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Sean Hannity

Sean Patrick Hannity (born 30 December 1961) is an American talk show host and conservative political commentator. He is the host of The Sean Hannity Show, a nationally syndicated talk radio show. He has also hosted Hannity, a commentary program, on Fox News, since 2009.

Quotes

 * Anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed. It's very dangerous if we start accepting lower and lower forms of behavior as the normal.
 * Hannity's first radio show at UC Santa Barbara (25 May 1989), as quoted in FAIR (November/December 2003)

 * Is it that you hate this president or that you hate America?
 * To attorney Stanley Cohen on Hannity & Colmes (30 April 2003)

 * It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state.
 * Hannity and Colmes (25 August 2003), as quoted in "The Document Sean Hannity Doesn't Want You To Read" at American Progress (16 June 2004)

 * The U.S. is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth.
 * Hannity's America (6 June 2008)

 * The tape is astonishing. And here's what's frustrating to me. And you asked specific questions, for example, about what people knew about Bill Ayers, you know, and who they voted for, the coal power plant comments. And these were really significant issues. And it seems that Obama voters, if you don't listen to talk radio, if you don't watch the FOX News Channel, you are not anywhere nearly as informed as people that are just hearing the bumper stickers, the slogans, the snippets of the commercials of the media so, journalism died in 2008, and it influenced a lot of people on the way out.
 * Hannity and Colmes (2 December 2008)

 * Here you are, you're a liberal, probably define peace as the absence of conflict. I define peace as the ability to defend yourself and blow your enemies into smithereens.

 * If you ask the question, "All right, well, why not just show us the certificate?" "You're a birther! You're a birther! That's what you are!" And uh, it's not been my number one issue, but I've been following it and I've been saying, "Why are all these people who just asked to see it, why are they, why are they crucified and beaten up and smeared and besmirched the way they are?"

 * What do you think about this birth certificate issue? I mean, it has not been my main issue, but it kind of does get a little odd here after a while. Can't they just produce it and we move on?
 * Jerry Springer
 * Because isn't this interesting? Of all our 43 presidents, of the 43 presidents —
 * Sean Hannity
 * Don't bring up race. Do not bring up race. Do not bring up race. It is a constitutional requirement.
 * Don't bring up race. Do not bring up race. Do not bring up race. It is a constitutional requirement.

 * Donald Trump brought up the issue of the birth certificate and it's getting huge buzz around the country. Even Chris Matthews has called for, you know, the birth certificate to be released. Why can't they just release the birth certificate, you know, and just move on?

 * If I was in Congress, I would not vote to raise the debt ceiling.

 * I have watched these Republicans be more harsh towards Donald Trump than they've ever been in standing up to Barack Obama and his radical agenda, they did nothing, nothing – all these phony votes to repeal and replace, show votes so they can go back and keep their power and get reelected.
 * Sorry, you created Donald Trump, all of you because of your ineffectiveness, because of your weakness, your spinelessness, your lack of vision, your inability to fight Obama, I'm getting a little sick and tired of all of you. Honestly, I am tempted to just say I don't support any of you people ever.
 * On his radio show. (August 4, 2016)

 * To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the President.
 * Tweet by @seanhannity (5 November 2018)

 * Mister President, thank you.
 * On stage, campaigning with the President, at a Republican rally in Cape Girardeau (5 November 2018)
 * I don’t vet the information on this program that I give out. We have always been independent, follow our own path on this show. That’s not going to change for me, ever.
 * (1 December 2020)

Quotes about Hannity
Oozing with vanity, Plump as a manatee, Faking humanity, Intellectual inanity, Journalistic calamity, Fox Noise insanity, You're a profanity, Hannity.
 * Aping urbanity,
 * John Cleese, Ode to Sean Hannity

 * He ain't never going to let white supremacy go, and he genuinely believes what he's doing. Bill O'Reilly and others are just trying to get ratings, but Hannity really believes that whites got special white rights. He's not just being anti-black; it's anti-anything other than white. He won't let that issue die.
 * James Meredith Interview with Jackson Free Press (2008)

 * Hannity's fantasy was so ridiculous that even his Fox colleague couldn't get on board. "You know she's thinking, 'Dude, you couldn't even protect women from getting sexually harassed in your own building and now you're Batman? Calm down. Calm down, man.
 * Trevor Noah, The Daily Show, October 3rd 2017, as quoted in "Trevor Noah Destroys Sean Hannity For His Delusional Las Vegas Response", by Rebecca Shapiro, Huffington Post, 10/04/2017

 * The bronze to Sean Hannity of Fixed News. On the Rupert Murdoch Network talking about those carbon off-sets you purchase to off-set your carbon footprint, "those off-sets, that is the biggest hoax in the world. You know what it's like. You go cheat on your wife and then say, 'Honey, don't worry, I bought an off-set.' Good luck." This is the second time Hannity has dismissed off-sets and going green and climate change, apparently utterly unaware that his boss pledged to make News Corp carbon neutral by 2010: "While we reduce our own carbon footprints, some emissions will be unavoidable. As a last resort, we will off-set these emissions. The carbon off-set is a financial tool to support projects that prevent carbon from being released in the atmosphere. Done right, they will widen the implementation of carbon saving technologies and give an incentive to create new solutions." Murdoch has also boasted that the telecast of the most recent Emmys was carbon neutral...
 * MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, in his nightly Worst Persons segment, (26 June 2008)

title: Sean Hannity


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George Soros

George Soros, born György Schwartz on 12 August 1930) is a Hungarian-born American businessman, philanthropist, and political activist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations.

The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the mind of the Market (1987)

 * The truth is, successful investing is a kind of alchemy.

 * I made two major discoveries in the course of writing: one is a reflexive connection between credit and collateral; the other is a reflexive relationship between regulators and the economies they regulate

 * The act of lending can change the value of the collateral

 * Economic theory is devoted to the study of equilibrium positions. The concept of equilibrium is very useful. It allows us to focus on the final outcome rather than the process that leads up to it. But the concept is also very deceptive. It has the aura of something empirical: since the adjustment process is supposed to lead to an equilibrium, an equilibrium position seems somehow implicit in our observations. That is not true. Equilibrium itself has rarely been observed in real life — market prices have a notorious habit of fluctuating.

1990s

 * The United States would not be called upon to act as the policeman of the world. When it acts, it would act in conjunction with others. Incidentally, the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential of the partnership because it would reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act. This is a viable alternative to the looming world disorder.
 * 1 November 1993 here

 * The bureaucratic method of building an integrated Europe has exhausted its potential.
 * "Can Europe Work? A Plan to Rescue the Union" in Foreign Affairs (September/October 1996)

Soros on Soros (1995)

 * Soros on Soros : Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995) ISBN 0471119776

 * My peculiarity is that I don't have a particular style of investing or, more exactly, I try to change my style to fit the conditions.

 * On the abstract level, I have turned the belief in my own fallibility into the cornerstone of an elaborate philosophy. On a personal level, I am a very critical person who looks for defects in myself as well as in others. But, being so critical, I am also quite forgiving. I couldn't recognize my mistakes if I couldn't forgive myself. To others, being wrong is a source of shame; to me, recognizing my mistakes is a source of pride. Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.

 * The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposition position. I assume that markets are always wrong. Even if my assumption is occasionally wrong, I use it as a working hypothesis. It does not follow that one should always go against the prevailing trend. On the contrary, most of the time the trend prevails; only occasionally are the errors corrected. It is only on those occasions that one should go against the trend. This line of reasoning leads me to look for the flaw in every investment thesis. ... I am ahead of the curve. I watch out for telltale signs that a trend may be exhausted. Then I disengage from the herd and look for a different investment thesis. Or, if I think the trend has been carried to excess, I may probe going against it. Most of the time we are punished if we go against the trend. Only at an inflection point are we rewarded.

