Favourite Quotations
The hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
[The King of Brobdingnag] was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century, protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice or ambition could produce.
Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea...and ideas are bulletproof.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Democracy is always a struggle for justice against the powerful.
All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
If one meets a powerful person - Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates - ask them five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?" If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.
I have no country to fight for. My country is the Earth. I am a citizen of the world.
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
An injury to one is an injury to all.
The Charter of the United Nations (1945)
We the people of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war which twice in our lifetimes has brought untold sorrow to mankind.
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to the freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-communism.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
War does not determine who is right, only who is left.
No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
What is the matter with the poor is poverty. What is the matter with the rich is uselessness.
All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers.
I am pleading for the future. I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.
I am a socialist because I believe that socialism will solve the misery of the world, give work to the man who is hungry and idle and at least give to little children the right to be born free.
The graveyards are filled with indispensable men.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
I resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
Understanding is a three edged sword.
The past tempts us, the present confuses us and the future frightens us.
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)
With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.
Villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well-camouflaged.
Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)
There's a reason we separate military and the police: one fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
Things will not calm down, Daniel Jackson. They will in fact calm up.
The universe is vast and we are so small. There is really only one thing we can ever truly control...whether we are good or evil.
Second star to the right and straight on till morning.
To die would be an awfully big adventure.
Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.
Those who do not read the newspaper are uninformed. Those who do read the newspaper are misinformed.
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or imbeciles who really mean it.
If you want to know if a man is honest, ask him. If he says yes, you know he's crooked.
Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? Answer the second question first.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ (1982)
I'm a committed radical. I am against nearly everything.
Earthquake in Guatemala. Thatcher responsible.