J.F.C. Fuller

“National armies fight nations, royal armies fight their like; the first obey a mob, always demented, and the second a king, generally sane”. –J.F.C. Fuller

George Halas

“Many people flounder about in life because they have no purpose. Before it is possible to achieve anything, an objective must be set”. –George Halas

Ibn Khaldun

“The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage”. –Ibn Khaldun

Paul Valéry

“Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business”. –Paul Valéry

Charles Lamb

“Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength”. –Charles Lamb

Revilo P. Oliver

“If our squawking pacifists were rational, they would perceive that war can only be ended by abolishing the several species of mammals called human; our spacecraft have shown us that Mars and Venus are perfectly warless worlds”. –Revilo P. Oliver

Frédéric Bastiat

“The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else”. –Frédéric Bastiat

Henry Steele Commager

“The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted”. –Henry Steele Commager

William Whewell

“Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation”. –William Whewell

Charles Reade

“The fortunate man is he who, born poor, or nobody, works gradually up to wealth and consideration, and, having got them, dies before he finds they were not worth so much trouble”. –Charles Reade

Immanuel Kant

“Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee”. –Immanuel Kant

F.H. Bradley

“The deadliest foe to virtue would be complete self-knowledge”. –F.H. Bradley

Lucian

“Criticism is twofold: that which teaches us what we are to choose, and that which teaches us what to avoid”. –Lucian

Hugh Kingsmill

“Writers are idolized not because they love their fellow men, which is never a recommendation and in extreme instances leads to crucifixion, but because their self-love is in tune with current fears and desires, and in giving it expression they are speaking for an inarticulate multitude”. –Hugh Kingsmill

Stefan Zweig

“The organic fundamental error of humanism was that it desired to educate the common people (on whom it looked down) from its lofty stance instead of trying to understand them and to learn from them”. –Stefan Zweig

Friedrich Klopstock

“He who has an opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave”. –Friedrich Klopstock

George Saintsbury

“Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it”. –George Saintsbury

Carroll Quigley

“We have now done what the Romans did when they started to commit suicide. We have shifted from an army of citizens to an army of mercenaries”. –Carroll Quigley

Charlton Ogburn

“Circumstances are seldom right… You must always do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen as appropriate for your special endowments”. –Charlton Ogburn

Novalis

“We are near awakening when we dream that we dream”. –Novalis

Mary Shelley

“It is decided as you may have expected; all judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape”. –Mary Shelley

Charles Dickens

“The law is an ass”. –Charles Dickens

Robert Southey

“Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust”. –Robert Southey

Thomas Carlyle

“Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and it gives in the long run a net result of zero”. –Thomas Carlyle

Goldwin Smith

“The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party”. –Goldwin Smith

Lewis Mumford

“Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers”. –Lewis Mumford

Samuel Smiles

“Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform”. –Samuel Smiles

Herodotus

“In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons”. –Herodotus

Livy

“Shared danger is the strongest of all bonds; it keeps men united in spite of mutual dislike and suspicion”. –Livy

Polybius

“When a state after having passed with safety through many and great dangers arrives at the higher degree of power, and possesses an entire and undisputed sovereignty, it is manifest that the long continuance of prosperity must give birth to costly and luxurious manners…” –Polybius

Washington Irving

“Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them”. –Washington Irving

William Morris

“I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name”. –William Morris

Nancy Mitford

“Surely a King who loves pleasure is less dangerous than one who loves glory?” –Nancy Mitford

Voltaire

“The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture for wild beasts to fight in”. –Voltaire

Wilhelm von Humboldt

“The government is best which makes itself unnecessary”. –Wilhelm von Humboldt

Barbara Tuchman

“Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed”. –Barbara Tuchman

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

“An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think”. –Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Claudius

“No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing”. –Claudius

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“The clock of communism has stopped striking, but its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble”. –Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Robert Graves

“Nobody is familiar with his own profile, and it comes as a shock when one sees it in a portrait, that one really looks like that to people standing beside one”. –Robert Graves

John Steinbeck

“You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway”. –John Steinbeck

H.G. Wells

“A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men’s lives should not stake their own”. –H.G. Wells

Charles Kingsley

“Science frees us in many ways… from the bodily terror which the savage feels. But she replaces that, in the minds of many, by a moral terror which is far more overwhelming”. –Charles Kingsley

James A. Michener

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home”. –James A. Michener

Jawaharlal Nehru

“It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive”. –Jawaharlal Nehru

Ernest Renan

“To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious”. –Ernest Renan

Stephen Ambrose

“Like their predecessors, the Presidents of today just throw up their hands”. –Stephen Ambrose

Karl Marx

“Democracy is the road to socialism”. –Karl Marx

Æschylus

“I have learned to hate all traitors, and there is no disease I spit on more than treachery”. –Æschylus

W.E.B. Du Bois

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity”. –W.E.B. Du Bois

Walter Scott

“For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears”. –Walter Scott

Isaac Asimov

“To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today”. –Isaac Asimov

Samuel Butler

“God cannot alter the past, though historians can”. –Samuel Butler

Henry David Thoreau

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves”. –Henry David Thoreau

Arrian

“Our enemies are Medes and Persians; men who, for centuries, have lived soft and luxurious lives. We, of Macedon, for generations past, have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves”. –Arrian

Bertrand Russell

“War does not determine who is right – only who is left”. –Bertrand Russell

Tacitus

“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace”. –Tacitus

Edward Gibbon

“Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery”. –Edward Gibbon