The Crisis of Global Capitalism (1998)

 * The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998) ISBN 1891620274

 * We live in a global economy, but the political organization of our global society is woefully inadequate. We are bereft of the capacity to preserve peace and to counteract the excesses of the financial markets. Without these controls, the global economy, is liable to break down

 * The development of a global economy has not been matched by the development of a global society. The basic unit for political and social life remains the nation-state. International law and international institutions, insofar as they exist, are not strong enough to prevent war or the large-scale abuse of human rights in individual countries. Ecological threats are not adequately dealt with. Global financial markets are largely beyond the control of national or international authorities.

 * Financial markets are supposed to swing like a pendulum: They may fluctuate wildly in response to exogenous shocks, but eventually they are supposed to come to rest at an equilibrium point and that point is supposed to be the same irrespective of the interim fluctuations. Instead, as I told Congress, financial markets behaved more like a wrecking ball, swinging from country to country and knocking over the weaker ones. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the international financial system itself constituted the main ingredient in the meltdown process.
 * On the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis

 * The global crisis is caused by pathologies inherent in the global financial system itself.

 * It is time to recognize that financial markets are inherently unstable. Imposing market discipline means imposing instability, and how much instability can society take? ... To put it bluntly, the choice confronting us is whether we will regulate global financial markets internationally or leave it to each individual state to protect its interests as best it can. The latter course will surely lead to the breakdown of the gigantic circulatory system, which goes under the name of global capitalism.

 * A global society does not mean a global state. To abolish the existence of states is neither feasible nor desirable; but insofar as there are collective interests that transcend state boundaries, the sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions.

60 Minutes interview (1998)

 * Interview with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes (1998)

 * Steve Kroft: In the last two years, you have been blamed for the financial collapse of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and Russia. George Soros: All of the above. Steve Kroft: All of the above. Are you that powerful? George Soros: No. I think there's a great misunderstanding. Steve Kroft: The prime minister of Malaysia said that the region spent 40 years trying to build up its economy, and along comes a moron like Soros with a lot of money, and it's all over. He called you a criminal. George Soros: It's easier for him to blame an outside force than to admit that they were mismanaging their economy and their currency. The French finance minister talked about hanging speculators from lamp posts.

 * George Soros: I think that I am being blamed for everything. I am basically there to make money. I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of what I do.

 * George Soros: Actually, president Mandela asked me, "How could South Africa protect itself against speculators like you?" And I told him. I wrote him a memo, trying to give him the best advice I could on how to reduce the exposure of South Africa to speculative attack. Steve Kroft: That's the old "stop me before I kill again" approach, right? You're telling him, "This is what you can do to stop me." George Soros: Whether I or somebody else does whatever is happening in the markets really doesn't make any difference to the outcome. I don't feel guilty, because I'm engaged in an amoral activity which is not meant to have anything to do with guilt.

 * Steve Kroft: You're a Hungarian Jew who escaped the Holocaust by posing as a Christian. And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps. George Soros: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made. Steve Kroft: In what way? George Soros: That one should think ahead. One should understand and anticipate events and when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a very personal experience of evil. Steve Kroft: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson. Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews. I mean, that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult? George Soros: Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't see the connection, but it created no problem at all. Steve Kroft: No feeling of guilt? For example, "I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there." None of that? George Soros: Well, of course I could be on the other side, or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was—well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets: that if I weren't there—of course, I wasn't doing it—somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. Whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator. The property was being taken away. So I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.

2000s

 * How can we escape from the trap that the terrorists have set us? Only by recognizing that the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war. We must, of course, protect our security; but we must also correct the grievances on which terrorism feeds. Crime requires police work, not military action.
 * Address at the University of Pennsylvania (2002); quoted in "White House playing into Soros' hands?" by J. Michael Waller, in WorldNetDaily (1 December 2003)

 * The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognize that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. The supremacist ideology postulates that just because we are stronger than others, we know better and have right on our side. The very first sentence of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (the President's annual laying out to Congress of the country's security objectives) reads, "The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise." The assumptions behind this statement are false on two counts. First, there is no single sustainable model for national success. Second, the American model, which has indeed been successful, is not available to others, because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system, and we are not willing to yield it.
 * "The Bubble of American Supremacy" in The Atlantic Monthly (December 2003), p. 63 - 66

 * Americans, sadly, are now victims who have turned into perpetrators. Indeed, since September 2001, the war on terror has claimed more innocent victims than those terrorist attacks. This fact is unrecognized at home because the victims of the war on terror are not Americans. But the rest of the world does not draw the same distinction, and world opinion has turned against America.
 * "How Terrorism's Victims Became Perpetrators" (April 2004)

 * Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.
 * As quoted in "Great Money Minds" by Chris Stallman at TeenAnalyst.com (5 May 2005)

 * If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.
 * As quoted in The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros (2006) by Mark Tier, p. 217

 * The main difference between me and other people who have amassed this kind of money is that I am primarily interested in ideas, and I don't have much personal use for money. But I hate to think what would have happened if I hadn't made money: My ideas would not have gotten much play.
 * As quoted in The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros (2006) by Mark Tier, p. 219

 * I wish I could write a book that will be read for as long as our civilization lasts... I would value it much more highly than any business success if I could contribute to an understanding of the world in which we live or, better yet, if I could help to preserve the economic and political system that has allowed me to flourish as a participant.
 * As quoted in The Winning Investment Habits of Warren Buffett & George Soros (2006) by Mark Tier, p. 219

Interview with Mark Shapiro (2000)

 * Interview with Mark Schapiro (5 September 2000)

 * I think there's a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they're not sufficient because markets don't look after social needs. Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention and I wouldn't under-estimate the value of that, but they're not designed to take care of social needs.

 * Each state is guided by its interests, not by some nebulous concept of common interest. And not many states are even democratic. So, you have a problem with the concept between international institutions and sovereignty. To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states.

 * I advocate an alliance of democratic states, with a dual purpose. One, to promote what I call open society. I talk about an alliance of open societies which would first foster the development of open societies within individual countries, because there's a lot that needs to be done in that effort. And secondly, to establish basic international law and international institutions that you need for a global, open society. So that's my sort of broad concept. Now, I have not worked out the details, because I don't think it's for me to work out the details. It's for them to work out the details.

 * I used to be opposed to the idea of social entrepreneurship. I said, you know, let business be business, and philanthropy be philanthropy. Keep the two separate, don't mix it up, and this is what I did, and I did that rather successfully, but I now recognize that actually you do need to mix it up and I think there is room for social entrepreneurship.

 * It's more difficult, you know, to bring about positive change than it is to make money. It's much easier to make money, because it's a much easier way to measure success — the bottom line. When it comes to social consequences, they've got all different people acting in different ways, very difficult to even have a proper criterion of success. So, it's a difficult task. Why not use an entrepreneurial, rather than a bureaucratic, approach. As long as people genuinely care for the people they're trying to help, they can actually do a lot of good.

 * Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.

 * I argue that it's appropriate for people to pursue their profit motive in business. If you want to change that, you're going against human nature. But when it comes to setting the rules or creating the institutions, then you should have the general interest at heart, even if it conflicts with your personal interest.

