Paul Christenson > Paul's Quotes

“The difference between a strong man and a weak one is that the former does not give up after a defeat.”
― Woodrow Wilson

“It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
― Noël Coward, Blithe Spirit

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“So, my dear fellow, if I don't believe in God, I believe still less in man.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Atheist’s Mass

“Where words lose their meaning, people lose their lives.”
― Confucius

“When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.He becomes a sort of hollow,posing dummy,the conventional figure of a sahib.For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives",and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him.He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“What holds true for the individual holds true for a society. It is never static; if it does not grow, it decays; if it does not transcend the status quo for the better, it changes for the worse. Often we, the individual or the people who make up a society, have the illusion we could stand still and not alter the given situation in the one or the other direction. This is one of the most dangerous illusions. The moment we stand still, we begin to decay.”
― Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology

“When someone is searching, said Siddhartha, then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal. Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal. You, oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a searcher, because, striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see, which are directly in front of your eyes.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“The painful thing observable about all this business was, the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor ... This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it.”
― Mark Twain A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

“The huge modern heresy is to alter the human soul to fit modern social conditions, instead of altering modern social conditions to fit the human soul.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“War is cruelty. You can't refine it.”
― William T. Sherman, Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman

“No one could endure lasting adversity if it continued to have the same force as when it first hit us. We are all tied to Fortune, some by a loose and golden chain, and others by a tight one of baser metal: but what does it matter? We are all held in the same captivity, and those who have bound others are themselves in bonds - unless you think perhaps that the left-hand chain is lighter. One man is bound by high office, another by wealth; good birth weighs down some, and a humble origin others; some bow under the rule of other men and some under their own; some are restricted to one place by exile, others by priesthoods: all life is a servitude.

So you have to get used to your circumstances, complain about them as little as possible, and grasp whatever advantage they have to offer: no condition is so bitter that a stable mind cannot find some consolation in it.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“To solve a problem, you need to remove the cause, not the symptom.”
― Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living

“If you're going through hell, keep going.”
― Winston Churchill

“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.”
― Ben Jonson, Timber: Or Discoveries Made Upon Men And Matter

“Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world - and unless we touch others, we're out of touch with life.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes

“We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Adversity removes the friends prosperity has harvested.”
― C.J. Langenhoven

“My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up.”
― Joe Biden, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics

“Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man, but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“If you're going through hell, keep going.”
― Winston Chruchhill

“Statesmanship is developed in the hard knocks of general experience, private and public.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

“There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
― George Orwell

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

“How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?”
― Howard Zinn

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.”
― Lysander Spooner

“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100/Methuselah's Children