Ramon4 > Ramon4's Quotes

“We [the military personnel here] serve the flag. The trade we all follow is the give and take of death. It is for that purpose that the American people maintain us. Any one of us who believes he has a job like any other, for which he draws a money wage, is a thief of the food he eats and a trespasser of the bunk in which he lies down to sleep.”
― Richard McKenna , The Sand Pebbles

“Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good master, but they mean to be master.”
― Daniel Webster

“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters”
― Daniel Webster

“I lied," I said. ...
"I know it," he said.
"Then do something about it. Do anything, just so it's something."
"I cant," he said.
"There aint anything to do? Not anything?"
"I didn't say that," Grandfather said. "I said I couldn't. You can."
"What?" I said. "How can I forget it? Tell me how to."
"You cant," he said. "Nothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever lost. It's too valuable."
"Then what can I do?"
"Live with it," Grandfather said.
"Live with it? You mean, forever? For the rest of my life? Not ever to get rid of it? Never? I cant. Dont you see that I cant?"
"Yes you can," he said. "You will. A gentleman always does. A gentleman can live through anything. He faces anything. A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences, even when he did not himself instigate them but only acquiesced to them, didn't say No though he knew he should.”
― William Faulkner, The Reivers

“Believe this, young man," exclaimed Shelgrim, layinga thick powerful forefinger on the table to emphasize his words, "try to believe this - to begin with - that railroads build themselves. Where there is a demand sooner or later there will be a supply. Mr. Derrick, does he grow his wheat? The Wheat grows itself. What does he count for? Does he supply the force? What do I count for? Do I build the Railroad? You are dealing with forces, young man, when you speak of Wheat and the Railroads, not with men. There is the Wheat, the supply. It must be carried to feed the People. There is the demand. The Wheat is one force, the Railroad, another, and there is the law that governs them - supply and demand. Men have only little to do in the whole business. Complications may arise, conditions that bear hard on the individual - crush him maybe - but the Wheat will be carried to feed the people as inevitably as it will grow. If you want to fasten the blame of the affair at Los Muertos on any one person, you will make a mistake. Blame conditions, not men.”
― Frank Norris, The Octopus: A Story of California

“Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember.”
― Oscar Levant

“When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”
― Herman Wouk

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions

“We teach best what we most need to learn.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you're alive it isn't.”
― Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story – A New York Times Bestselling Philosophical Memoir of Hope and Intimacy

“The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world -- even if what is published is not true.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.”
― Thomas Szasz

“The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. ”
― Thomas Szasz

“Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation from others, and thus affords them the possibility of dignity. They loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, and thus confronts them with the possibility of insignificance.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, The Second Sin

“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth--that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts and Pushers

“Although both home and mental illness are complex, modern ideas, we have fallen into the habit of using phrases such as "housing the homeless" and "treating the mentally ill" as if we knew what counts as housing a homeless person or what it means to treat mental illness. But we do not. We have deceived ourselves that having a home and being mentally healthy are our natural conditions, and that we become homeless or mentally ill as a result of "losing" our homes or our minds. The opposite is the case. We are born without a home and without reason, and have to exert ourselves and are fortunate if we succeed in building a secure home and a sound mind.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

“For the libertarian, the state is a guardian entrusted with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and hence a permanent threat to individual liberty. Whereas for the (modern) liberal, the state is a social apparatus for protecting people from destitution, discrimination, and disease. Those who distrust the state, believe the government should provide only those services that individuals or informal groups cannot provide for themselves. Those who trust it, believe the government should provide as many services as people in need require.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.”
― Erma Bombeck

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“Another strange notion pervading whole peoples is that the State has money of its own; and nowhere is this absurdity more firmly fixed than in America. The State has no money. It produces nothing. It existence is purely parasitic, maintained by taxation; that is to say, by forced levies on the production of others. “Government money,” of which one hears so much nowadays, does not exist; there is no such thing.”
― Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man