 * You know, these things interested me before I became a businessman and I kind of neglected them during twenty, twenty-five years, while I was engaged in making money, because running a hedge fund takes, you know, a hundred percent of your attention on Saturday morning, and so I didn't get involved in these issues very much. It's only when I was rather successful at it and I've made enough money for my personal needs and to look after my family that we established this interest and, by now, it is more important to me than my business.

 * I did spearhead the introduction of the Internet in countries like Russia, the former Soviet Union, because it is a very open system of communication. I think it has great potential for self-organization and self-organization is very much at the heart of an open society. The Internet is sort of a medium of open society. However, it can also be a medium of control and so we have to be careful it doesn't destroy you.

 * I think you will have to be very, very careful to have the regulations that will protect freedom.

Interview with David Brancaccio (2003)

 * Interview with David Brancaccio (12 September 2003)

 * The Republican Party has been captured by a bunch of extremists … People who maintain that markets will take care of everything, that you leave it to the markets and the markets know best. Therefore, you need no government, no interference with business. Let everybody pursue his own interests. And that will serve the common interest. Now, there is a good foundation for this. But it's a half-truth.

 * We need to maintain law and order. We need to maintain peace in the world. We need to protect the environment. We need to have some degree of social justice, equality of opportunity. The markets are not designed to take care of those needs. That's a political process. And the market fundamentalists have managed to reduce providing those public goods.

 * I give away something up to $500 million a year throughout the world promoting Open Society. My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them.

 * I'm not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I'm doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.

 * You know, I learned at a very early age that what kind of social system or political system prevails is very important. Not just for your well-being, but for your very survival. Because, you know, I could have been killed by the Nazis. I could have wasted my life under the Communists. So, that's what led me to this idea of an open society. And that is the idea that is motivating me.

 * The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.

 * We are the dominant power. And that imposes on us a responsibility to be actually concerned with the well being of the world. Because we set the agenda. And there are a lot of problems, including terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, that can only be tackled by collective action. And we ought to be leading that collective action, instead of riding roughshod over other people's opinions and interests.

 * If the terrorists have the sympathy of people, it's much harder to find them. So we need people on our side, and that leads us to be responsible leaders of the world, show some concern with the problems.

 * I think he's a man of good intentions. I don't doubt it. But I think he's leading us in the wrong direction.
 * On George W. Bush

 * If we re-elect Bush, we are endorsing the Bush doctrine. And then we are off to a vicious circle of escalating violence in the world. And I think, you know, terrorism, counter-terrorism, it's a very scary spectacle to me. If we reject him, then we are effectively rejecting the Bush doctrine. Because he was elected on a platform of a more humble foreign policy. Then we can go back to a more humble foreign policy. And treat this episode as an aberration. We have to pay a heavy price. You know, 100 billion dollars a year in Iraq. We can't get out of that. We mustn't get out of it. But still, we can then regain the confidence of the world, and our rightful place as leaders of the world, working to make the world a better place.

BuzzFlash interview (2004)

 * BuzzFlash interview (25 February 2004)

 * Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality — but reality as distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble bursts.

 * Now look at the ideology of American supremacy. It has a solid foundation in reality; namely, the United States is the dominant power in the world. The current government believes the United States ought to use this dominant position to impose its will on the world. That is the misconception. This approach is not what made America great. America did not arrive at its dominant position by imposing its will on the world.

 * My position is that America is great precisely because it is an open society, and an open society recognizes that nobody is the ultimate arbiter — and that we may be wrong at times, even if we are powerful. We must be open to criticism and respect divergent and different views and interests.

 * I find the idea that you can introduce democracy by military force a very quaint idea. Moreover, if I wanted to choose a testing ground for doing it, Iraq would be the last nation I would choose.

 * Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on. We do need to intervene, to improve political and economic conditions inside countries that have bad governments, where people are suffering. One way of doing this, without violating sovereignty, is through constructive actions — reinforcements and incentives for countries that are moving in the right direction, toward an open society, a market economy, et cetera. That is what I'm advocating. I'm advocating preventive action of a constructive nature. And I would use military force only as the very last resort, when nothing else works.

Why We Must Not Reelect President Bush (2004)

 * The first U.S. political advertisement by Soros, published in The Wall Street Journal and 39 regional newspapers (October 2004)

 * This is the most important election of my lifetime. I have never been heavily involved in partisan politics but these are not normal times. President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests and undermining American values. That is why I am publishing this message. I have been demonized by the Bush campaign but I hope you will give me a hearing.

 * We face a vicious circle of escalating violence. President Bush ran on the platform of a "humble" foreign policy in 2000. If we re-elect him now, we endorse the Bush doctrine of preemptive action and the invasion of Iraq, and we will have to live with the consequences.

 * I grew up in Hungary, lived through fascism and the Holocaust, and then had a foretaste of communism. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of government prevails. I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society. When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society.

 * A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.

 * We are losing the values that have made America great. The destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was such a horrendous event that it required a strong response. But the President committed a fundamental error in thinking: the fact that the terrorists are manifestly evil does not make whatever counter-actions we take automatically good. What we do to combat terrorism may also be wrong. Recognizing that we may be wrong is the foundation of an open society.

 * President Bush inadvertently played right into the hands of bin Laden. The invasion of Afghanistan was justified: that was where bin Laden lived and al Qaeda had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not similarly justified. It was President Bush's unintended gift to bin Laden.

 * War and occupation create innocent victims. We count the body bags of American soldiers; there have been more than 1000 in Iraq. The rest of the world also looks at the Iraqis who get killed daily. There have been 15 times more. Some were trying to kill our soldiers; far too many were totally innocent, including many women and children. Every innocent death helps the terrorists' cause by stirring anger against America and bringing them potential recruits.

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)

 * Speech at the National Press Club (28 October 2004)

 * I have been crisscrossing the country for the last three weeks arguing against the reelection of President Bush. I feel strongly that he has led us in the wrong direction. The invasion of Iraq was a colossal blunder and only by rejecting the President at the polls can we hope to escape from the quagmire in which we find ourselves.

 * The nation is deeply divided and the two camps seem to be talking past each other. John Kerry won all three debates but President Bush invokes his faith and that inspires his followers. In the end, it boils down to a philosophical difference over how to deal with an often confusing and threatening reality.

 * An open society such as ours is based on the recognition that our understanding of reality is inherently imperfect. Nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. As the philosopher Karl Popper has shown, the ultimate truth is not attainable even in science. All theories are subject to testing and the process of replacing old theories with better ones never ends.

 * Faith plays an important role in an open society. Exactly because our understanding is imperfect, we cannot base our decisions on knowledge alone. We need to rely on beliefs, religious or otherwise, to help us make decisions. But we must remain open to the possibility that we may be wrong so that we can correct our mistakes. Otherwise, we are bound to be wrong.

 * President Bush has shown that he is incapable of recognizing his mistakes. He insists on making reality conform to his beliefs even at the cost of deceiving himself and deliberately deceiving the public. There is something appealing in the strength of his faith, especially in our troubled time. But the cost is too high. By putting our faith in a President who cannot admit his mistakes we commit ourselves to the wrong policies.

 * We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.

 * If we reelect President Bush we are endorsing his policies and we shall have to live with the consequences. We are facing a vicious circle of escalating violence with no end in sight. If we reject him at the polls we shall have a better chance to regain the respect and support of the world and break the vicious circle. Our future depends on it.

 * I have devoted half my fortune and most of my energies in the last 15 years to promoting the values of democracy and open society all over the world, especially in the former Soviet Empire. After 9/11 I came to feel that those principles need to be defended at home.

