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are slavish, not true but specious; his very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he have got fear under his feet.

To be always afraid of losing life is, indeed, scarcely to enjoy a life that can deserve the care of preservation. He that once indulges idle fears will never be at rest.

Feelings

We're used to saying, "I'm fine," but it's rarely true. I often joke, "If a woman says she's fine, call 911."

Fellowship

What men call good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

Feminism

Feminism has betrayed women, alienated men and women, replaced dialogue with political correctness.

Feminism was always wrong to pretend that women could "have it all." It is not male society but mother nature who lays the heaviest burden on woman.

Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.

Fence

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.

Fetter

Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

Fiction

I hate things all fiction … there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.

Fiddler

Fiddlers, dogs and flies come to feasts uncalled.

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

Fidelity

Fidelity that is bought with money may be overcome by money.

Fighting

Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way.

The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

[If] a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

Have fun and don't screw with anyone bigger than you.

It is fighting at great disadvantage to fight those who have nothing to lose.

There is a time to pray and a time to fight. This is the time to fight.

Finality

It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they always say in Turkey, when they cut the wrong man's head off.

Finery

If lust and wanton eyes are the death of the soul, can any women think themselves innocent who, with naked breasts, patched faces, and every ornament of dress, invite the eye to offend?

Finland

Finland is the country of the Devil.

Fishing

Occasionally we passed grim and taciturn men, huddled from the wind under wide green umbrellas, working the waters with every conceivable device of piscatorial ingenuity, in the pursuit of bream, tench, gudgeon and other inedible creatures. What pleasure did they derive from this dank and unrewarding pastime? Was it, perhaps, the negative comfort of escaping from wives, mothers, girlfriends, into one of the last bastions of unreformed masculinity?

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

Anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought.

Flag

The land and the people and the flag — the land a continent, the people of every race, the flag a symbol of what humanity may aspire to when the wars are over and the barriers are down; to these each generation must be dedicated and consecrated anew, to defend with life itself, if need be, but, above all, in friendliness, in hope, in courage, to live for.

Flattery

'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools —
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.

Flattery is a foolish suicide; she destroys herself with her own hands.

[Flattery] adheres to power, and envy to superior merit.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when they are no longer of any use. But flatterers destroy the souls of the living by blinding their eyes.

Flatterers look like friends, as wolves like dogs.

If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others would not hurt us.

When a woman thinks she can't be flattered, tell her it's true; that flatters her.

Flatterers, like cats, lick and then scratch.

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

Flea

The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.

Well washed and combed domestic pets grow dull; they miss the stimulus of fleas.

Flute

The flute is not an instrument with a good moral effect. It is too exciting.

Fly

Some men are more vexed with a fly than with a wound.

Flying

You know the oxygen masks on airplanes? I don't think there's really any oxygen. They're just to muffle the screams.

The air [flying] is an extremely dangerous mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age.

Follower

A man who tries to surpass another may perhaps succeed in equalling if not actually surpassing him, but one who merely follows can never quite come up with him: a follower, necessarily, is always behind.

Folly

The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when had the opportunity.

The common curse of mankind, — folly and ignorance.

The chief disease that reigns this year is folly.

He who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks.

The follies of the fathers are no warning to the children.

I enjoy vast delight in the folly of mankind: and, God be praised, that is an inexhaustible source of entertainment.

The first degree of folly is to conceit one's self wise; the second to profess it; the third to despise counsel.

The follies of the fool are known to the world, but are hidden from himself; the follies of the wise are known to himself, but hidden from the world.

Each age has its own follies, as its majority is made up of foolish young people.

… a man advanced in years and no less advanced in folly.

Food

… nobody really likes capers no matter what you do with them. Some people pretend to like capers, but the truth is that any dish that tastes good with capers in it, tastes even better with capers not in it.

I am an epicure; you are a gourmand; he has both feet in the trough.

The best number for a dinner party is two — myself and a damn good head waiter.

I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking.

[Cheese is] milk's leap toward immortality.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead — not sick, not wounded — dead.

Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.

I don't think of myself as a "foodie." I'm more of an "eatie."

The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.

Fool

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority for any town?

