Non-Official Wisdom

The following quotes have not been approved by John Ashcroft and will never be uttered by Whitehouse Spokesperson Ari Fleischer (aka The Mouth of Sauron).

On Democracy and Speaking Out

"What good fortune for those in power that people do not think."
- Adolf Hitler, politician

"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them."
- Paul Valery, poet

"It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs."
- Albert Einstein, professor

"The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them."
- Lois McMaster Bujold, author, in Diplomatic Immunity

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."
- Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr., diplomat

"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."
- Robert Louis Stevenson, author

"It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting."
- Tom Stoppard, playwright, in "Jumpers"

On Liberty and Equality

"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it, 'all men are created equal, except Negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia, for example, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. "
- Abraham Lincoln, lawyer

On the Presidency

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American Public."
- Theodore Roosevelt, Republican President

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure... The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to frame the Constitution so that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood."
- Abraham Lincoln, US Representative

"There is no King, who, with sufficient force, is not always ready to make himself absolute."
- Thomas Jefferson, independent farmer

"Faith in the ability of a leader is of slight service unless it be united with faith in his justice."
- George Goethals, psychologist

"An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world."
- Thomas Jefferson, independent farmer

On Patriotism

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else."
- Theodore Roosevelt, Republican President

"'My country, right or wrong,' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"
- G.K. Chesterton, author

"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."
- Malcom X, minister

"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet

"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship... voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

On Fear

"It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable."
- Erik Hoffer, author, in The Passionate State of Mind

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
- Bertrand Russell, philosopher

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear."
- Edmund Burke, politician

On Violence and War

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"
- Mohandas K. Gandhi, lawyer

"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."
- Sir Winston Churchill, pub patron

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the wise can not see all ends."
- J.R.R. Tolkien, author, in The Fellowship of the Ring

On Peace

"In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior."
- Sir Francis Bacon, author

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi, lawyer

"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, General and Republican President

"First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others."
- Thomas A. Kempis, author

"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare."
- Mark Twain, author

"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
- Baruch Spinoza, philosopher

"Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi, lawyer

"If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies."
- Moshe Dayan, warrior/peacemaker

"The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war."
- Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, politican

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."
- Jesus of Nazareth, carpenter

The main page for more on peace.