 * The invasion of Afghanistan was justified: that was where Osama bin Laden lived and al Qaeda had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not similarly justified.

 * The war in Iraq was misconceived from start to finish — if it has a finish. It is a war of choice, not of necessity, as President Bush claims. It goes without saying that Saddam was a tyrant, and it is good to be rid of him. But in invading Iraq as we did, without a second UN resolution, we violated international law. By mistreating and even torturing prisoners, we violated the Geneva conventions. President Bush has boasted that we do not need a permission slip from the international community, but our disregard for international law has endangered our security, particularly the security of our troops.

 * The war on terror is an abstraction. But the terrorists are real people and they are not all alike. Most of the people attacking our soldiers in Iraq originally had nothing to do with al Qaeda. They have been generated by the policies of the Bush administration. We have been spared a terrorist attack at home but it is quite a stretch to attribute that to the invasion of Iraq. The insurrection in Iraq, however, is a somber reality and it doesn't make us safer at home. Our security, far from improving as President Bush claims, is deteriorating.

 * Bush's war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties.

 * Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more because we are bogged down in Iraq. Iran and North Korea are moving ahead with their nuclear programs at full speed and our hand in dealing with them has been greatly weakened.

 * The war on terror as defined by President Bush is a one-dimensional presentation of reality. We cannot fight terrorism by military means alone. We can use military force only when we have a known target; but it is the habit of terrorists to keep their whereabouts hidden. To track them down we need the support of the populations amongst whom they hide. Offense is not necessarily the best defense if it offends those whose allegiance we need.

 * George W. Bush revels in being a war president. His campaign is shamelessly exploiting the fears generated by 9/11. Vice President Cheney is conjuring mushroom clouds into our cities. But fear is a bad counselor; we must resist it wherever it comes from. President Roosevelt had the right idea when he said, "We have nothing to fear but Fear itself."

 * An open society is always in danger. It must constantly reaffirm its principles in order to survive. We are being sorely tested, first by 9/11 and then by President Bush's response. To pass the test we must face reality instead of finding solace in false certainties. This election transcends party loyalties. Our future as an open society depends on resisting the Siren's song.

The Age of Fallibility (2006)

 * The Age of Fallibility: The Consequences of the War on Terror (2006) ISBN 1586483595

 * The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States. This is a harsh — indeed, for me, painful — thing to say, but unfortunately I am convinced it is true. The United States continues to set the agenda for the world in spite of its loss of influence since 9/11, and the Bush administration is setting the wrong agenda . The Bush agenda is nationalistic: it emphasizes the use of force and ignores global problems whose solution requires international cooperation. The rest of the world dances to the tune the United States is playing, and if that continues too long we are in danger of destroying our civilization. Changing the attitude and policies of the United States remains my top priority.
 * Prologue, p. xvi

 * We must recognize that as the dominant power in the world we have a special responsibility. In addition to protecting our national interests, we must take the leadership in protecting the common interests of humanity. I go into some detail as to what that entails. Mankind’s power over nature has increased cumulatively while its ability to govern itself has not kept pace. There is no other country that can take the place of the United States in the foreseeable future. If the United States fails to provide the right kind of leadership our civilization may destroy itself. That is the unpleasant reality that confronts us.
 * Introduction, p. xxv

On Israel, America and AIPAC (2007)

 * Article in The New York Review of Books (12 April 2007)

 * I am not a Zionist, nor am I am a practicing Jew, but I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a deep concern for the survival of Israel.

 * The Bush administration is once again in the process of committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East ... Hamas won the elections in an upset victory. Then came the blunder I am talking about. Israel, with the strong backing of the United States, refused to recognize the democratically elected Hamas government.

 * The Palestine problem does not have a purely military solution. Military superiority is necessary for Israel's national security, but it is not sufficient. The solution has to be political, as President Clinton recognized.

 * The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism. Politicians challenge it at their peril because of the lobby's ability to influence political contributions. ... Following his criticism of repressive Israeli policy on the West Bank, former president Jimmy Carter has suffered the loss of some of the financial backers of his center.

 * One of the myths propagated by the enemies of Israel is that there is an all-powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false accusation. Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so successful in suppressing criticism has lent some credence to such false beliefs. Demolishing the wall of silence that has protected AIPAC would help lay them to rest. A debate within the Jewish community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it. Anticipating attacks, I should like to emphasize that I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views.

2010s

 * Esperanto was a very useful language, because wherever you went, you found someone to speak with.
 * "How Do You Say ‘Billionaire’ in Esperanto?" in The New York Times (December 16, 2010)

 * So the euro is here to stay, and the arrangements that evolved in response to the crisis have become established as the new order governing the eurozone. This confirms my worst fears. It’s the nightmare I’ve been talking about. I’m hopeful that the Russian invasion of Crimea may serve as a wake-up call. Germany is the only country in a position to change the prevailing order.
 * 24 April 2014 nybooks.com

 * Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment. This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it.
 * 25 January 2018 remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum

 * ‘The EU needs to transform itself into an association that countries like Britain would want to join, in order to strengthen the political case,’ Mr Soros said he was convinced it was the ideal time for the EU to reform itself and prepare the ground for the UK staying inside the bloc.
 * On BREXIT, "Brexit: Second referendum campaign to be launched, George Soros announces", The Independent (2018)

 * China isn’t the only authoritarian regime in the world, but it’s undoubtedly the wealthiest, strongest and most developed in machine learning and artificial intelligence. This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of those who believe in the concept of open society.
 * Speech at World Economic Forum (24 January 2019)

2020s

 * Nationalism, far from being reversed, made further headway. The biggest and most frightening setback came in India, where a democratically elected Narendra Modi is creating a Hindu nationalist state, imposing punitive measures on Kashmir – a semi-autonomous Muslim region, and threatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship.
 * George Soros, At the World Economic Forum at Davos 2020, Soros, George. 2020. Frightening setback in India, democratically elected Modi creating Hindu state: George Soros. 24 January. ThePrint.. quoted from Malhotra R. & Viswanathan V. (2022). Snakes in the Ganga : Breaking India 2.0.

 * I consider Xi Jinping the most dangerous enemy of open societies in the world.
 * Tweet 16 August 2021

Misattributed

 * We have a booming global economy but we don't have a global society. Markets reduce everything, including human beings and nature, to commodities. Societies need more than this to prosper — such goals as political freedom and social justice.
 * Marshall William Fishwick in Popular Culture: Cavespace to Cyberspace (1999)

Quotes about Soros

 * I've learned many things from him, but perhaps the most significant is that it's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong.
 * Stanley Druckenmiller as quoted in The New Market Wizards : Conversations with America's Top Traders (1994) by Jack D. Schwager, p. 207; part of this statement has sometimes been attributed directly to Soros: It's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong. (as quoted in 500 of the Most Witty, Acerbic and Erudite Things Ever Said about Money (2002) edited by Philip Jenks)

 * Historically, most highly paid executives voted Republican. No more. ... George Soros was on the leading edge of this trend. Long before he became famous as one of the biggest Democratic donors in history, Soros was best known for getting rich by betting against national currencies, notably the English pound. Soros was considered such a rapacious and unethical practitioner of vulture capitalism that liberal economist Paul Krugman once accused him of intentionally trying to provoke currency crises in order to profit from them. Krugman no longer criticizes Soros, who has gone on to spend billions on behalf of liberal candidates and policy positions around the world.
 * Tucker Carlson, Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution (2018)

 * The financier George Soros has come to the reflection: 'There are collective interests that don't find expression in market values'."
 * Nadine Gordimer A Letter to Future Generations (1999), included in Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954-2008 (2010)

 * Four hundred seventy-three million to one. Those are the odds against George Soros compiling the investment record he did as manager of the Quantum Fund from 1968 through 1993. His investment record is the most unimpeachable refutation of the random walk hypothesis ever! ... History will probably remember Mr. Soros as the speculator who tilted against the Bank of England in 1992 (and freed the English people from recession). His billion dollar score is simply too compelling a story to overlook. Mr. Soros himself would probably like to be remembered as a great economist or even scientist. But I am going to remember him for something even more important, for which he does not receive the credit he deserves. He is someone who genuinely cares about the state of the human condition and tries to better it. His myriad and monumental philanthropical efforts will qualify him as one of history's great benefactors. ... He is a hands-on workaholic who materially impacts the quality of lives of people less fortunate than he. Now this, this is a sign of greatness.
 * Paul Tudor Jones II in his foreword to The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market (1994 edition).