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

Who loves not wine, women, and song
Remains a fool his whole life long.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

Wise men store up knowledge,
but the mouth of a fool invites ruin.

A fool's lips bring him strife,
and his mouth invites a beating.

A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one.

Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that.

It is Ill-Manners to silence a Fool, and Cruelty to let him go on.

The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still 'tis Nonsense.

Most Fools think they are only ignorant.

Half Wits talk much but say little.

The World is full of fools and faint hearts; and yet every one has courage enough to bear the misfortunes, and wisdom enough to manage the Affairs of his neighbor.

Tricks and treachery are the Practice of Fools, that have not Wit enough to be honest.

Fools multiply folly.

What fools these mortals be.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool,
And to do that well craves a kind of wit.

When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit,
'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet;
Nor ever ever shall, until that I die,
For the longer I live the more fool am I.

Whoever brings a fool into the world does so to his grief, and the father of a fool has no joy.

A foolish son brings grief to his father and bitterness to the mother who bore him.

There is always a majority of fools.

Who is not a fool? (Qui non stultus?)

A fool and his money are soon parted.

There is in human nature, generally more of the fool than of the wise.

None is a fool always; everyone sometimes.

Some fools have wit, but none have discretion.

Wise men learn by other men's harms; fools by their own.

The fool is happy that he knows no more.

A fool must now and then be right by chance.

Ever since Adam fools have been in the majority.

I am always afraid of a fool. One cannot be sure that he is not a knave as well.

It is better to be silent like a fool than to talk like one.

Women and luck always favor fools.

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day. Wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

At thirty, a man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.

The world is made up for the most part of fools and knaves, both irreconcilable foes to truth.

Forbearance

There is however a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Men may tolerate injuries, whilst they are only personal to themselves. But it is not the first of virtues to bear with moderation the indignities that are offered to our country.

Force

Who overcomes
By force hath overcome but half his foe.

Forecaster

The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

Foreign Aid

Foreign aid is the transfer of wealth from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

Foreign Relations

Nations that want protectors will have masters.

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.

Foresight

'Tis easy to see, hard to foresee.

Eaten bread is soon forgotten. Dangers which are warded off by effective precautions and foresight are never even remembered.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

In respect to foresight and firmness, the people are more prudent, more stable, and have better judgment than princes.

A miser of sixty refuses himself necessaries that he may not want them when he is a hundred. Almost all of us make ourselves unhappy by too much foresight.

Forethought

Yet is one good forewit worth two afterwits.

Excessive forethought and too great solicitude for the future are often productive of misfortune; for the affairs of the world are subject to so many accidents that seldom do things turn out as even the wisest predicted; and whoever refuses to take advantage of present good from fear of future danger, provided the danger be not certain and near, often discovers to his annoyance and disgrace that he has lost opportunities full of profit and glory, from dread of dangers which have turned out to be wholly imaginary.

Forgetfulness

It is often wise to forget what you know.

Forgiveness

Injuries may be forgiven, but not forgotten.

God may forgive you, but I never can.

There is nothing so advantageous to a man as a forgiving disposition.

In taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over he is superior, for it is a prince's part to pardon.

To err is human, to forgive divine.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Forgiving the unrepentant is like drawing pictures on water.

Only the brave know how to forgive …. A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.

To forgive enemies H— does pretend,
Who never in his life forgave a friend.

Fortitude

Bear all inward and outward sufferings in silence, complaining only to God.

Fortune

Fortune is fickle and soon asks back what he has given.

I never admired another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

The fortune of nations has often depended on accidents …

Fortune favors the bold. (Alternative version: Fortune favors the brave.)

Fortune can take from us nothing but what she gave us.

Man's life is ruled by fortune, not by wisdom.

Not many men have both good fortune and good sense.

Nothing is more perilous to men than a sudden change of fortune.

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good.

Fortune knocks at least once at every man's door.

It is a law of the gods, never broken, to sell somewhat dearly the great benefits they confer upon us.

Great fortune brings with it great misfortune.

Fortune is always on the side of the largest battalions.

I am not now in fortune’s power: He that is down can fall no lower.

For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy. (Nam in omni adversitate fortunae infelicissimum est genus infortunii, fuisse felicem.)

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

Forty

I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty.

Fox-hunter

Fox-hunters who have all day long tried in vain to break their necks join at night in a second attempt on their lives by drinking.

France

France though armed to the teeth is pacifist to the core.

… the great in France live very magnificently, but the rest very miserably. There is no happy middle state as in England.

The day of the ruin of France is the eve of the ruin of England.

France always has plenty men of talent, but it is always deficient in men of action and high character.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

It seems to me to be very likely that Roosevelt will take a high place in American popular history — maybe even alongside Washington and Lincoln … He had every quality that morons esteem in their heros. It will be to the interest of all his heirs and assigns to whoop him up, and they will probably succeed in swamping his critics.

He [Roosevelt] was the first American to penetrate to the real depths of vulgar stupidity. He never made the mistake of overestimating the intelligence of the American mob. He was its unparalleled professor.

Fraud

Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him whom he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society.

There is no condition which is not disquieted either with the care of gaining or of keeping money; and the race of man may be divided in a political estimate between those who are practising fraud, and those who are repelling it.

Free Government

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.

Free Market

If you destroy a free market, you create a black market.

Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail.… Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.

Free Press

A free Press is the unsleeping guardian of every other right that freemen prize; it is the most dangerous foe of tyranny.

The liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman.

Free Speech

We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech.

The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.

Sections of society who once complained of injustice, like blacks, homosexuals, and militant women, now demand not just equality but privilege, including the right to censor their critics.

Herein lies the value of free speech. It makes concealment difficult, and, in the long run, impossible. One heretic, if he is right, is as good as a host. He is bound to win in the long run. It is thus no wonder that foes of the enlightenment always begin their proceedings by trying to deny free speech to their opponents. It is dangerous to them and they know it. So they have at it by accusing these opponents of all sorts of grave crimes and misdemeanors, most of them clearly absurd — in other words, by calling them names and trying to scare them.

… democracy and free speech are eternal enemies.

Everybody favours free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.

Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.

Free Trade

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

Freedom

If people have to choose between freedom and sandwiches they will take sandwiches.

When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again.

The middle class prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.

A nation may lose its liberties in a day, and not miss them for a century.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.

I believe that the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty's head will be dealt by [the United States] in the ultimate failure of its example to the earth.

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.

It seems to me that society usually wins. There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in the last analysis, is not much greater than that of a canary in a cage. They may leap from perch to perch; they may bathe and guzzle at their will; they may flap their wings and sing. But they are still in the cage, and soon or late it conquers them.

We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear those words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist." You never heard a real American talk in that manner.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

[The] vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.

[The] love of freedom, so often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order, and the desire of impunity.

Live free or die; death is not the worst of evils.

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.

If [the fact that people make poor decisions] is reason enough for the government to second-guess their decisions about dangerous activities such as smoking cigarettes and riding motorcycles, why on earth should the government let people make their own choices when it comes to such consequential matters as where to live, how much education to get, whom to marry, whether to have children, which job to take, or what religion to practice?

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

The thing to remember about freedom is that it's not given, it's taken.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

I am not a warrior, but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.

Freedom is the silence of the law.

I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrine — Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way.

Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks — drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high. Big Government is the small option: it's the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives.

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

England's [Liberty] bell has fallen silent. Americans would do well to ensure that the crack in theirs grows no larger.

To live in freedom one must grow used to a life full of agitation, change, and danger.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

All of us would like to legislate against activities we deplore; all of us would like unlimited freedom to indulge in those we enjoy.

Partial freedom seems to me a most invidious mode of slavery. But, unfortunately, it is the kind of slavery the most easily admitted in times of civil discord; for parties are but too apt to forget their own future safety in their desire of sacrificing their enemies.

Men must have a certain fund of natural moderation to qualifye them for Freedom, else it becomes noxious to themselves and a perfect Nuisance to every body else.

None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.

No man is wholly free. He is a slave to wealth, or to fortune, or the laws, or the people restrain him from acting according to his will alone.

Who, then, is free? The wise who can command his passions, who fears not want, nor death, nor chains, firmly resisting his appetites and despising the honors of the world, who relies wholly on himself, whose angular points of character have all been rounded off and polished.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

Man is born free — and everywhere he is in irons.

Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Sir, there have existed, in every age and every country, two distinct orders of men — the lovers of freedom and the devoted advocates of power.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Every generation must wage a new war for freedom against new forces which seek through new devices to enslave mankind.

Freemason

[Freemasons are] a set of imbeciles who meet to make good cheer and perform ridiculous fooleries.

French

The French have a passion for revolution but an abhorrence of change.

The French drink to get loosened up for an event, to celebrate an event, and even to recover from an event.

In Paris, they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

I prefer to travel on French ships because there is none of that 'women and children first' nonsense.

The French are naturally more fierce and hot than dexterous and strong, and if resisted handsomely in their first charge they slacken and cool, and grow as timorous as women. They are likewise impatient of distress or incommodity, and grow so careless by degrees that it is no hard matter, finding them in disorder, to master and overcome them.

The French are a gross, ill-bred, untaught people; a lady there will spit on the floor and rub it with her foot.

French Language

If only this damned French language were not so badly fitted for music!

French Revolution

The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures.

Frenchman

A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing, when he has nothing to say.

Forty million Frenchmen can't be wrong.

Freud

After eighty years' experience, his [Freud's] methods of therapy have proved, on the whole, costly failures, more suited to cosset the unhappy than cure the sick.

Friend

[A] friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

An open Foe may prove a curse;
But a pretended friend is worse.

Be slow in choosing a Friend, slower in changing.

Friends, after all, are just irritating strangers we've gotten used to.

I have plague enough with my adversaries, therefore my brethren should not vex me.

Cosmus, Duke of Florence, was wont to say of perfidious friends, that "We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends."

Some companions rejoice in the happiness of a friend, but in time of trouble they are against him.

Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings, because they are his own.

True happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice.

Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.

When he was asked "What is a friend?" he said "One soul inhabiting two bodies."

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.

Do not abandon old friends, for new ones cannot equal them. A new friend is like new wine; when it has aged, you can drink it with pleasure.

Have no friends not equal to yourself.

He who throws away a friend is as bad as he who throws away his life.

The vulgar estimate friends by the advantage to be derived from them.

In prosperity it is very easy to find a friend; in adversity, nothing is so difficult.

To find friends when we have no need of them, and to want them when we have, are both alike easy and common. In prosperity, who will not profess to love a man? In adversity, how few will show that they do indeed?

All are not friends that speak us fair.

A man is judged by his friends, for the wise and foolish have never agreed.

Choose thy friends like thy books, few but choice.

Make not thy friend too cheap to thee, nor thyself too dear to him.

It is good to have friends, but bad to need them.

If we all told what we know of one another there would not be four friends in the world.

Real friends are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow. It were almost to be wished that all true and faithful friends should expire on the same day.

If you have one true friend you have more than your share.

There are three faithful friends — an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

There is no word in the Latin language that signifies a female friend. Amica means a mistress: and perhaps there is no friendship betwixt the sexes wholly disunited from a degree of love.

One friend must in time lose the other.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

We never know the true value of friends. While they live we are too sensitive of their faults: when we have lost them we only see their virtues.

The best way to keep your friends is to never borrow from them and never lend them anything.

Old wine and an old friend are good provisions.

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.

Friends help; others pity.

An untried friend is like an uncracked nut.

If you seek friends who can be trusted, go to the cemetery.

[Friends] should not only be firm in the day of distress, but gay in the hour of jollity; not only useful in exigencies, but pleasing in familiar life; their presence should give cheerfulness as well as courage, and dispel alike the gloom of fear and of melancholy.

There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.

Give me the avowed, erect and manly foe;
Firm I can meet, perhaps return the blow;
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save me, oh, save me, from the candid friend.

Friend And Enemy

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Treat your friend as if he will one day be your enemy, and your enemy as if he will one day be your friend.

God save me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies.

Nature teaches us to love our friends, but religion our enemies.

Our friends abandon us only too easily, and our enemies are implacable.

Speak well of your friend; of your enemy say nothing.

Life is nothing without friendship. (Sine amicitia vitam esse nullam.)

Friendship

Of my friends I am the only one I have left.

It's important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.

In life it is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best.

Don't tell your friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics, and his epistemology.

A friend in need is a friend to be avoided.

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

George Bernard Shaw: Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend — if you have one.
Winston Churchill: Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second — if there is one.

Misfortune tests the sincerity of friendship.

Friendship cheers the faint and weary,
Makes the timid spirit brave,
Warns the erring, lights the dreary,
Smooths the passage to the grave.

Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.

If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.

For 'mid old friends, tried and true,
Once more we our youth renew.
But old friends, alas! may die;
New friends must their place supply.
Cherish friendship in your breast —
New is good, but old is best;
Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.

There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals.

We ought to flee the friendship of the wicked, and the enmity of the good.

When adversities flow, then love ebbs; but friendship standeth stiffly in storms.

Friendship is constant in all other things,
Save in the office and affairs of love.

What causes the majority of women to be so little touched by friendship is that it is insipid when they have once tasted of love.

The friendships of the world are oft
Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure.

The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetener and cement of friendship.

Friendship often ends in love; but love, in friendship — never.

Friendships multiply joys, and divide griefs.

We are often, by superficial accomplishments and accidental endearments, induced to love those whom we cannot esteem; we are sometimes, by great abilities, and incontestable evidences of virtue, compelled to esteem those whom we cannot love.

Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.

Where obligations begin, friendship ends.

The cheerful sage, when solemn dictates fail,
Conceals the moral counsel in a tale.

(——Garrit aniles
Ex re fabellas.——)

Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery.

Those, therefore, whom the lot of life has conjoined, should endeavour constantly to approach towards the inclination of each other, invigorate every motion of concurrent desire, and fan every spark of kindred curiosity.

Love comes from blindness,
Friendship from knowledge.

(L'amour vient de l'aveuglement,
L'amitié de la connaissance.)

Aristotle observes, that old men do not readily form friendships, because they are not easily susceptible of pleasure.

What! old, and rich, and childless too,
And yet believe your friends are true?
Truth might perhaps to those belong,
To those who lov’d you poor and young;
But, trust me, for the new you have,
They’ll love you dearly — in your grave.

(Orbus es, et locuples, et Bruto consule natus,
Esse tibi veras credis amicitias?
Sunt veræ: sed quas juvenis, quas pauper habebas:
Qui novus est, mortem diligit ille tuam.)

Frugality

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

Frugality is so necessary to the happiness of the world, so beneficial in its various forms to every rank of men, from the highest of human potentates, to the lowest labourer or artificer; and the miseries which the neglect of it produces are so numerous and so grievous, that it ought to be recommended with every variation of address, and adapted to every class of understanding.

Frugality may be termed the daughter of prudence, the sister of temperance, and the parent of liberty.

… for without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

Frugality is misery in disguise.

Frugality includes all the other virtues.

Fruit

Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Funeral

I did not attend his funeral; but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

It is of no consequence to the dead what his funeral is; costly obsequies are the affectation of the living.

The pomp of funerals feeds rather the vanity of the living than does honor to the dead.

Here lies one who for med'cines would not give
A little gold, and so his life he lost;
I fancy now he'd wish again to live,
Could he but guess how much his funeral cost.

Burn me and scatter the ashes where they will, and let there be no abracadabra of ritual, is my wish about myself.

Every funeral may justly be considered as a summons to prepare for that state, into which it shews us that we must some time enter …

Futility

I have spent my life laboriously doing nothing. (Vitam perdidi laboriose agendo.)

Future

Do not boast about tomorrow,
for you do not know what a day may bring forth.

[The] future belongs to those who show up for it.

A week ago, I had no idea what the future would bring, which, I guess, is always true of everyone all the time.

There's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

I have no fear of the future. Let us go forward into its mysteries, let us tear aside the veils which hide it from our eyes and let us move onward with confidence and courage

Every man is sufficiently discontented with some circumstances of his present state, to suffer his imagination to range more or less in quest of future happiness, and to fix upon some point of time, in which, by the removal of the inconvenience which now perplexes him, or acquisition of the advantage which he at present wants, he shall find the condition of his life very much improved.

But the truth is, that things to come, except when they approach very nearly, are equally hidden from men of all degrees of understanding …

Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with too much dejection.

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