Semiticus > Semiticus's Quotes

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#1

“My dear friend, clear your mind of cant [excessive thought]. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, "Sir, I am your most humble servant." You are not his most humble servant. You may say, "These are bad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times." You don't mind the times ... You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don't think foolishly.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Johnson, Vol 4

tags: appropriateness, cant, excess, expression, language, moderation, thought

69 likes

#2

“There are two ways of being happy: We may either diminish our wants or augment our means- either will do- the result in the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest. If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means. If you are active and prosperous or young and in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants. But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are very wise you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society.”
― Benjamin Franklin

19 likes

#3

“Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. They are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury.”
― H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women

tags: politics

160 likes

#4

“For a Monarchy readily becomes a Tyranny, an Aristocracy an Oligarchy, while a Democracy tends to degenerate into Anarchy. So that if the founder of a State should establish any one of these three forms of Government, he establishes it for a short time only, since no precaution he may take can prevent it from sliding into its contrary, by reason of the close resemblance which, in this case, the virtue bears to the vice.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius

17 likes

#5

“Tact is the knack of keeping quiet at the right time; of being so agreeable yourself that no one can be disagreeable to you; of making inferiority feel like equality. A tactful man can pull the stinger from a bee without getting stung.”
― George Lorimer

tags: business, tact

11 likes

#6

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
― Alexander Pope

tags: beatitudes, misattributed-ben-franklin, misattributed-swift

152 likes

#7

“Everything that occurs in the world, in every epoch, has something that corresponds to it in ancient times.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses

33 likes

#8

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
― Benjamin Franklin

266 likes

#9

“I have noticed that nothing I have never said ever did me any harm.”
― Calvin Coolidge

70 likes

#10

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”
― Confucius

tags: foolishness, other-people

1418 likes

#11

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucious

tags: wisdom

6111 likes

#12

“Study the past if you would define the future.”
― Confucius

tags: direction, future, history, learning, moving-forward, past, strategy

1465 likes

#13

“When you see a good person, think of becoming like her/him. When you see someone not so good, reflect on your own weak points.”
― Confucius

971 likes

#14

“Towering genius disdains a beaten path... It sees no distinction in adding story to story... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it...”
― Abraham Lincoln

tags: genius-distinction

15 likes

#15

“As democracy is perfected, the office of 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, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

tags: democracy, elite, elitism, elitist, meritocracy, politics, predictions, voter, voting

1097 likes

#16

“A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”
― H.L. Mencken

tags: politics

249 likes

#17

“The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.”
― H.L. Mencken

tags: mentoring, teacher

250 likes

#18

“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
― H.L. Mencken

tags: conformity, control, education, government, obedience, school

215 likes

#19

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Little Book In C Major

tags: democracy

208 likes

#20

“The Seven Social Sins are:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.

From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.”
― Frederick Lewis Donaldson

tags: character, commerce, conscience, happiness, humanity, knowledge, misattributed-to-gandhi, money, morality, pleasure, politics, principle, sacrifice, science, sin, sins, wealth, work, worship

13157 likes

#21

“If you're 50 years old or younger, give every book about 50 pages before you decide to commit yourself to reading it, or give it up.

If you're over 50, which is when time gets shorter, subtract your age from 100 - the result is the number of pages you should read before deciding whether or not to quit. If you're 100 or over you get to judge the book by its cover, despite the dangers in doing so.”
― Nancy Pearl

244 likes

#22

“All generalizations are false, including this one.”
― Unknown - attributed to Mark Twain by Normand Baillargeon

tags: paradox

201 likes

#23

“I think being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause - but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism."

[Interview with Ron Powers (Chicago Sun Times) for Playboy, 1973]”
― Walter Cronkite

tags: dogma, journalism, liberal, liberalism, objectivity, politics

125 likes

#24

“I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.”
― Brenda Ueland

tags: inspiration, life

110 likes

#25

“It is given to us to calculate, to weigh, to measure, to observe, this is natural philosophy; almost all the rest is chimera.”
― Voltaire

tags: numbers, reason, voltaire

6 likes

#26

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

tags: black-and-white-thinking, evil, good, good-and-evil

2197 likes

#27

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
― Isaac Asimov

tags: education, learning, lifelong-learning, self-education

1575 likes

#28

“My whole life I've been a fraud. I'm not exaggerating. Pretty much all I've ever done all the time is try to create a certain impression of me in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired. It's a little more complicated than that, maybe. But when you come right down to it it's to be liked, loved. Admired, approved of, applauded, whatever. You get the idea.”
― David Foster Wallace

61 likes

#29

“What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

1017 likes