 * All these countries [in East Asia] have spent 40 years trying to build up their economies and a moron like Soros comes along with a lot of money to speculate and ruin things.
 * Mahathir bin Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, quoted in Baily, N. M., D. Farrell and S. Lund (2000), The Color of Hot Money, Foreign Affairs, 79(2), 99–109.

 * Hungary was led to bankruptcy by a government of former communists pursuing liberal policy. This example strengthens the conviction that in fact there is no such thing as a liberal: a liberal is nothing more than a communist with a university degree. If we had taken their advice, right now Hungary would be in the intensive care ward, with the tubes of IMF and Brussels credit attached to every limb. And the fingers on the valves regulating the flow of credit would belong to George Soros. This is no exaggeration.
 * Viktor Orbán, State of the Nation speech (2020)

 * I’ve been plying the craft of politics for more than thirty years now, and with my own eyes I’ve seen George Soros attempt to plunder Hungary on three separate occasions. The first time was in the early nineties, when he wanted to buy up all the country’s state debt: all of Hungary’s state debt in the hands of one person, the fate of every Hungarian in the hands of George Soros. It’s spine-chilling even thinking about the situation we managed to avoid. Gratitude and recognition are due to József Antall for preventing this from happening. And I remember 1994, when Soros wanted to plunder us a second time. He tried to acquire OTP Bank, which was then the uniquely dominant Hungarian retail bank. No less spine-chilling is the vision of almost every Hungarian’s money in the hands of one person. Gratitude and recognition are due to Gyula Horn for not allowing that to happen. Today the soaring success of OTP is proof that he was right to do so. Even young people can remember the third attempt. In 2015, people-smuggling networks disguised as human rights organisations brought hundreds of thousands of migrants to the Hungarian border. And when Europe was already straining under the weight of migration, Soros announced that he was ready to offer credit to finance the settlement of one million migrants a year. Please bear in mind that the Soros Plan, the planned settlement of foreign population groups, is still on the agenda: the operation is in progress and we must man the defences, stoutly and unwaveringly.
 * Viktor Orbán, State of the Nation speech (2020)

 * I discovered Karl Popper via [a] trader, perhaps the only one I have ever truly respected. ...I disagreed with his statements when it came to economics and philosophy... [H]is first book, The Alchemy of Finance... does not show much grasp of the concepts. ...One cannot infer much from a single experiment in a random environment... [H]e writes that the category... "economists" believe that things converge to equilibrium... There are plenty of economic theories that believe that departure from a price level can cause further divergence and cause cascading feedback loops. ...say, game theory (...Harsanyi and Nash) or information economics (...Stiglitz, Akerhof, and Spence).
 * Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2001) Seven: The Problem of Induction | Sir Karl's Promoting Agent

 * [A]lthough Soros did not deliver anything meaningful in his writings, he knew how to handle randomness, by keeping a critical open mind open and changing his opinion with minimal shame ...calling himself fallible ...while others had loftier ideas about themselves. He understood Popper. Do not judge him by his writings. He lived a Popperian life.
 * Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2001) Seven: The Problem of Induction | Sir Karl's Promoting Agent

 * Aside from very few exceptions like George Soros, I am not impressed by people with money... Becoming rich is not directly a moral achievement.
 * Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2001) Eight: Too Many Millionaires | Double Survivorship Biases | More Experts

 * George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become "open societies," open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but — more important — tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.
 * Paul Volcker in his foreword to The Alchemy of Finance (2003 edition)

 * George Soros has a long and storied track record of being all villains to all people. Nobody that rich, and that meddlesome in international affairs — through his massive, market-influencing hedge-fund bets against national currencies, or via his multi-billion dollar "Open Society" philanthropy in 50-plus countries — could avoid being fitted for devil's horns on a daily basis. ... Until very recently, you could place most of Soros' fiercest critics in categories marked "paranoid" and "anti-democratic." In 1990s Central Europe, where he and his various organizations were ubiquitous presences (at least in the cosmopolitan capital cities), reaction to Soros was a useful if crude indicator of a politician's basic orientation. ... But now, Slavic autocrats have been joined in red-faced George-bashing by two new overlapping groups: American conservatives, and hawkish friends of Israel. ... Thus we now have the spectacle of one of the world's most active and influential anti-communists (not to mention one of its most successful capitalists) being tarred as a particularly dangerous friend of Marx and Lenin.
 * Matt Welch in "Open Season on 'Open Society'" in Reason magazine (8 December 2003)

 * Half the day he engages in the most ruthless financial exploitations, ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands, even millions. The other half [of the day] he just gives part of it back.
 * Slavoj Žižek, The Reality of the Virtual

 * Alex told me that for many years, his father had not been eager to advertise his Judaism because “this was something he was almost killed for.” But he had always “identified firstly as a Jew,” and his philanthropy was ultimately an expression of his Jewish identity, in that he felt a solidarity with other minority groups and also because he recognized that a Jew could only truly be safe in a world in which all minorities were protected. Explaining his father’s motives, he said, “The reason you fight for an open society is because that’s the only society that you can live in, as a Jew — unless you become a nationalist and only fight for your own rights in your own state".
 * 17 July 2018 Michael Steinberger quoting Alexander Soros about his father George Soros in The New York Times.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: George Soros


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User:Malaheart

My Home Page
Louix Dor Dempriey

Some quotes
"Be The Change You Wish To See In The World" - Ghandi

"Nothing Is Your Fault, Everything Is Your Responsibility" - L.D.D.

"Where You Place God In Your Life Is Where God Shows Up In Your Life" - L.D.D.

title: User:Malaheart


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Equilibrium

Equilibrium is the condition of a system in which all competing influences are balanced, in a wide variety of contexts.

Quotes

 * [The notion of equilibrium] is a notion which can be employed usefully in varying degrees of looseness. It is an absolutely indispensable part of the toolbag of the economist and one which he can often contribute usefully to other sciences which are occasionally apt to get lost in the trackless exfoliations of purely dynamic systems.
 * Kenneth Boulding (1958) The Skills of the Economist, p. 14.

 * Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination.
 * Kenneth Boulding (1974) Toward a General Social Science, p. 29.

 * The equilibrium model describes systems which, in moving to an equilibrium point, typically lose organization, and then tend to hold that minimum level within relatively narrow conditions of disturbance.
 * Walter F. Buckley (1967) Sociology and modern systems theory p. 40 as cited in: Jacquie L'Etang, Magda Pieczka (2006) Public Relations: Critical Debates and Contemporary Practice. p. 335.

