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Quotations of the Day: November 2003
November 30, 2003
We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, when faced with discomfort, to discard any and all first principles of liberty, and, further, to indict those who do not freely join with us in happily arrogating those principles. —David Mamet
November 29, 2003
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, colored men looking for loans and whites who “understand the Negro.” —Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
November 28, 2003
People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy. —Friedrich Engels
November 27, 2003
He [James Agee] was not fit for marriage, only for work. A major writer, he conceded, required major torment. —Laurence Bergreen
November 26, 2003
A business with an income at its heels / Furnishes always oil for its own wheels. —William Cowper
November 25, 2003
The artist selects and classifies what nature mingles in a hideous confusion and in doing so he is, in one of his many ways, adapting the universe to our minds by presenting it in an order which our emotions can follow. —Joseph Wood Krutch
November 24, 2003
The novel can’t compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who’s had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished. —Louis-Ferdinand Céline
November 23, 2003
The War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in America were both intestinal conflicts arising out of similar ideas. In the first the clash was between feudalism and the new economic order; in the second, between an agricultural society and a new industrial one. —J.F.C. Fuller
November 22, 2003
With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own. —John F. Kennedy
November 21, 2003
Women hope men will change after marriage but they don’t; men hope women won’t change but they do. —Bettina Arndt
November 20, 2003
The War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of Fate. —Winston Churchill
November 19, 2003
The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and silly. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost gem-like perfection—the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. —H.L. Mencken
November 18, 2003
Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. —Franklin D. Roosevelt
November 17, 2003
You talkin’ to me? Youtalkin’ tome? You talkin’ tome? Then who the hell else you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here. —Paul Schrader
November 16, 2003
The drama can only be brought to its climax in one of two ways—through the selective brutality of terrorism or the impartial horrors of war. —Kenneth Kaunda
November 15, 2003
God has given you your country as cradle, and humanity as mother; you cannot rightly love your brethren of the cradle if you love not the common mother. —Giuseppe Mazzini
November 14, 2003
It is a dangerous thing to ask why someone else has been given more. It is humbling—and indeed healthy—to ask why you have been given so much. —Condoleezza Rice
November 13, 2003
If some beggar steals a bridle / he’ll be hung by a man who’s stolen a horse. / There’s no surer justice in the world than that / which makes the rich thief hang the poor one. —Peire Cardenal
November 12, 2003
It is the common failing of totalitarian regimes that they cannot really understand the nature of our democracy. They mistake dissent for disloyalty. They mistake restlessness for a rejection of policy. They mistake a few committees for a country. They misjudge individual speeches for public policy. —Lyndon B. Johnson
November 11, 2003
What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It’s a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter. —Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
November 10, 2003
For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel. —Martin Luther
November 9, 2003
Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children. —Georg Büchner
November 8, 2003
Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind. —William Golding
November 7, 2003
Many of our German friends before the war would come as our guest to hunt wild pig. I refused to invite Goering. I could not tolerate his killing a wild pig—seemed too much like brother against brother. —Joseph L. Mankiewicz
November 6, 2003
Editing is the same as quarreling with writers—same thing exactly. —Harold Ross
November 5, 2003
If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. —John F. Kennedy
November 4, 2003
Not yesterday I learned to know / The love of bare November days / Before the coming of the snow.… —Robert Frost
November 3, 2003
I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. —Isaac Newton
November 2, 2003
We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges. —Winston Churchill
November 1, 2003
The sword conquered for a while, but the spirit conquers for ever! —Sholem Asch
