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|  John Adams | I answered that the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon. Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination. | |
| John Adams | Society's demands for moral authority and character increase
as the importance of the position increases. | |
| John Adams | Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have... a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers. | |
| John Quincy Adams | Always stand on principle, even if you stand alone. | |
| Aeschylus | It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered. | |
| Mohammed Ali | The man who views the world at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life. | |
| Corri Alius | Do whatever you can to capture, or recapture, your life spark - unless it harms others, in which case suffer with as much happiness as you can muster. Your nobility of spirit will spark itself. | |
| James Allen | Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him. | |
| Henri-Frédéric Amiel | The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms. | |
| Henri Frederic Amiel | The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal. | |
| Thomas Aquinas | If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship he would keep it in port forever. | |
| Hannah Arendt | No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny. | |
| Hannah Arendt | What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core. | |
| Aristophanes | You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner. | |
| Ben H. Bagdikian | In the US, voters cast ballots for individual candidates who are not bound to any party program except rhetorically, and not always then. Some Republicans are more liberal than some Democrats, some libertarians are more radical than some socialists, and many local candidates run without any party identification. No American citizen can vote intelligently without knowledge of the ideas, political background, and commitments of each individual candidate. | |
| Alan Barth | Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims. | |
| Rev. Henry Ward Beecher | Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them. | |
| Saul Bellow | Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can’t open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated. | |
| Henri-Louis Bergson | Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. | |
| George Berkeley | He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave. | |
| Bruno Bettelheim | This is exactly the message that fairy tales get across to the child in manifold form: that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence -- but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious. | |
| Ambrose Bierce | In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity. | |
| William Boetcker | You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.\\
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.\\
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.\\
You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.\\
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.\\
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.\\
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.\\
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.\\
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.\\
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. | |
| Elias Boudinot | Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow. | |
| Robert Browning | Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or what’s a heaven for? | |
| Buddha | All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. | |
| Edmund Burke | The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded. | |
| Edmund Burke | Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young peoples, and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation. | |
| Thomas Carlyle | Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world. | |
| Thomas Carlyle | Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects. | |
| Otis Chandler | Once we start to worry too often and too deeply about what certain individuals and what certain groups think about us, then we might start selling our souls for the sake of expediency. | |
| William Ellery Channing | Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself. | |
| Mary Ellen Chase | Manual labor to my father was not only good and decent for it's own sake but, as he was given to saying, it straightened out one's thoughts. | |
| Winston Churchill | An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. | |
| Arthur C. Clarke | Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. | |
| Henry Clay | Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character. | |
| Steve Dasbach | Government schools can't teach reading, writing, and arithmetic -- why should we trust them to teach morality, respect, and character? If public education does for ethics what it's done for learning, we'll end up with a generation of immoral, disrespectful, and characterless students. | |
| Étienne de la Boétie | Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. | |
| Charles-Louis De Secondat | We ought to be very cautious in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty, and may be the origin of a number of petty acts of tyranny if the legislator be not on his guard; for as such an accusation does not bear directly on the overt acts of a citizen, but refers to the idea we entertain of his character. | |
| Alexis de Tocqueville | If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them. | |
| Alexis de Tocqueville | In the end, the state of the Union comes down to the character of the people. ... I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, and it was not there. I sought for it in the fertile fields, and boundless prairies, and it was not there. I sought it in her rich mines, and vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. | |
| Democratic Party Platform of 1996 | Today's Democratic Party knows our children's education is not complete unless they learn good values. We applaud the efforts of the Clinton-Gore Administration to promote character education in our schools. Teaching good values, strong character, and the responsibilities of citizenship must be an essential part of American education. | |
| Benjamin Disraeli | Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed. | |
| W. Vaughn Ellsworth | Pity the poor, wretched, timid soul, too faint hearted to resist his oppressors.
He sings the songs of the damned, 'I cannot resist, I have too much to lose,
they might take my property or confiscate my earnings,
what would my family do, how would they survive?'