 * In Deutsch's view, to say that a social system is in equilibrium implies that: 1) it will return to a particular state when disturbed; 2) the disturbance is coming from outside the system; 3) the greater the disturbance the greater the force with which the system will return to its original state; 4) the speed of the system's reaction to disturbance is somehow less relevant — a sort of friction, or blemish having no place in the "ideal" equilibrium; 5) no catastrophe can happen within the system.
 * Walter F. Buckley (1967) Sociology and modern systems theory. p. 56.

 * The equilibrium between supply and demand is achieved only through a reaction against the upsetting of the equilibrium.
 * David Harvey (2006) The Limits To Capital. 2006 VERSO Edition. p. 82.

 * I remember Robbins asking me if I could turn the Hayek model into mathematics... it began to dawn on me that... the model must be better specified. It was claimed that, if there were no monetary disturbance, the system would remain in 'equilibrium'. What could such an equilibrium mean? This, as it turned out, was a very deep question; I could do no more, in 1932, than make a start at answering it. I began by looking at what had been said by... Pareto and Wicksell. Their equilibrium was a static equilibrium, in which neither prices nor outputs were changing... That, clearly, would not do for Hayek. His 'equilibrium' must be progressive equilibrium, in which real wages, in particular, would be rising, so relative prices could not remain unchange … The next step in my thinking, was … equilibrium with perfect foresight. Investment of capital, to yield its fruit in the future, must be based on expectations, of opportunities in the future. When I put this to Hayek, he told me that this was indeed the direction in which he had been thinking. Hayek gave me a copy of a paper on 'intertemporal equilibrium', which he had written some years before his arrival in London; the conditions for a perfect foresight equilibrium were there set out in a very sophisticated manner.
 * John Hicks, Money, Interest and Wages (1982), p. 6.

 * To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
 * Eric Hoffer (1963) The Ordeal of Change. p. 27.

 * Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good.
 * Eric Hoffer (1973) Reflections on the Human Condition. Section 26.

 * Maxwell... during the 1860s... showed that when the velocities reached the bell-shaped distribution, no further net change was likely. (...Ludwig Boltzmann further elaborated... and strengthened Maxwell's results). Any specific molecule would speed up or slow down, but... other molecules would change in speed to compensate. When a gas reached that state... the gas was at equilibrium. ...[T]his notion of equilibrium is precisely analogous to the Nash equilibrium in game theory. ...[J]ust as the Nash equilibrium is typically a mixed set of strategies, a gas seeks an equilibrium state with a mixed distribution of molecular velocities.
 * Tom Siegfried, A Beautiful Math (2006) Ch. 7: Quetelet's Statistics and Maxwell's Molecules, pp. 139-140.

 * It cannot but happen that those individuals whose functions are most out of equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces, will be those to die; and that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces. But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest. Out of the fittest thus multiplied, there will, as before, be an overthrowing of the moving equilibrium wherever it presents the least opposing force to the new incident force.
 * Herbert Spencer (1864) The Principles of Biology, Vol. I, Part III: The Evolution of Life, Ch. 7: Indirect Equilibration.

 * Economic theory is devoted to the study of equilibrium positions. The concept of equilibrium is very useful. It allows us to focus on the final outcome rather than the process that leads up to it. But the concept is also very deceptive. It has the aura of something empirical: since the adjustment process is supposed to lead to an equilibrium, an equilibrium position seems somehow implicit in our observations. That is not true. Equilibrium itself has rarely been observed in real life — market prices have a notorious habit of fluctuating.
 * George Soros (1987) The Alchemy of Finance: Reading the Mind of the Market.

title: Equilibrium


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User:Greudin

\o/

fr:utilisateur:Greudin

title: User:Greudin


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User:Fruggo

See w:nl:User:Fruggo

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Ken Olsen

Ken Olsen (February 20, 1926 – February 6, 2011) was founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation.

Quotes

 * There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
 * In at talk given to a 1977 World Future Society meeting in Boston. Olsen later explained that he was referring to smart homes rather than personal computers."Ken Olsen", Snopes

title: Ken Olsen


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Thomas Watson

Thomas Watson may refer to:

 * Thomas Watson (Puritan), the 17th century preacher.
 * Thomas J. Watson, president of IBM.

title: Thomas Watson


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User:Weft

fr:Utilisateur:Weft

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Talk:Kill Bill: Volume 1

We need a native Japanese speaker to translate some of the Japanese-but-unfortunately-only-in-English quotes.

I'm adding a Japanese quote, more can be found at http://mralansmithee.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-71.html Heruan (talk) 12:23, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Cleanup
I have readded the cleanup tag that was removed earlier. If there is any confusion about what is meant by "cleanup to a higher standard", please review Templates/Films and its talk page, as well as the parent article Templates and its talk page. In any case, the cleanup tag should never be removed without some explanation (brief in the edit summary and/or detailed on the talk page). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:54, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

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Talk:Brian Mulroney

Michael McCaffertyof Regina,Saskatchewan says that Brian Mulroney is truly a great Canadian statesman and history will judge him as a very great Prime Minister.

Where's "clucking faster"?

(By this, I assume the previous editor is referring to a political skit song produced by the CBC comedy group "Double Exposure", parodying an episode in Canadian parliamentary history where Brian Mulroney was accused of calling members of the Liberal opposition party some a impolite name that happen to rhyme with "clucking faster".)

Unsourced

 * "The only person who has ever [been] appointed around here, for the last 20-odd years, has been [the leader of] your party. And 99% of [your cabinet members] have been Liberals...and you ought not to be proud of that. Nor should you repeat something that I think you know to be inaccurate. You know full well that that was a figure of speech that was used, and I don't deny it, in fact, I've gone so far-because I believe what you did was so bad-I've gone so far, sir, to apologise to the Canadian people for even kidding about it. The least you should do is to apologise for having made these horrible appointments! I've had the decency I think, to acknowledge that I was wrong in even kidding about it. I shouldn't have done that and I've said so. You sir, at least owe the Canadian people a profound apology for doing it. The cost of [those appointments]-$84.4 million-is enough to the ordinary Canadian taxpayer...we could pay every senior citizen in this country, on the supplement, an extra $70 at Christmas rather than pay for those Liberal appointments! And I say to you sir, two things: a) You should produce that letter, because you keep coming back to this situation. Please produce the [rhetoric] of that secret letter that you signed that you undertook to make those appointments. And b) May I say respectfully, that if I felt I owed it to the Canadian people, and I did, an apology for 'bantering' about the subject, you sir owe the Canadian people a deep apology for having indulged in that kind of practice with those kinds of appointments."

 * "You had an option, sir. You could have said, 'I am not going to do it. This is wrong for Canada, and I am not going to ask Canadians to pay the price.' You had an option, sir--to say 'no'--and you chose to say 'yes' to the old attitudes and the old stories of the Liberal Party. That sir, if I may say respectfully, that is not good enough for Canadians."
 * Speaking to John Turner during the debate before the 1984 federal election.

 * "You do not have a monopoly on patriotism, and I resent the fact of your implication that only you are a Canadian! I want to tell you that I come from a Canadian family, and I love Canada! And that's why I [signed the deal], to promote prosperity, and don't you impugn my motives or anyone else's!!"
 * Replying to John Turner's attacks on the Free Trade Agreement during the debate before the 1988 federal election.

 * "Popularity's bad for you. I avoid it like the plague.

 * (On one of his cabinet ministers) "Slit her throat."

