Quotes

Here are some of my favorite quotes…

–Thomas Jefferson

• I cannot live without books
• Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
• Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself.
• I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
• Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you and act accordingly.
• The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
• When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
• Friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life.
• Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
• Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
• I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

–General Douglas MacArthur

• Americans never quit.
• A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
• Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.
• Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.
• You are remembered for the rules you break.

–George Eliot

• Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
• It’s never too late to be who you might have been.
• Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.
• There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

–Mark Twain

• If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
• The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
• The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
• Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
• The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.  (SO TRUE!!)
• It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
• I never let schooling interfere with my education.
  
• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
• When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.
• When in doubt, tell the truth.
• The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
• The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
• Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
• What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, what counts is the size of the fight in the dog.
• There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
• The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right.
• The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
• When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
• Do something every day that you don’t want to do this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
• A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
• Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

–Sir Winston Churchill

• A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
• Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
• Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
• I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.
• History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
• It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
• It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.
• When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
• We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
• Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt… We shall not fail or falter we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.
• Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

–Theodore Roosevelt

• The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
• The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of continuing to be a nation at all would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.
• The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
• Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.
• A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.
• The government is us we are the government, you and I.
• It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.
• To educate a man in mind, and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society.
• Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly I can’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.