Friday, January 04, 2008 Escudero: Great thoughts from great minds By Edcer Escudero Wit or without
LET ME deviate from the usual oft-repeated rundown of self-centered resolutions for the New Year. Instead, I'd like to share with Sun.Star readers powerful thoughts from great minds that have had lasting impact and influence on contemporary thinking, and which helped advance progress and civilization.
To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.
- Willian Corbbett, Advice to Young Men
Poverty is no vice, but an inconvenience.
- John Florio
Power
Power, like a desolating pestilence, pollutes whatever it touches.
- Shelley, Queen Mab, III
Politics
Man is a political animal.
- Aristotle, Politics, I
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
- Dr. Arbuthnot
Public
There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly pitiless, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the public.
- Hazlitt, Table Talk
Soldiers
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin, they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
- Siegfried Sassoon, Dreamers
Statesman
A statesman is a successful political who is dead.
- Thomas B. Reed
Liar
A liar needs a good memory.
- Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria, IV
This is the punishment of a liar: He is not believed even when he speaks the truth.
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin
Liberty
The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.
- Bertrand Barere, Speech, 1792
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
- Patrick Henry, Speech, 1775
Reform
Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.
- Cardinal Gibbon, 1909.
Religion
All religions must be tolerated for every man must get to heaven his own way.
- Frederick the Great, 1740
Righteous
Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself over-wise.
- Old Testament, Ecclesiastes
Truth
A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
- Blake, Auguries of Innocence
Reading
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
- Francis Bacon