 * "In politics, madame, you need two things: friends, but above all, an enemy"

Quotes about Mulroney (unsourced)

 * "My pleasure. Good guy. Brian Mulroney, the former prime minister of Great Britain."
 * Larry King

 * "In 1993, Brian Mulroney was the most unpopular prime minister in the history of Canadian polling and the Progressive Conservative Party was at historically low levels of support. The question that begs asking is why he then gave me, as his successor, only two and a half months to turn the party fortunes around before an election had to be called. The effect of hearing Brian Mulroney in his own voice is, sadly, to remind Canadians of why they didn't like him and delay what he so clearly craves and feels he deserves - respect for the achievements of his government."
 * Kim Campbell, responding via e-mail[published where?] at the request of the Vancouver Sun in a response to Mulroney's remarks about her campaign activities in his book The Secret Mulroney Tapes

title: Talk:Brian Mulroney


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User:Limeheadnyc~enwikiquote

Yep, same guy as on the 'pedia.

title: User:Limeheadnyc~enwikiquote


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Talk:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The alternative name "Göthe" is wrong, since "von Goethe" is the german name itself. --84.164.9.132 23:17, 29 January 2006 (UTC) (from Germany)

Misattributed quote?
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."
 * Apparently no good sources for this being from Goethe. 03:21, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

 * Actually it's from a translation by John Anster. See p.20 here: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.96946/page/n17/mode/2up?view=theater ... See also https://web.archive.org/web/20060209114247/http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html

Missattributed Quote?
"The way you see people is the way you treat them. And the way you treat them is what they become." This quote is widely attributed to Goethe by English speaking people. Is it his? In the affirmative case: what is the context? And the original Language version? I couldn't find any similar phrase in deutsch. In the negative case it would be interesting to find the real author and, if it belongs to a German author, the version in deutsch, in order to include it in the Missatributed section of both, german and english Wikiquote's Goethe Article. --200.55.67.72 19:14, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

This seems to come from Apprenticeship from the site Bartleby translation:
 * ‘When we take people,’ thou wouldst say, ‘merely as they are, we make them worse; when we treat them as if they were what they should be, we improve them as far as they can be improved.’

--Twifkak (talk) 20:31, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Nothing is worth more than this day
"Nothing is worth more than this day." Is this quote misattributed? I can't find it anywhere except lame quote websites which list only his name and never the source work. I'd be disappointed if it were actually from some new wave guru jerk, since I really like the quote. 72.75.101.88 02:46, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be a concise translation of Maxim 332 in Maxims and Reflections. 46.11.104.231 00:00, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. --Antiquary 19:30, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

 * if only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful. --Jbgfour (talk) 14:57, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * A collection of anecdotes and maxims is the greatest of treasures for the man of the world, for he knows how to intersperse conversation with the former in fit places, and to recollect the latter on proper occasions.

 * It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.

 * A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days.

 * A reasonable man needs only to practice moderation to find happiness.

 * Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

 * All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

 * As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

 * Choose well; your choice is brief, and yet endless.
 * Quoted by Starbucks on some of their cardboard tabs attached to tea bags. I don't think it's in Faust, which is where I'd expect it to be if it's a genuine quote, but...who knows. 199.3.246.231 16:44, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Comes from the song/poem The Masons' Lodge Majesty of the Commons (talk) 23:15, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

 * Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
 * Sourced as Instruction does much, but encouragement everything
 * p.27: "the studio of the great artist develops sooner the developing philosopher and the developing poet, than the lecture-rooms of the philosopher and the critic. Instruction does much, but encouragement everything."

 * Create, artist! Do not talk!
 * Saying

 * Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes. (Quote seems to be from **Elective Affinites**.

 * Distrust those in whom the desire to punish is strong.
 * Also rendered: Mistrust all in whom the desire to punish is imperative. (Similar statements have definitely been made by Nietzsche, and attributed to Dostoevsky)

 * Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.

 * Even the lowliest, provided he is whole, can be happy, and in his own way, perfect.

 * Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
 * free translation of: Kein Mensch will etwas werden,/Ein jeder will schon was sein.from the poem Zahme Xenien IV, ; literal translation: No man wants to become something, Every man wants to be something already.

 * Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.

 * Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine.

 * He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

 * He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build.

 * How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.
 * cf. Viktor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy. https://archive.org/details/doctorsoulfromps0000vikt_k4m4/page/56/mode/2up

 * Hypotheses are lullabies for teachers to sing their students to sleep. The close and thoughtful observer more and more learns to recognize his limitations. He realizes that with the steady growth of knowledge more and more new problems keep on emerging.

 * [at the end of a long letter] I have no time to make it short
 * Not Goethe, this is actually by Blaise Pascal, "Lettres provinciales", letter 16, 1657
 * However, given as Goethe in Der grosse Duden, vol. 2, Stilwoerterbuch, 1963, p.14: "Da ich keine Zeit habe, Dir einen kurzen Brief zu schreiben, schreibe ich Dir einen langen."

 * If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.

See: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/10/09/capable/
 * If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.

 * If Switzerland were flat as a pancake, it would be larger than Prussia.

 * If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

 * In art the best is good enough.

 * It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors.

 * It's not that age brings childhood back again, age merely shows what children we remain.
 * I found a less modern translation (published in 1889) of what I think is this quote in the Prelude to Faust: "Age childish makes, they say, but 'tis not true; / We're only genuine children still, in Age's season!" The Google books version of this can be found here.  --Hughh (talk) 16:19, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

 * Joy and sorrow both have part in my solitude.

 * Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.

 * Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
 * This is on the German version of this page ("Es ist nicht genug, zu wissen, man muss auch anwenden. Es ist nicht genug, zu wollen, man muss auch tun.") with a source, but I do not consider myself proficient enough in German or sufficiently aware of Wikipedia's standards to be able to judge whether the mentioned source is considered reputable. 2A02:2C40:100:B000:2D09:889E:3DCC:B9E5 09:55, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It's from "From Makarie's Archive", which at some point Goethe appended to the end of Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years. It was apparently incorporated into his Maxims and Reflections later, where it appears as Aphorism 324. --Hughh (talk) 17:17, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

 * Live dangerously and you live right.

 * Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

 * Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it.

 * Mathematicians are [like] a sort of Frenchmen; if you talk to them, they translate it into their own language, and then it is immediately something quite different.

 * Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.

 * One has only to grow older to become more tolerant. I see no fault that I might not have committed myself.

 * Only when we know little do we know anything; doubt grows with knowledge.

 * [Prague is the] prettiest gem in the stone crown of the world...

 * Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.

 * Should I not be proud, when for twenty years I have had to admit to myself that the great Newton and all the mathematicians and noble calculators along with him were involved in a decisive error with respect to the doctrine of color, and that I among millions was the only one who knew what was right in this great subject of nature?

 * Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own.

 * Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

 * The best genius is that which absorbs and assimilates everything without doing the least violence to its fundamental destiny — that which we call character — but rather improving it and enhancing it as far as possible.

 * The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.

 * The deed is everything, the glory naught.

 * The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.

 * The highest happiness of man as a thinking being is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.
 * Maxims and Reflections, 1907

 * The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
 * Sometimes phrased as: An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, a wise man hardly anything.

 * The man is born with a talent which he has meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it.

 * The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.

 * There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.

 * There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.

 * Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.

 * Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

 * To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.
 * This is an accurate English rendering of the original German "Sich in seiner Beschränktheit gefallen ist ein elender Zustand" from Maximen und Reflexionen, cf Maximen und Reflexionen, page 155

 * To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.

 * To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.

 * Truth is a torch but a tremendous one. That is why we hurry past it, shielding our eyes, indeed, in fear of getting burned.

 * We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

 * We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

 * We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.

 * What one knows, one sees.
 * Variant translation: What man knows, man sees.