He hides behind pretended family responsibility, failing to see that
the most glorious legacy that we can bequeath to our posterity is liberty! | |
| Ralph Waldo Emerson | The less government we have the better - the fewer laws and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual. | |
| Ralph Waldo Emerson | Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live as well as think. | |
| Thomas I. Emerson | The right to freedom of expression is justified first of all as the right of an individual purely in his capacity as an individual. It derives from the widely accepted premise of Western thought that the proper end of man is the realization of his character and potentialities as a human being. | |
| Frederick W. Faber | There is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character. | |
| William Faulkner | Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy… These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | History will also give Occasion to expatiate on the Advantage of Civil Orders and Constitutions, how Men and their Properties are protected by joining in Societies and establishing Government; their Industry encouraged and rewarded, Arts invented, and Life made more comfortable: The Advantages of Liberty, Mischiefs of Licentiousness, Benefits arising from good Laws and a due Execution of Justice, &c. Thus may the first Principles of sound Politicks be fix'd in the Minds of Youth. | |
| Arthur Freed | Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough. | |
| James Anthony Froude | English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on
the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised
democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour
of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family,
each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its
self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own
affairs and think its own thoughts. | |
| Thomas Fuller | 'Tis better to suffer wrong than do it. | |
| Rick Gaber | Those who complain the most about the quality of the people in power are the ones who put all that power there in the first place. Well, what kind of people did they expect it all to attract, anyway? Sheesh! | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles. | |
| Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi | The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice. | |
| James A. Garfield | I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error. | |
| William Jay Gaynor | My dear sir, let me tell you that every citizen has full legal right to arrest anyone whom he sees committing any criminal offense, big or little. The law of England and of this country has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen. You have the same right to make an arrest for an offense committed in your presence that any policeman has. But we cannot all be bothering with making arrests, so we employ a certain number of our fellow citizens for that purpose and put blue clothes and brass buttons on them. But their clothes and their buttons add nothing whatever to their right to make arrests without warrant. They still have only the same right which the law gives to all of us. Be so good as to look at section 183 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and be convinced of your powers, and then sail right in as hard and as fast as you want to, being careful, however, only to arrest guilty persons, for otherwise your victims will turn around and sue you for damages for false arrest. Policemen have to face the same risk. | |
| John C. Gifford | One man can completely change
the character of a country,
and the industry of its people,
by dropping a single seed
in fertile soil. | |
| William Branch Giles | [It is not the purpose nor right of Congress] to attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life. | |
| Emma Goldman | The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?... With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? | |
| Alexander Hamilton | To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude,
that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast,
with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace;
and, that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility,
is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | In the recommendation to admit indiscriminately foreign emigrants of every description to the privileges of American citizens on their first entrance into our country, there is an attempt to break down every pale which has been erected for the preservation of a national spirit and a national character; and to let in the most powerful means of perverting and corrupting both the one and the other. | |
| Thomas Hardy | Persons with weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits. | |
| Elizabeth Harrison | Those who are lifting the world upward and onward are those who encourage more than criticize. | |
| Heraclitus | Man's character is his fate. | |
| Richard Hofstadter | A university’s essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism – a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else. | |
| Horace | Who then is free? The wise who can command his passions, who fears not want, nor death, nor chains,
firmly resisting his appetites and despising the honors of the world, who relies wholly on himself, whose angular points of character have all been
rounded off and polished. | |
| Horace | “Painters and poets,” you say, “have always had an equal license in bold invention.” We know; we claim the liberty for ourselves and in turn we give it to others. | |
| Justice Charles Evans Hughes | Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed.' | |
| Charles Evans Hughes | A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company. | |
| Jan Hunt | All children behave as well as they are treated. | |
| Michael Iapoce | Reputation is character minus what you've been caught doing. | |
| Justice Robert H. Jackson | Our forefathers found the evils of free thinking more to be endured than the evils of inquest or suppression. This is because thoughtful, bold and independent minds are essential to the wise and considered self-government. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate. | |
| Garrison Keillor | You taught me to be nice, so nice that now I am so full of niceness, I have no sense of right and wrong, no outrage, no passion. | |
| L. Lionel Kendrick | Integrity is the core of our character. | |
| John F. Kennedy | Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm. | |
| John F. Kennedy | But peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings. | |
| John F. Kennedy | We need men who can dream of things that never were. | |
| Alan Keyes | Character is the accumulated confidence that individual men and women acquire from years of doing the right thing, over and over again, even when they don't feel like it. People with character understand that their lives are filled with events and choices that are significant, above all, not because of the short term success or failure of the search for money or position, but because the choices we make are actually making us into one kind of person, or another. Our life of choices is a life-long labor to make ourselves into a person who has begun to respond adequately to the awesome gift we received from God when He made us in His image. | |
| Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | I have a dream that one day
this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:
'We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal.' ... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. | |
| Sir Roger L'Estrange | One stumble is enough to deface the character of an honorable life. | |
| Ann Landers | Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. | |
| Lao-Tzu | Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power. | |
| Frances Moore Lappé | [O]ur greatest contributions to the cause of freedom and development overseas is not what we do over there, but what we do right here at home. | |
| Lucy Larcom | Labor, in itself, is neither elevating or otherwise. It is the laborer's privilege to ennoble his work by the aim with which he undertakes it, and by the enthusiasm and faithfulness he puts into it. | |
| Paul F. Lazarsfeld | It is the tragic story of the cultural crusader in a mass society that he cannot win, but that we would be lost without him. | |
| Robert E. Lee | You must study to be frank with the world: frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted that you mean to do right. | |
| C. S. Lewis | To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death --- these are wishes deeply ingrained in civilised man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow. | |
| C. S. Lewis | Hitherto the plans of the educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted, and indeed we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. | |
| Abraham Lincoln | Nearly all men can withstand adversity; if you want to test a man's character, give him power. | |
| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. | |
| John Lubbock | If we are ever in doubt about what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done. | |
| Martin Luther | I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self. | |
| Thomas Babington Macaulay | The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out. | |
| James Madison | Stability in government is essential to national character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are among the chief blessings of civil society. | |
| James Madison | If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty. | |
| James Madison | As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another. | |
| James Madison | The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon … has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right. | |
| James Madison | In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. | |
| Donald S. McAlvaney | In every declining civilization there is a small "remnant" of people who adhere to the right against the wrong; who recognize the difference between good and evil and who will take an active stand for the former and against the latter; who can still think and discern and who will courageously take a stand against the political, social, moral, and spiritual rot or decay of their day. | |
| Margaret Mead | Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. | |
| Mencius | The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute -- he simply speaks and does what is right. | |
| H. L. Mencken | Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking. | |
| John Stuart Mill | Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. | |
| Charles Edward Montague | A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie. | |
| John Viscount Morley | No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character. | |
| Gerhard Oestreich | No external force will ever succeed in making you 'want what you do not want and believe what you do not believe'. A man may take my life, but not my faith. | |
| Thomas Paine | When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel ... for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon. | |
| Thomas Paine | Character is much easier kept than recovered. | |
| Thomas Paine | Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ... | |
| Thomas Paine | But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then you are not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant. | |
| Mario Palmieri | Fascist ethics begin ... with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position. | |
| Francis W. Parker | The end and aim of all education is the development of character. | |
| Dr. Ron Paul | Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms. | |
| Dennis Prager | To the students and faculty of our high school:
I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.
I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.
First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships.
The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity -- your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American. This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans.
If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity-, race- and non-American nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America, one of its three central values -- e pluribus unum, "from many, one." And this school will be guided by America's values.
This includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness.
Your clubs will be based on interests and passions, not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism -- an unhealthy preoccupation with the self -- while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. So we will have clubs that transport you to the wonders and glories of art, music, astronomy, languages you do not already speak, carpentry and more. If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interesting in are those based on ethnic, racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you.
Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united America's citizens for over 200 years, and it will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has always come to be one country. And if you leave this school without excellent English language skills, I would be remiss in my duty to ensure that you will be prepared to successfully compete in the American job market. We will learn other languages here -- it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English -- but if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.
Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor, everything in this school will reflect learning's elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for Hollywood events than for church or school. These people have their priorities backward. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.
Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school's property -- whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can't speak without using the f-word, you can't speak. By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission, plus epithets such as [the 'N' word], even when used by one black student to address another black, or 'bitch,' even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.
Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way -- the way people attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago -- by earning it. One immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight.
Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will be devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue. There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual or not Christian. We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately lucky -- to be alive and to be an American.
Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you. | |
| Proverb | Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are. | |
| Mary Renault | In all men is evil sleeping; the good man is he who will not awaken it, in himself or in other men. | |
| Samuel Richardson | For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse. | |
| John D. Rockefeller, Sr. | In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.
We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen -- of whom we have an ample supply.
The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way. | |
| John Ruskin | The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it. | |
| Eric Schaub | Life is but a blink,
and it matters. | |
| Eric Schaub | It takes two wings to fly. | |
| Eric Schaub | The process of liberation is continuous. | |
| Eric Schaub | The truth doesn't sell. It is high in supply, but low in demand. | |
| Carl Schurz | If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other. | |
| General H. Norman Schwarzkopf | Character is the single most important ingredient of leadership. Proper leadership would have prevented the wars in Kosovo and Somalia. | |
| General H. Norman Schwarzkopf | Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body. | |
| Lucius Annaeus Seneca | You can tell the character of every man when you see how he gives and receives praise. | |
| Adam Smith | It is not the benevolence of the butcher, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard
to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their
advantages. | |
| Logan Pearsall Smith | Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior. | |
| Jeffrey R. Snyder | Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers. | |
| Joseph Sobran | Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right. | |
| King Solomon | These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. | |
| Herbert Spencer | The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature -- a type nowhere at present existing. | |
| Lysander Spooner | [F]or everybody has a natural right to defend his own person and property against aggressors, but also to go to the assistance and defence of everybody else, whose person or property is invaded. The natural right of each individual to defend his own person and property against an aggressor, and to go to the assistance and defence of every one else whose person or property is invaded, is a right without which men could not exist on earth. | |
| Charles Haddon Spurgeon | Men cannot see truth, because they love falsehood. The gospel is not seen, because it is too pure for their loose lives and lewd thoughts. | |
| State Gazette (Charleston) | No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state.... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen. | |
| Publilius Syrus | Take care that no one hates you justly. | |
| William Makepeace Thackeray | To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even ambition when the end is gained -- who can say this is not greatness? | |
| Margaret Thatcher | Perhaps I can summarise it best by saying this -- Nations that have pursued equality, like the Iron Curtain countries, I think have finished up with neither equality, nor liberty. Nations, which like us, in the past have pursued liberty, as a fundamental objective, extending it to all, have finished up with liberty, human dignity, and far fewer inequalities than other people. | |
| Margaret Thatcher | Liberty, human dignity, a higher standard of living is fundamental. And, steadily, I think, people are beginning to realise that you don't have those things unless you have a pretty large private enterprise sector. Any Iron Curtain country has neither liberty, nor a very high standard of living. The two things go, economic and political freedom, go together. I've been right in the forefront of saying that, here, in the States, and it's very interesting to me now, to see a number of articles from people who are taking up the same theme. They are disturbed that Socialism is reducing liberty and freedom for ordinary people, and that's really what matters. | |
| Margaret Thatcher | Look, I think you're tackling public expenditure from the wrong end, if I might say so. Why don't you look at it as any housewife has to look at it? She has to look at her expenditure every week or every month, according to what she can afford to spend, and if she overspends one week or month, she's got to economise the next. Now governments really ought to look at it from the viewpoint of "What can we afford to spend?" They've already put up taxes, and yet the taxes they collect are not enough for the tremendous amount they're spending. They're having to borrow to a greater extent than ever before, and future generations will have to repay. Now, if anyone tells me that a Chancellor of the [Denis Healey] Exchequer can put up public expenditure in two years by -- and it's a tremendous figure -- twenty thousand million pounds, and he doesn't know where to get it down by about three thousand million pounds, then he ought never to have been in charge of the nation's finances ... never! | |
| Margaret Thatcher | I think they've made the biggest financial mess that any government's ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they're now trying to control everything by other means. They're progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people. | |
| Margaret Thatcher | But don't forget that we fought a 1974 election on saying really that pay couldn't go on going up as it was. The important thing … you must never look at pay on its own, what you've got to look at is pay in relation to the amount produced. It's when those two get badly out of line that you get inflation. And now obviously, we've got very much higher pay, but we're producing less than we were in 1970, so it's the relationship that you've got to watch. Don't look at pay separately. Once you start to cut off a man's pay from the fruits of his labour, he will inevitably feel enormous resentment. If he's going to work harder, of course he deserves more pay, and he doesn't want it all taken away in tax. But there are two sides of the equation you've got to look at. | |
| Margaret Thatcher | I'm never quite sure what you mean by consensus politics. I believe that what most people want in their lives, is what the Conservative Party wants to have for them. I believe that our policies are fundamentally common sense policies. Just let's take taxation for an example. Wherever I go I hear enormous resentment about the amount which people are paying out of their own pay packet in tax. And, this goes right across the income ranges. Socialism started by saying it was going to tax the rich, very rapidly it was taxing the middle income groups. Now, it's taxing people quite highly with incomes way below average and pensioners with incomes way below average. You look at the figure on the beginning of a pay slip, sometimes it can look quite high, look along the slip to the other end, and see how many deductions you've had off, those deductions have increased enormously under Socialism ...
Public expenditure, which they always boast about, is financed out of the pay packet in our pockets. People are saying that they really think too much is being taken out of the pay packet for someone to spend on their behalf, and they'd rather be left with more, and it's now well-known that Socialist Governments put up taxes and Conservative Governments take them down. It's part of our fundamental belief giving the people more choice to spend their own money in their own way. | |
| Margaret Thatcher | Jobs really come in the productive sector of the economy. The real jobs are where people are producing goods or services which other people will buy. Now, dependent on those people producing those goods, are a lot of others in the public sector. Now if you run up the public sector, you can only do it by draining money out of industry and commerce. But that's where the jobs are. And one of the reasons why you have to cut public expenditure is to get the money back out of the public sector, into industry and commerce, so that they, in fact, can invest, and improve, and expand; because that's where the secure jobs are. | |
| Dorothy Thompson | It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe... till we come to the hard bottom of rocks in place, which we can call reality. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls -- the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning. | |
| Henry David Thoreau | The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals. | |
| Lily Tomlin | The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. | |
| Mark Twain | Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest. | |
| Immanuel Hermann von Fichte | If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it. | |
| Robert von Musil | One does what one is; one becomes what one does. | |
| Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. | Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. | |
| George Washington | I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man. | |
| Martha Washington | The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances. | |
| J. C. Watts, Jr. | Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking. | |
| James Q. Wilson | Character is not the enemy of self-expression and personal freedom, it is their necessary precondition. | |
| W.B. Yeats | The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. | |
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