 * When a man stops to ponder his physical or moral condition, he generally finds he is ill.

 * When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

 * Apparently Goethe did write this, or something very much like it. In Faust, Part 1, Mephistopheles says: “Denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen, Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.” (tr. as “For if your meaning's threatened with stagnation, Then words come in to save the situation.”) [von Goethe: 'Faust, Volume 1' tr. Philip Wayne, (Penguin Classics, 1958), p.97.] George963 au (talk) 16:46, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

 * Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.
 * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities (1809), ch. XXX page 319 - for full text please see https://archive.org/stream/electiveaffiniti00goetuoft/electiveaffiniti00goetuoft_djvu.txt

 * Without haste, but without rest.
 * Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast

 * Yet we all kill the thing we love by all let this be heard some do it with a bitter look some with a flattering word...
 * [Chacun tue ce qu'il aime, le brave avec son épée, le lâche avec son baiser.] Oscar Wilde, La Ballade de la geôle de Reading (1898), Début

 * You must be either the servant or the master, the hammer or the anvil.
 * From Ein Kophtisches Lied, according to Balthasar Gracian (cf. https://sacred-texts.com/eso/aww/aww00.htm#fn_0).

 * Genieße wenn du kannst, und leide wenn du mußt
 * Enjoy when you can, endure when you must
 * Maskenzug 18. Dezember 1818, Musarion / Phanias
 * Note: I do not understand this citation nor can confirm it. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 01:06, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Misunderstandings
This page gives:
 * […] misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.

February 10 translates the same quote to:
 * And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence.

I consider "confusion" and "mischief" as quite different. Can someone verify that "confusion" is a correct translation? gives "mischief". --Chealer (talk) 02:18, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Irrelevant paintings
I don't see any relevance for the paintings chosen to accompany these quotes, particularly the one about the inherent virtue of art. 199.3.246.231 16:43, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Talking is a necessity, listening is an art.
I just removed an addition to the misattributed section made without reference to any notable citation: "Talking is a necessity, listening is an art." An internet search of the phrase returned only 23 results, mostly on obscure internet posts, so if such a statement is attributed to Goethe, it is not currently widely attributed in this form. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 22:15, 27 August 2015 (UTC) The sentence is in various sites in Germany: "Reden ist ein Bedürfnis. Zuhören ist eine Kunst" attributed to Goethe but without mention of books.

Comment about the la out of the article
Tonight, User:24.244.32.153 added the following comment in the article, see here...
 * This section needs a heading that has a sufficiently clear meaning. If all the quotations, that are in the long list which follows this section's heading, are from Goethe, and if each quotation (for some reason) is not going to be immediately followed by Goethe's name (nor placed within quotation marks), then the heading needs to reflect that all the quotations in the section are from Goethe. Instead of "Quotes," perhaps the heading (or at least a clear sentence of introduction immediately following the heading) could say, "Quotations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe." (Also, one might bear in mind that some of the people who visit this webpage have come to check for misattributing, misquoting, and the like related to quotations that they have seen which other websites have attributed to Goethe.  These accuracy seekers are sometimes coming from websites that list or discuss related references.  Perhaps the page author or someone with Wikiquote.org experience could make appropriate adjustments.  Thank you kindly for any consideration.)"

which is now moved to the talk page. -- Mdd (talk) 01:18, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

 * I must say I don't disagree with the intention of the comment. I also think each quote in the "quote" section should contain the name of the author (unless this is already given on top of any subsection). This is also a service to the audience: if they want to copy/paste the quote, then they have all the data at once available. -- Mdd (talk) 01:22, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I think a page heading is sufficient. It does not need to be repeated in section headings or with each quotation. ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:42, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

I noted a quote in the front matter of "the Statesman's Year-Book" for 1929 attributed to Goethe which translates as thus: It is often said; Numbers rule the world. The age is certain to show numbers how it is governed." I have no further corroboration of its veracity. The book can be accessed at <https://books.google.com/books?id=ZOjIDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA1240&lpg=PA1240&dq=%22RUSSIA%27S+RUIN%22+book+1919&source=bl&ots=QfZmOiKYMX&sig=YeXPOlWbSsz5UG1fEdi45O0HrEs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYhIm6yfTUAhXENj4KHYKnApQQ6AEIQDAH#v=onepage&q=%22RUSSIA'S%20RUIN%22%20book%201919&f=false>.

From the Memoirs of a Superflous Man (1943), Albert Jay Nock

 * Relevance of these quotes to the page to be ascertained, and relevant quotes reinserted in appropriate section.

 * Niebuhr was right when he saw a barbarous age coming. It is already here, we are in it, for in what does barbarism consist, if not in the failure to appreciate what is excellent?
 * p. 97

 * "As Goethe remarked, all eras in a state of decline and dissolution are subjective, while in all great eras which have been really in a state of progression, every effort is directed from the inward to the outward world; it is of an objective nature. I have always believed, as Goethe did, that here one comes on a true sense of the term classic."
 * p. 184

 * "Goethe suggested, in the interest of clearness one might very well make a clean sweep of all terms like classic, modernist, realist, naturalist and substitute the simple terms healthy and sickly."
 * p. 184

 * [Those who make the assumption that literacy carries with it the ability to read] do not know what time and trouble it costs to learn to read. I have been working at it for eighteen years, and I can't say yet that I am completely successful.
 * Goethe at the age of seventy-nine
 * p. 194

 * Man will become more clever and sagacious, but not better, happier or showing more resolute wisdom; or at least, only at periods.
 * p. 214

 * Was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine.
 * That which holds us all in bondage, the common and ignoble.
 * p. 227

 * [The next sentence after predicting that great progress is coming:] I foresee the time when God will have no further pleasure in man, but will break up everything for a new creation.
 * p. 273

Encourage the beautiful, the useful will take care of itself
I have come across many, many instances of "encourage the beautiful, the useful will take care of itself" attributed to Goethe, without anybody bothering to tell us where it is written. I am tempted to put this is in the "dubious" category, which I will do after a reasonable time. TomS TDotO (talk) 20:52, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Attribution located for "Ignorant men raise questions..."
"Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago."

Have seen this attributed to Goethe all over the internet and cannot find one single source. It's not listed here (though there is at least one that is slightly similar). Any insight on this quote? --2600:1702:1110:2AF0:A80A:B713:C217:1645 11:58, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

+1 Indeed, it looks misattributed, and it is such great quote so that I wanted to know the original one. 33fb3342355478b423f197b2015e89fb 188.206.100.249 15:33, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Ok, this website www dot notable-quotes dot com slash goethe_quotes_iii.html claims "JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, attributed, Day's Collacon". Although from an old book, I couldn't find it to download, and even difficult to buy. Someone is selling at https://www.amazon.com/Days-collacon-encyclopaedia-quotations-alphabetical/dp/B00085L8C6 "Day's collacon: an encyclopaedia of prose quotations,: Consisting of beautiful thoughts, choice extracts and sayings, of the most eminent writers of ... and an alphabetical list of subjects quoted Unknown Binding – January 1, 1884". A reviwer note: "found this very large leather-skin bound book at Salvation Army and bought it for $6.00. I just love it. There are portraits of the authors in there from the 1800's and each portrait is covered with tissue paper or something like it. The book is packed with amazing quotes from the 1800's and earlier." 33fb3342355478b423f197b2015e89fb 188.206.100.249 19:46, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

You'll find it here, although 'men' was in this translated as 'people'. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33670/33670-h/33670-h.htm Thomas Bailey Saunders, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe, 532 (p. 187)

title: Talk:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe