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Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury, a novel based on his own short story "The Fireman" (originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction Vol. 1 No. 5 in February 1951), follows the exploits and self-examination of fireman Guy Montag in a dystopian society where books are banned and firemen create fires rather than put them out in order to protect society from the supposed dangers of reading.
 * See also: Fahrenheit 451 : Coda 1979

FAHRENHEIT 451: The temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns.
 * If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. Quotation of Juan Ramón Jiménez, used as an epigraph on the first page.

Part 1: The Hearth and the Salamander

 * It was a pleasure to burn.

 * I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane. (7)

 * "Do you ever read any of the books you burn?" He laughed. "That's against the law!" "Oh. Of course."  "It's fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan." (8)

 * I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly. If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he’d say, that’s grass! A pink blur! That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles per hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn’t that funny, and sad, too? (9)

 * Then she seemed to remember something and came back to look at him with wonder and curiosity. "Are you happy?" she said. (10)

 * "You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else. You're one of the few who put up with me. That's why I think it's so strange you're a fireman. It just doesn't seem right for you, somehow.'" (pages 23-24)

 * "I was just figuring," said Montag, "what does the Hound think about down there nights? Is it coming alive on us, really? It makes me cold." "It doesn't think anything we don't want it to think." "That's sad," said Montag, quietly, "because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that's all it can ever know." (31)

 * They crashed the front door and grabbed at a woman, though she was not running, she was not trying to escape. She was only standing, weaving from side to side, her eyes fixed upon a nothingness in the wall as if they had struck her a terrible blow upon the head. Her tongue was moving in her mouth, and her eyes seemed to be trying to remember something, and then they remembered and her tongue moved again:  "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."
 * This is a quotation of Hugh Latimer to Nicholas Ridley as they were about to be burned at the stake as heretics during the reign of "Bloody Mary", Queen Mary I of England, at Oxford, on October 16, 1555.

 * How inconvenient! Always before it had been like snuffing a candle. The police went first and adhesive-taped the victim's mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering beetle cars, so when you arrived you found an empty house. You weren't hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn't be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don't scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up. Janitorial work, essentially. Everything to its proper place. Quick with the kerosene! Who's got a match? (36)

 * So it was the hand that started it all. He felt one hand and then the other work his coat free and let it slump to the floor. He held his pants out into an abyss and let them fall into darkness. His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders and then jump over from shoulder blade to shoulder blade like a spark leaping a gap. His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger as if they must look at something, anything, everything. (38)

 * In the dim, wavering light, a page hung open and it was like a snowy feather, the words delicately painted thereon. In all the rush and fervor, Montag had only an instant to read a line, but it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if stamped there with fiery steel. “Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.” (42)
 * This is a quotation from Dreamthorp: Essays written in the Country by Alexander Smith.

 * She's nothing to me; she shouldn't have had books. It was her responsibility, she should have thought of that. I hate her. She's got you going and next thing you know we'll be out, no house, no job, nothing. (48)

 * It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I came along in two minutes and boom! it's all over. (49)

 * Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real? (49)

 * "Many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag) whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: 'Now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors.' Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more." (52)

 * School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts? (53)

 * Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. (54)

 * "With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar." (58)

 * "We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute." (pages 58-59)

 * People want to be happy, isn't that right? Haven't you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we live for, isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these. (59)

 * Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. (59)

 * She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead. (60)

 * You can't build a house without nails and wood. If you don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. (61)

 * "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I've tried it; to hell with it." (61)

 * "I hope I've clarified things. The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, to our happy world as it stands now." (61-62)

 * "At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh? Well, Montag, take my word for it, I've had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They're about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if they're fiction. And if they're non-fiction, it's worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another's gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost." (62)

 * And if there is something here, just one little thing out of a whole mess of things, maybe we can pass it on to someone else. (67)

 * "That woman, the other night, Millie, you weren't there. You didn't see her face. And Clarisse. You never talked to her. I talked to her. And men like Beatty are afraid of her. I can't understand it. Why should they be so afraid of someone like her? But I kept putting her alongside the firemen in the house last night, and I suddenly realized I didn't like them at all, and I didn't like myself at all any more. And I thought maybe it would be best if the firemen themselves were burnt." (67)

 * Montag picked a single small volume from the floor. "Where do we begin?" He opened the book halfway and peered at it. "We begin by beginning, I guess." (68)

 * He read a dozen pages here or there and came at last to this: "'It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break eggs at the smaller end.'" (68)
 * This is a quotation from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.

Part 2: The Sieve and the Sand

 * We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help.(78)

 * The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this.(82)

 * The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. (83)

 * Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth. But when he was held, rootless, in mid-air, by Hercules, he perished easily. If there isn't something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I am completely insane. (83)

 * 'After all, when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do'' need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. (86)

 * The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, 'Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.(82)

 * Remember the firemen are rarely necessary. The public stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but its a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line. So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily. Can you dance faster than the White Clown, shout louder than 'Mr. Gimmick' and the parlor 'families'? If you can, you'll win your way, Montag. In any event, you’re a fool. People are having fun.(87)
 * Faber to Montag

 * Those who don't build must burn.

 * Out of two separate and opposite things, a third. And one day he would look back upon the fool and know the fool.

 * If there were no war, if there was peace in the world, I'd say fine, have fun! But, Montag, you mustn't go back to being just a fireman. All isn't well with the world.

 * You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.

 * "Who are a little wise, the best fools be." Welcome back, Montag.

 * Go home and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and your third husband blowing his brains out, go home and think of the dozen abortions you’ve had, go home and think of that and your damn Caesarian sections, too, and your children who hate your guts! Go home and think how it all happened and what did you ever do to stop it?

 * It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.

 * Do you know, I had a dream an hour ago. I lay down for a cat-nap and in this dream you and I, Montag, got into a furious debate on books. You towered with rage, yelled quotes at me. I calmly parried every thrust. Power, I said, And you, quoting Dr. Johnson, said `Knowledge is more than equivalent to force!' And I said, `Well, Dr. Johnson also said, dear boy, that "He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.'" Stick with the fireman, Montag. All else is dreary chaos!"...Beatty chuckled. "And you said, quoting, `Truth will come to light, murder will not be hid long!' And I cried in good humour, 'Oh God, he speaks only of his horse!' And `The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.' And you yelled, 'This age thinks better of a gilded fool, than of a threadbare saint in wisdom's school!' And I whispered gently, 'The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.' And you screamed, 'Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer!' And I said, patting your hand, 'What, do I give you trench mouth?' And you shrieked, 'Knowledge is power!' and 'A dwarf on a giant's shoulders of the furthest of the two!' and I summed my side up with rare serenity in, 'The folly of mistaking a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself as an oracle, is inborn in us, Mr. Valery once said.'" Montag's head whirled sickeningly. He felt beaten unmercifully on brow, eyes, nose, lips, chin, on shoulders, on upflailing arms..."Oh, you were scared silly," said Beatty, "for I was doing a terrible thing in using the very books you clung to, to rebut you on every hand, on every point! What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives. And at the very end of my dream, along I came with the Salamander and said, Going my way? And you got in and we drove back to the firehouse in beatific silence, all dwindled away to peace." Beatty let Montag's wrist go, let the hand slump limply on the table. "All's well that is well in the end." --Beatty misquoting Shakespeare and others out of context.

 * All right, he's had his say. You must take it in. I'll say my say, too, in the next few hours. And you'll take it in. And you'll try to judge them and make your decision as to which way to jump, or fall. But I want it to be your decision, not mine, and not the Captain's. But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority.(108)

 * I paid for all this — how? Playing the stock-market, of course, the last refuge in the world for the dangerous intellectual out of a job.(90)

Part 3: Burning Bright

 * This is happening to me. "What a dreadful surprise," said Beatty. "For everyone nowadays knows, absolutely is certain, that nothing will ever happen to me. Others die, I go on. There are no consequences and no responsibilities. Except that there are. But let's not talk about them, eh? By the time the consequences catch up with you, it's too late, isn't it, Montag?" (115)

 * It was pretty silly, quoting poetry around free and easy like that. It was the act of a silly snob. Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he's the Lord of all Creation. You think you can walk on water with your books. Well, the world can get by just fine without them. Look where they got you, in slime up to your lip. If I stir the slime with my little finger, you'll drown! (117-118)

 * We never burned right...

 * They would have killed me, thought Montag, swaying, the air still torn and stirring about him in dust, touching his bruised cheek. For no reason at all in the world they would have killed me.(122)

 * Would he have time for a speech? As the Hound seized him, in view of ten or twenty or thirty million people, mightn't he sum up his entire life in the last week in one single phrase or a word that would stay with them long after the Hound had turned, clenching him in its metal-plier jaws, and trotted off in darkness, while the camera remained stationary, watching the creature dwindle in the distance— a splendid fade-out! What could he say in a single word, a few words, that would sear all their faces and wake them up?(128):"Are you happy?"

 * With an effort, Montag reminded himself again that this was no fictional episode to be watched on his run to the river; it was in actuality his own chess-game he was witnessing, move by move.

 * "Police suggest entire population in the Elm Terrace area do as follows: Everyone in every house in every street open a front or rear door or look from the windows. The fugitive cannot escape if everyone in the next minute looks from his house. Ready! " Of course! Why hadn't they done it before! Why, in all the years, hadn't this game been tried! Everyone up, everyone out! He couldn't be missed! The only man running alone in the night city, the only man proving his legs!

 * The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen, and the sun burnt Time, that meant everything burnt! (141)

 * Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people's heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silver-fish, rust and dry-rot, and men with matches. (141)

 * He walked on the track. And he was surprised to learn how certain he suddenly was of a single fact he could not prove. Once, long ago, Clarisse had walked here, where he was walking now. (145)

 * They're faking. You threw them off at the river. They can't admit it. They know they can hold their audience only so long. The show's got to have a snap ending, quick! If they started searching the whole damn river it might take all night. So they're sniffing for a scape-goat to end things with a bang. Watch. They'll catch Montag in the next five minutes! (148)

 * Right now, some poor fellow is out for a walk. A rarity. An odd one. Don't think the police don't know the habits of queer ducks like that, men who walk mornings for the hell of it, or for reasons of insomnia. Anyway, the police have had him charted for months, years. Never know when that sort of information might be handy. And today, it turns out, it's very usable indeed. It saves face. (148)

 * Walk carefully. Guard your health. If anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclesiastes. (151)

 * I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

 * Right now we have a horrible job; we're waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end. It's not pleasant, but then we're not in control, we're the odd minority crying in the wilderness. When the war's over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world."... We'll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can't make people listen.

 * Montag turned and glanced back. What did you give to the city, Montag? Ashes. What did the others give to each other? Nothingness.

 * When he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.

 * Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime. (156-157)

 * 'I hate a Roman named Status Quo!' he said to me. 'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.'  (157-158)

 * And the war began and ended in that instant.

 * Montag saw the flirt of a great metal fist over the far city and he knew the scream of the jets that would follow, would say, after the deed, disintegrate, leave no stone on another, perish. Die.

 * Montag, falling flat, going down, saw or felt, or imagined he saw or felt the walls go dark in Millie's face, heard her screaming, because in the millionth part of time left, she saw her own face reflected there, in a mirror instead of a crystal ball, and it was such a wildly empty face, all by itself in the room, touching nothing, starved and eating of itself, that at last she recognized it as her own and looked quickly up at the ceiling as it and the entire structure of the hotel blasted down upon her, carrying her with a million pounds of brick, metal, plaster, and wood, to meet other people in the hives below, all on their quick way down to the cellar where the explosion rid itself of them in its own unreasonable way.

 * I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.

 * There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation.

 * Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them." (163-164)

 * To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silent and a time to speak. Yes, all that. But what else? What else? Something, something . . . And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Quotes about Fahrenheit 451

 * (Why couldn't you write after 9/11?) AH: I was so depressed and hopeless about the state of the world. When I re-read Fahrenheit 451, a book about how important books are, I was reminded of the reason to write.
 * Alice Hoffman Reddit AMA (2021)

 * Fahrenheit 451 is an American classic and a work of genius...
 * Alice Hoffman Interview (2014)

title: Fahrenheit 451


text:
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about a lunar colony's revolt against rule from Earth. The novel expresses and discusses libertarian ideals.

Quotes

 * Further citation by chapter is desirable

And woke up.'''
 * When Mike was installed in Luna, he was pure thinkum, a flexible logic — "High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L" — a HOLMES FOUR. He computed ballistics for pilotless freighters and controlled their catapult. This kept him busy less than one percent of time and Luna Authority never believed in idle hands. They kept hooking hardware into him — decision-action boxes to let him boss other computers, bank on bank of additional memories, more banks of associational neural nets, another tubful of twelve-digit random numbers, a greatly augmented temporary memory. '''Human brain has around ten-to-the-tenth neurons. By third year Mike had better than one and a half times that number of neuristors.
 * Ch. 1

 * "Soul?" Does a dog have a soul? How about cockroach?
 * Ch. 1

 * I spent time then soothing Mike down trying to make him happy, having figured out what troubled him — thing that makes puppies cry and causes people to suicide: loneliness. I don't know how a long a year is to a machine that thinks a million times faster than I do. But must be too long.
 * Ch. 1

 * That we were slaves I had known all my life — and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren't bought and sold — but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.
 * Ch. 2

 * As it says in Bible, God fights on side of heaviest artillery.
 * Ch. 2, Manuel Davis

 * (Correction — are no homely women. Some more beautiful than others.)
 * Ch. 3

 * Genius is where you find it.

 * I'm a Fifth Internationalist, most of the Organization is. Oh, we don't rule out anyone going our way; it's a united front. We have Communists and Fourths and Ruddyites and Societians and Single-Taxers and you name it. But I'm no Marxist; we Fifths have a practical program. Private where private belongs, public where it's needed, and an admission that circumstances alter cases. Nothing doctrinaire.

 * A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as "state" and "society" and "government" have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame. . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world. . . aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.

 * Do this. Don't do that. Stay back in line. Where's tax receipt? Fill out form. Let's see license. Submit six copies. Exit only. No left turn. No right turn. Queue up and pay fine. Take back and get stamped. Drop dead — but first get permit.

 * Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory.

 * I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
 * Ch. 6

 * "Sovereign," like "love," means anything you want it to mean; it's a word in dictionary between "sober" and "sozzled."

 * TANSTAAFL
 * Acronym created by Heinlein for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"; Heinlein and Milton Friedman are sometimes credited with creating this phrase, but it existed well before either's use of it, dating to at least the 1930s.

 * One way or other, what you get, you pay for.

 * This air isn't free, you pay for every breath.

 * Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good" — not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.
 * As an electronics man I shuddered. Throw away every book, table, instrument, and start over?  I know that some of my ancestors did that in switching from old English units to MKS--but they did it to make things easier. Fourteen inches to a foot and some odd number of feet to a mile. Ounces and pounds. Oh, Bog! ·        Ch 14

 * First, what is it you want us to pay taxes for? Tell me what I get and perhaps I'll buy it.

 * In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.

 * Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by four thousand citizens. He would then represent those four thousand affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would have been a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with eight thousand supporters might have two votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out — many of them! But you could work them out. . . and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government, the disgruntled minority which feels — correctly! — that it has been disenfranchised.
 * Ch. 22

 * Whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket!

 * Comrades, I beg of you — do not resort to compulsory taxation. There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

 * You have put your finger on the dilemma of all government — and the reason I am an anarchist. The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it contains until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government — sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive — and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?

 * I note one proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent — the more impediments to legislation the better. But, instead of following tradition, I suggest one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let the legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority... while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere one-third minority. Preposterous? Think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command two-thirds of your consents, is it not likely that it would make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
 * Ch. 22

 * In writing your constitution let me invite attention to the wonderful virtue of the negative! Accentuate the negative! Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do. No conscript armies... no interference however slight with freedom of press, or speech, or travel, or assembly, or of religion, or of instruction, or communication, or occupation... no involuntary taxation.

 * What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government powers to do something that appears to need doing.

 * Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn't forbidden.

 * Oratory is a null program.

 * Some logics get nervous breakdowns. Overloaded phone system behaves like frightened child. Mike did not have upsets, acquired sense of humor instead. Low one. If he were a man, you wouldn't dare stoop over. His idea of thigh-slapper would be to dump you out of bed — or put itch powder in pressure suit.

 * Excuse me, I did not mean to criticize your planet.

 * Women are scarce; aren't enough to go around — that makes them most valuable thing in Luna, more precious than ice or air, as men without women don't care whether they stay alive or not.

 * At one time kings were anointed by Deity, so the problem was to see to it that Deity chose the right candidate. In this age the myth is "the will of the people" ... but the problem changes only superficially.

 * You listening, Bog? Is a computer one of Your creatures?

 * But I was born free.

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

title: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress


text:
Talk:Benjamin Franklin

Surplus

 * Scientists have long suspected that volcanoes can affect the global climate. The first to make the connection between a major eruption and the weather was... Benjamin Franklin. Franklin's efforts to negotiate a peace treaty to end the Revolutionary War took him to Europe during the year 1783. ...he was among many to notice the peculiar blue haze or "dry fog" that cloaked the land that summer and fall. The following winter turned out to be unusually harsh. Soon afterwards Franklin published an article that attributed these events to the eruption of Iceland's Laki Fissure.
 * Shawna Vogel, Naked Earth: the New Geophysics (1995)

 * One famous delegate, Benjamin Franklin, was elected to all three bodies and played a leading role in shaping both the Declaration of Independence and the new Pennsylvania constitution. At seventy, Franklin was among the older patriot leaders, and the oldest to sign the Declaration. He was also the most renowned, thanks to his scientific discoveries and “Poor Richard” writings, as well as his long political service. And he was proving to be, in some respects, among the most democratic. Franklin’s work at the Continental Congress —as an esteemed delegate, a member of the select committee that helped Jefferson draft the Declaration, and a major contributor to the debates over the new Articles of Confederation —is well known. After independence was declared, he pushed to create a strong federal government run by a popularly elected legislature based on proportional representation. (Few of those ideas got far.) Much less familiar is Franklin’s contribution as president of the now-obscure State Convention that drafted and approved the most egalitarian constitution produced anywhere in Revolutionary America.
 * Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy (p. 13-14), 2005

Popular internet quote
"Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out." Benjamin Franklin

It's all around the web, but I can't find a source (granted, I just googled very quickly). If there's a source, it should be added, and otherwise I think that it should be listed as a common misquotation.

The quote seems to be from Paul Galvin. This is the oldest book I found in Google books that has the quote.

Did Franklin Say This?
Commonly attributed to Franklin on the 'net:- "All humanity is divided into three classes: those who are immovable, those who are movable, and those who move!" Is the attribution correct? Yes, he says this in his Autobiography - Can someone provide a page number? A Google search with vocab variants didn't turn this up, and some sources cite it as an "Arab proverb."

Also, the attributed quote here about beer: God made beer because he loves us and wants us to be happy.

I've seen more often as Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

I've never seen anyone able to provide a source for this quotation, however. Any clues? 128.231.88.4 16:34, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, Franklin was known for drinking a lot. All the revolutionaries were. So, it sounds plausible. I know that's not good enough, but I wouldn't rule it out. --70.33.101.105 20:02, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

 * The truth is that Franklin rather loathed beer and those who drank it to excess. Ben preferred the fruit of the vine and in 1779 wrote the following in a letter to André Morellet, a French economist. “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” It is easily seen how the quote has been altered. January 22, 2008
 * This issue has been addressed, and though Franklin's possible opinions on Beer are not provided, the original quote on wine is, both in the section containing a more extensive quotation of the letter, and in the "Misattributed" section. ~ Kalki 17:36, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
 * This issue has been addressed, and though Franklin's possible opinions on Beer are not provided, the original quote on wine is, both in the section containing a more extensive quotation of the letter, and in the "Misattributed" section. ~ Kalki 17:36, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I have found a few cites that quote Franklin as having said, "Never leave for tomorrow that which can be done today" or some variant thereof. Did Franklin actually say this? Does anyone have any idea where, or what the true wording is? Much appreciated! DRenaud (WMF) (talk) 06:58, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Hang Separately?
The quotation "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." is in the sourced section but "Stated at the signing of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) meaning that the rebels would either band together as Americans or be hung individually at the gallows." doesn't sound like a source to me. Superm401 08:33, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Google news has a newspaper attribution from 1844

 * "Humor Repeats Itself" by Irene Nye, The Classical Journal, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Jan., 1914), pp. 154-164 quotes one signer of the Declaration saying "We must all hang together", with Franklin responding "Yes, or we will all hang seperately".  (If you don't have access to JStor, try your local library's web site).--Nowa123 04:46, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

freedom of printing?
Anybody know whether this attributed quote belongs to Franklin? "If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed." Thanks, --85.181.59.74 21:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Possible quote?

 * When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.

I have seen this attributed to him elsewhere, but not sure of its provenance. Anyone can confirm or deny it? -- 86.145.222.229 00:40, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Checking Google news, Google scholar and Google Books for "they can vote themselves money", I could find no attributions to Franklin earlier than 1988. By contrast, "time is money" is attributed to Franklin as early as 1850.--Nowa123 04:46, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Wikiquote has a similar quote attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler: 'A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.' -- Traal 18:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Misattributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, you mean. Check the page. Embram (talk) 15:53, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

The definition of insanity...
I respectfully suggest that the quote "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to come out different" is a misattribution to both Franklin and Einstein. According to Google news archive, the earliest news article attributing the quote to Franklin is from 2004. The earliest attribution to Einstein is 1998. By contrast, the earliest Google news article that attributes "time is money" to Franklin is 1849

The earliest news article in Google's archives that has the quote "The definition of insanity is doing the same...." is 1991 to Zamberletti of the Vikings. He said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing year after year and expecting different results"

The earliest reference to "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results" is 1989 to david boswell

The earliest reference to "the definition of insanity is doing..." is 1986 to Tony Elliott of the New Orleans Saints when he said "the definition of insanity is doing over and over again things that can kill you"

A similar quote is from "Sudden Death" by Rita Mae Brown, from 1983.

Any objection to moving "the definition of insanity..." to misattributions?--Nowa123 04:47, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

 * It seems pretty clearly to be a misattribution. ~ Fnord 04:35, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input. If there are no objections by 3/1/07, I'll move it to misattributions.--Nowa123 14:06, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I found a 1925 New Yorker that attributes the quote to Einstein here. I updated accordingly. - Stillwaterising 05:48, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

 * Above link is wrongly cited. Withdrawn. - Stillwaterising 20:09, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

The book "Terrorism: documents of international and local control" (1979) attributes this quote to Einstein. --MariaEp 21:04, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

In the 1950s, George Kelly, in his book on Personal Construct Theory, wrote, "psychological disorder is any personal construction which is used repeatedly in spite of consistent invalidation". I would venture that this is the origin of the quote that has been misattributed elsewhere.

 * That's actually from 2006, because it references the Dubai Ports World controversy. —KHirsch 01:23, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * What is? LookingGlass (talk) 11:57, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not keen on the wiki-lingo, so if you experts can interject this for me:: At a minimum, this phrase dates back to the '70s. It was used in alcohol cessation programs, and you can go to books.google.com yourself to view the text.

Here's a book published in 1980, referring to the statement verbatim -

James G. Jensen "Step Two: A promise of hope" ca 1980...: ..."When I came into the program, I heard that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results"

 * Thanks! I’ve added this to the extended discussion of this quote at Narcotics Anonymous. You’re correct, it certainly appears to have been in oral use prior to that point (1981).
 * —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 09:42, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Please see reference to George Kelly above. LookingGlass (talk) 11:57, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

You know, doing the same thing repeatedly with expectation of differing results would be the definition of stupidity, not insanity. --Kazvorpal (talk) 19:25, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

All-too-late: The earliest mention of this [paraphrase] is from Voltaire, "Reflexions sur de jonque": "Lorsque l'on effectue une action, atteint un mauvais résultat, puis répète l'action plusieurs fois attendent un meilleur résultat, on est un peu fou de singe, non?" see:http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?p=1686296 (Babylon coarse auto-translation: "When an action is carried out, does a bad result reach, then repeats the action several times expect a better result, one is a little insane of monkey, not?") [Cleaner, still not precise: "When one carries out an action, that reaches a bad result, then one repeats the same action several times, expecting a better result-- one is a little-insane monkey, no?" 'Americanized to 2012'': "When one does something that reaches a bad result, then one does it again several times, expecting a better result-- is one not a crazy monkey?"''' Voltaire 1694-1788 [(Friend of Franklin when he was US Ambassador to France) I believe this would settle some bets, but I have yet to find the actual quotation ONLINE.--Art4med (talk) 18:19, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

 * And you won't find the actual quotation online, either. This is a patently obvious hoax. Voltaire has no such quote, and there's no such publication as Reflection sur la Jonque (Reflections about Junk"). Furthermore, jonque has no other meaning in French except a type of boat--the cognate of one of the secondary English meanings of Junk.) I'm afraid you've been taken in. Mathglot (talk) 08:42, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks Mathglot Appreciated.  LookingGlass (talk) 11:57, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

In 1975, Osho said the following in a recorded public talk: "The mind is always asking you to do something over again, something you have already done so many times before. And every time you see that by doing it nothing is achieved. What else can madness be?"  And: "To be mad is to keep repeating something that has already been seen as useless, as worthless."  Published 1975: Osho, The Great Secret, Chapter 10.

Sourced Misattribution For Liberty / Safety ???
The explanation of "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" concludes that it is very unlikely that Franklin is the author. In my understanding of "sourced"(= Franklin's authorship is proven) the quote should therefore go to misattribution (with the fine explanation). Kevin --89.53.53.171 15:26, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Bartlett's has the following: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." with a sourced of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755.—The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, vol. 6, p. 242 (1963). I have not tried to verify this source. Rolland --70.192.218.175 15:24, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The Benjamin Franklin Papers are available online and include the Novemeber 11, 1755 letter: http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=6&page=238a Franklin writes: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither"

Those Who Would Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither

Posted by Gregg DesElms:

In the Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress (S. 459) (12.00.00) is an original first edition print of what is usually alleged to be Franklin's "An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania (1759)" in which the "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" version appears on the cover page, with a reference to there being more on page 289. Click here to see a photo of it.

If you look closely at that photo, just above the quote on the title page, and just below the words "Founded on Authentic DOCUMENTS," of that particular copy, you can see the handwritten (with a quill or fountain pen) annotation that it's "by Doctor Franklin," meaning, of course, Benjamin Franklin. Well, according to this (click here), that annotation was written by Thomas Jefferson, in his own hand. About it is written on that web page, the following: "Although the actual authorship of this work was in question at the time, Jefferson attributed it to Benjamin Franklin and annotated the title page to indicate it. Franklin later denied authorship, but Jefferson’s high regard for Franklin likely allowed his attribution to persist."

The Wikiquote page (to which this is the discussion page) contains that "the book was published by Franklin; its author was Richard Jackson," and, interestingly, we also see written, in that photo, using a more modern (likely ball point) ink pen, at the very top of the page, the name "Jackson, Richard".

So, I think the Wikiquotes page (to which this is the discussion page) pretty much has it right. All that really needs, at this writing, is to have fixed the (as of March 1, 2012) broken link to the telling of it (and to maybe better explain it a bit, based on some additional information I've found, and to which I link in my next paragraph).

So, now, based, in part, on this web page (click here), and this one (click here), and this one (click here), and this one (click here), and this one (click here), and, finally, this one (click here), I'm now going to change both how the text on the Wikiquotes page is worded, as well as the citation(s) to it.

Deselms (talk) 19:36, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Update by Gregg DesElms:

I'm frustrated because, as I wrote I would do, immediately above, I did a fairly comprehensive rewrite of the sections regarding these three quotes...

 * "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."

 * "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

 * "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

...which I rearranged in that order, and which I expanded, quite a bit (with way more linked references and proofs than immediately above), so that the true and complete history of these quote could finally, once and for all, be told (and whatever doubt about them finally settled). It took me... well... a while, because I so heavily documented with the links...

...yet when I posted here, this site's "spam filter" flagged so much of it that I just gave up for that session (though, of course, I copied-and-pasted my work into a text file on my machine, so it's not lost).

It's good work... less wordy than, but as good as...

The Open Library; "An Historical Review of Pennsylvania"

...which I wrote and posted before I tried to post here (as part of the process through which I go when I'm researching and writing about this sort of thing; and, yes, I know that, at this writing, there are no citations/references/footnotes over in that Open Library piece... I'm circling back and adding those soon... though there was no shortage of references in what I tried to post here, most of which, again, got treated by this site's spam filter as spam).

Needless to say, nothing in my linked references/citations, here, was in any way spammish. NOTHING! So I don't get it. How do I get it posted here? Never had this problem in Wikipedia. What's different about Wikiquotes? Does anyone here know what I should do?

Deselms (talk) 17:19, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Searchable Sayings from -- and based on -- Poor Richard's Almanac
I enjoyed your excellent article and particularly appreciated the timeline. It seems especially important in a man willing to respond to changing events. Your website indicates an interest in aphorisms from Poor Richard’s Almanac. My website www.benandverse.com includes many of his prose sayings (along with updates in modern verse for each). There is a search engine and a detailed index. As part of the “Creative Commons” project, I am offering all the material on my website free of copyright restrictions, provided that any original material is attributed to me. The material may be used for commercial or other purposes without payment. I hope in this way to help spread Franklin’s good sense to a world that I think needs it. I want to congratulate your website for its role in this mission. Sincerely yours, John D. McCall PS. Franklin’s famous rhymes are not on my website. For them, I suggest you use you check a search engine -- for “Poor Richard’s Almanac” + 1758 -- and read that year’s preface. PPS. The website has link from the Franklin Institute and an A+ from the WebEnglishTeacher.

FROM "ADVICE TO A YOUNG MAN"
What about the "Lastly, they are so grateful!!" quote?

What about this?
"I will not agree with your words, but fight to the death to allow you to speak them." Is this something Ben said? Thanks!  DangerousNerd    talk    contribs    email   20:32, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

 * This seems to be a rather poor paraphrase of "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" which has commonly been attributed to Voltaire but was in fact a statement by Evelyn Beatrice Hall indicating what she believed Voltaire's attitude to be. ~ Kalki 21:03, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

 * How could Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) paraphrase the words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall (1868 – >1939), born almost a century after his death? Monkeyjunky (talk) 15:25, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

That math is correct but it seems that Hall was talking of Voltaire's attitude, not Franklin's

Had to add a revised quote of mine which is spreading like wildfire
"Those who give up their liberty neither deserve liberty nor security." I think it is one which is now widely used everywhere and was not in there.

other quotes from aphorisms-galore.info are real?
is this <=== real from aphorisms-galore.com i use it for English project, a hope it is real and not a lie by other people, thankyou

Language Quote
I found the following quote attributed to Franklin in an education textbook: What is going on in America? It is amazing, and disturbing, to ride on a road and see street signs that are printed not only in English but in other languages as well. What's more, even legal documents are now being written in foreign languages, How unnerving to walk down an American street and not understand what people are talking about. Maybe this isn't America. I feel like a stranger in my own land. Why don't they learn to speak English? The only other information about the quote is that it was from the 1750s and the other language he was mainly referring to was German. The textbook in question is Teachers, Schools, and Society, 8th edition (2008) by David Miller Sadker, Myra Pollack Sadker and Karen R. Zittleman. ISBN is 978-0-07-352590-7. The quote is on page 75. Publisher is McGraw-Hill.

Now, the reason that I haven't added this to the page is that despite the source I have is that I have not been able to independently confirm the quote in any other source. "The 1750s" statement gives me pause. The vagueness makes me doubt the quote's authenticity. Does anyone here have more information about this quote? Henrymrx 05:07, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

 * This looks completely bogus to me. Both the phrasing and the sentiment are anachronistically modern, and in the 1750s this wasn't America yet. ~ Ningauble 15:33, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

 * I think I've traced this. It appears to be a modern paraphrase of part of a Benjamin Franklin letter - "on the condition and character of the Germans in Pennsylvania" - to Peter Collinson, May 9, 1753, as printed in The Works of Benjamin Franklin: first page / relevant section. How authentic it is, I don't know; a footnote says it was first printed in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1834, having been found in a diary. Gordonofcartoon 01:18, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

 * Ok, first of all the textbook in question does NOT say it is a quote. It says "Benjamin Franklin expressed this view." Secondly, the source for Franklin's actual words is at best a plausible but questionable third-hand transcription of a document of unclear provenance:
 * There is a reprint of the complete magazine article in "Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle, Volume 1", pp. 5–16, wherein the diarist Thomas Green is quoted giving the following provenance for the letter: "In looking over some papers this morning, I met with the following curious and unpublished letter of Dr. Franklin, (p. 11, italics in original). For information about Mr. Green and the provenance of his diary see Edmund Gosse, Gossip in a Library (1914), pp. 205–211. For the original Extracts from the Diary of a Lover of Literature published anonymously by Mr. Green, which does not include this entry, see the edition of 1810.
 * Based on a Google search, I do not think this is misattributed widely enough that we need a rebuttal in the article. I pity the future students of any prospective teachers who do not recognize this text is not a quote, or at least question it as Henrymrx did. ~ Ningauble 20:46, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Antisemitic quote
The quote stating that the great threat "is the Jew" comes from a forged speech that is specifically discredited in a Wikipedia article, sourced from a 2004 congressional report. Is there some reason this is not at the very least in the Misattributed section or simply removed entirely? This quote was fabricated by a 1930s religious extremist who was later arrested for treason, sedition, and libel. Its intent was only ever to smear and deceive. I submit that it does not belong on this page at all.

Brubble 03:46, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

 * The quote actually IS in the misattributed section — with numerous other misattributions, where it is described as "Part of a longer quotation attributed to Franklin during the Constitutional Convention, supposedly recorded by Charles Pinckney in a journal that no longer exists. The quotation, first appearing in print in the 1930s, uses English idioms that were unknown in Franklin's time." ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 04:05, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Long quote on argumentation
Here's a long quote on argumentation; I wasn't sure whether it should be posted somewhere here. Found at a colleague's blog:

 * There was another Bookish Lad in the Town, John Collins by Name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of Argument, & very desirous of confuting one another. Which disputatious Turn, by the way, is apt to because a very bad Habit, making People often extremely disagreeable in Company, by the Contradiction that is necessary to bring it into Practice, & thence, besides souring & spoiling the Conversation, is productive of Disgusts and perhaps Enmities where you may have occasion for Friendship. I had caught it by reading my Father’s Books of Dispute about Religion. Persons of good Sense, I have since observ’d, seldom fall into it, except Lawyers, University Men, and Men of all Sorts that have been bred at Edinburgh. . ..

 * While I was intent on improving my Language, I met with an English Grammar (I think it was Greenwood’s), at the End of which there were two little Sketches of the Arts ofRhetoric and Logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic Method. And soon after I procur’d Xenophon’s Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many Instances of the same Method. I was charm’d with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt Contradiction and positive Argumentation, and put on the humble Enquirer & Doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury & Collins, become a real Doubter in many Points of our Religious Doctrine, I found this Method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it. Therefore I took a Delight in it, practis’d it continually & grew very artful and expert in drawing People even of superior Knowledge into Concessions the Consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in Difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining Victories that neither my self nor my Cause always deserved.–

 * I continu’d this Method some few Years, but gradually left it, retaining only the Habit of expressing my self in Terms of modest Diffidence, never using when I advance anything that may possibly be disputed, the Words Certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the Air of Positiveness to an Opinion; but rather say, I conceive, or I apprehend a Thing to be so or so, It appears to me, or I should think it so or so for such & such Reasons, or I imagine it to be so, or it is so if I am not mistaken. –This Habit I believe has been of great Advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my Opinions & persuade Men into Measures that I have been from time to time engag’d in promoting.-

 * And as the chief Ends of Conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning sensible men would not lessen their Power of doing Good by a Positive assuming Manner that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create Opposition, and to defeat every one of those Purposes for which Speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving Information or Pleasure: For If you would inform, a positive dogmatical Manner in advancing your Sentiments, may provoke Contradiction & prevent a candid Attention. If you wish Information and Improvement from the Knowledge of others and yet at the same time express your self as firmly fix’d in your present Opinions, modest sensible Men, who do not love Disputation, will probably leave you undisturb’d in the Possession of your Error; and by such a Manner you can seldom hope to recommend your self in pleasing your Hearers, or to persuade those whose Concurrence you desire.

From Part One of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 1793; from The Library of America edition of Benjamin Franklin: Writings, 1987

Thoughts? Jodi.a.schneider 13:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

 * This looks much too long to use as a quote. Our rule of thumb is 250 words, about the length of the Gettysburg Address. ~ Ningauble 12:29, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Unsourced

 * These require citations to adequate sources before being placed into the main article.

 * If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing.
 * This is reminiscent of the writing of Pliny the Younger in his letter (VI.16) to Tacitus "For my part I deem those blessed to whom, by favour of the gods, it has been granted either to do what is worth writing of, or to write what is worth reading..."

 * Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances.
 * The sayings of Poor Richard; 1889; p. 228

 * Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.
 * According to a Snopes message board, the earliest known reference dates to the late 1990s.

 * Never ruin an apology with an excuse.

 * Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame.
 * It is listed without attribution in a book of proverbs from 1901

 * Do not fear having no friends. Fear having bad friends.

 * It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.

Cultural Morals and the Dead
This is often attributed to BF, but I think this is false due to lack of reference. Any help?

"One can tell the morals of a culture by the way they treat their dead."

Google

Thekaleb 19:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Born ignorant
A number of quotation sites give this saying ("We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.") as Benjamin Franklin's. I can't find it in Franklin's works, and the oldest reference Google Books comes up with is 2005 or so. Could this be a modern paraphrase of something Franklin wrote? Sbh 23:32, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I found a book from 1990, but no attribution. It's quite possibly not Franklin.

The sentence would have had a different meaning to an 18th century speaker, and so it is unlikely one used by Franklin.

 * The thought has the feel of the late 20th to 21st century. I doubt any thinker in the 18th century would have thought this way.  That's only opinion, but I would want very firm evidence before believing Franklin said anything like this.  I see no such evidence.
 * Also, see the independent same opinion at English Language & Usage Stack Exchange. Zaslav (talk) 04:48, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Trickery and Treachery quotation

 * Trickery and treachery are the practices of fools who have not wits enough to be honest.
 * As quoted in Dr. Swan's Prescriptions for Job-Itis (2003) by Dennis Swanberg and Criswell Freeman, p. 45

This is a misquotation of a saying from the 1740 edition of Poor Richard's Almanac, and is already cited on that page:

 * Tricks and trechery are the Practice of Fools, that have not Wit enough to be honest.

I think it should probably be deleted here. Sbh 19:30, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Quotations from Cato's Letters
The following quotations, attributed here to Franklin writing under the pseudonym of Silence Dogood, are in fact taken from Cato's Letters (written by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon) and quoted in the named source by Franklin. (The letter in question can be read here.)

 * WITHOUT Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the Right of another. And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know. This sacred Privilege is to essential to free Governments, that the Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Fteeness [sic!] of Speech; a Thing terrible to Publick Traytors.
 * Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym Silence Dogood in the The New-England Courant. Issue 49. From Monday July 2. to Monday July 9. 1722

 * That Men ought to speak well of their Governours is true, while their Governours, deserve to be well spoken of, but to do publick Mischief, without hearing of it, is only the Prerogative and Felicity of Tyranny: A free People will be shewing that they are so, by their Freedom of Speech.
 * Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym Silence Dogood in the The New-England Courant. Issue 49. From Monday July 2. to Monday July 9. 1722

 * The Administration of Government, is nothing else but the Attendence of the Trustees of the People upon the Interest and Affairs of the People: And as it is the Part and Business of the People, for whole Sake alone all publick Matters are, or ought to be transacted, to see whether they be well or ill transacted, so it is the Interest, and ought to be the Ambition, of all honest Magistrates, to have their Deeds openly examined, and Publickly scann'd[.]
 * Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym Silence Dogood in the The New-England Courant. Issue 49. From Monday July 2. to Monday July 9. 1722

 * Freedom of Speech is ever the Symptom, as well as the Effect of a good Government. In old Rome, all was left to the Judgment and Pleasure of the People, who examined the publick Proceedings with such Discretion, & censured those who administred them with such Equity and Mildness, that in the space of Three Hundred Years, not five publick Ministers suffered unjustly. Indeed whenever the Commons proceeded to Violence, the great Ones had been the Agressors.
 * Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym Silence Dogood in the The New-England Courant. Issue 49. From Monday July 2. to Monday July 9. 1722

 * GUILT only dreads Liberty of Speech, which drags it out of its lurking Holes, and exposes its Deformity and Horrour to Day-light.
 * Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym Silence Dogood in the The New-England Courant. Issue 49. From Monday July 2. to Monday July 9. 1722

 * The best Princes have ever encouraged and Promoted Freedom of Speech; they know that upright Measures would defend themselves, and that all upright Men would defend them.
 * Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym Silence Dogood in the The New-England Courant. Issue 49. From Monday July 2. to Monday July 9. 1722

 * Misrepressentation of publick Measures is easily overthrown, by representing publick Measures truly; when they are honest, they ought to be publickly known, that they may be publickly commended, but if they are knavish or pernicious, they ought to be publickly exposed, in order to be pubickly detested.
 * Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym Silence Dogood in the The New-England Courant. Issue 49. From Monday July 2. to Monday July 9. 1722

I've removed them from the Franklin page, where they obviously don't belong, but I'm not sure what to do with them. These quotations seem to be worth keeping, but I'm not sure where to put them. Wikiquotes doesn't seem to have a page for Cato's Letters or for either of the authors. Any thoughts? Sbh (talk) 17:06, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

 * The above quotations have been moved to the Freedom of speech site. I suggest you create a page for both authors and then insert the quotes from the relevant authors. This page should help you to do this.

You're finished
"When you're finished changing, you're finished." is attributed to my buddy B. Frank but I can't find a source. Any help here fellow Frankliners?
 * Doesn't sound like Franklin to me. He wrote aphorisms in the style of 18th century Neoclassical prose, but this looks like a 20th century idiom. ~ Ningauble (talk) 13:07, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God - possibly inspired by a quote by Simon Bradstreet
The Wikiquote page for Thomas Jefferson notes that the quote "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God" is often misattribted to him. It also notes that earliest use of this quote comes from Simon Bradstreet and it provides two sources for the quote: Official Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the State Convention: assembled May 4th, 1853 (1853) by the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, p. 502 and A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore (1883) by Samuel Adams Drake. p.426. Unfortunately these are print sources so you can't quickly see the quote and compare it to Benjamin Franklin's proposed motto for the Great Seal of the United States]. Furthermore these sources probably don't discusses any possible connected between the similarity of these quotes. Does anybody have any information on a possible connection between these quotes?

"If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking."
I've seen this attributed to Franklin, but with no source. In searching, I've also seen it attributed to Gen. Patton, so my alarm bells went off double-time. Can anyone help? JayHubie (talk) 04:42, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

“ Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” — Walter Lippmann, The Stakes of Diplomacy (1915)

Source of Franklin quote on poverty
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it..."

Though this is quoted widely, none of the sources I've seen cites a source. I did find this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/04/glenn-beck-watch-misquoti_n_89870.html Allreet01 (talk) 12:59, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

This is from "On the Price of Corn, and Management of the Poor" written under the pseudonym Arator and published in The London Chronicle, 29 November 1766. S0208 (talk) 13:22, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

1772 Apple Quotation
I came across this quote online: “Calling it an apple does not make it an apple.” — Benjamin Franklin, 1772. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 14:02, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

"Sound nothing but sound" in misattributions
The phrase "My opponent's argument is sound—nothing but sound", a version of which is in the Misattributions section, occurred in the 1949 movie Adam's Rib, written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.50.172.44.101 13:03, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

 * The full quote in context would be "First of all, I should like to say at the outset that I think the arguments advanced by the counsel for the defense were sound. Mere sound." 93 (talk) 21:58, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Well-armed gentlemen
"Democracy is an agreement about rules between well-armed gentlemen." appears in the Internet (for example, http://lang-8.com/1101873/journals/112794369001376766148866991476465536762 ). Does someone know the source? Tovarischivanov (talk) 17:59, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Source for this quote?
I've found this quote online attributed to Ben Franklin. "An Investment in Knowledge Pays the Best Interest" Does anyone know of a source for it?Just A Regular New Yorker (talk) 23:51, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Still me. Anyone have any sources?Just A Regular New Yorker (talk) 19:27, 22 October 2017 (UTC) Just A Regular New Yorker (talk) 19:27, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

 * An attribution that reads "If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him; an investment; in knowledge; always pays the best interest. Franklin. " appears on Page 480 of "Day’s Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations," published in 1884.
 * Doesn't mean it's Franklin's per se, but it has been attributed to him for quite some time. 24.121.25.154 23:03, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Doesn't mean it's Franklin's per se, but it has been attributed to him for quite some time. 24.121.25.154 23:03, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

"Squander Time" quotation.
'Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.' — This quotation is so widely attributed to Benjamin Franklin that it should certainly be on this page, either as verified with a citation as to the actual source; as misattributed, with identification of the actual source; or as disputed, with a discussion. Embram (talk) 15:58, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Franklin's Jackass?
A review of [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q96943486 Michael Waldman (2016) The Fight To Vote includes the following attributed to Ben Franklin:

 * "Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the mean time has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers -- but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass?"

If this is accurate, I think it belongs in the Wikiquote article on "Benjamin Franklin". Sadly, I don't have easy access to this book.

What do you think? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 15:18, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

 * I asked about this on w:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities: w:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities.  The quote appears on p. 3 of Keyssar (2000) Right to Vote.  Waldman (my source above) cites Keyssar as a source but acknowledges that the original source is Benjamin Franklin (1828) The Casket, or Flowers of Literature, Wit and Sentiment. Closer inspection of that document suggests that it was monthly magazine.  A search for "Franklin" found his name on 4 different pages.  However, a search for "jackass" found nothing.

 * Someone there also found it from an 1827 newspaper, which I just cited in adding this quote to the "Attributed" section just a minute ago.

 * Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 23:40, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Benjamin Franklin


text:
Harold Powers

Harold Stone Powers (August 5, 1928 – March 15, 2007) was an American musicologist.

Quotes

 * Given my present belief in the much greater range of variability as to both order and kind of complexity in the world's musics versus the world's languages, I can hardly imagine how a model developed really satisfactorily for the detailed structureal explanation of one musical language is so easiy modified to another, and all the more so if the original model be evolved from linguistics rather than from the musical disciplines.
 * Harold Powers, "Language Models and Musical Analysis", p.48.

 * 'Objective' analysis is a tool, primarily useful for suggesting or confirming putative relationships between different musical styles....'Critical' analysis results not in a statistical measurement of style or proof of relationship but rather, ideally, in a formal model for a relatively independent and artistically controllable style within a culture, and should then be viable for accounting for individual manifestations of that style...
 * [A. Merriam] neglects to take sufficiently into account the possibilities of critical musical analysis as though from within the culture, be it by a native or a native-trained foreigner.
 * Harold Powers, review of A. Merriam's The Anthropology of Music, p.171, 167.

 * No critic, not even a topical analyst, can escape seeing the musical past from a present perspective. But...the common-language approach of the topical-analyst critics permits a separation between present sensibility and the general sensibilities of the late eighteenth century, allowing for an ever-evolving dialogue between the vanished past and the evanescent present.
 * Harold Powers, "Reading Mozart's Music", p.43.

 * In applications of the music-as-language metaphor we should attend to diverse musical traditions in musical terms, including not only traditions of the music we study but also traditions of how we study music.
 * Harold Powers, "Language Models and Musical Analysis", p.54-55.

 * A tonal type is minimally identifiable by its three markers and thus objectively observable completely apart from its musical or cultural context; it is 'scientific,' it is 'etic.' 'Mode' conversely is all bound up in sixteenth-century musical culture, not as a living doctrine of the music of the church and a heritage fomr the Middle Ages but also as a musical construct being expirimented with by members of the culture, from both humanistic and traditional points of view; it is thoroughly 'emic' and requires study on its own terms....
 * Harold Powers, "Tonal Types", p.439.

 * Counterpoint texts tend to resemble one another in the underlying principles of voice-leading they espouse and in the kinds of orderings of rules they provide, but no one could accuse the harmony texts of, let us say, Heinrich Schenker and Hugo Riemann, or of Allen Irvine McHose and Walter Piston--or for that matter, of Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith, and Roger Sessions--of being mutually compatible, either in premise or in practice.
 * Harold Powers, "Is Mode Real", p.18,10.

 * "Rules of simultaneous ensemble constraint can't be assumed a priori to be the kinds of rules or rest on the same foundations as rules for constraint on succession. They may well be similar, but they may well not be similar also. It seems to me that ensemble constraints must first be understood in their own terms, within musical cultures individually and comparitively, looking to what appear to be basic principles in each in light of the others, I would call such a study "comparative counterpoint."
 * Harold Powers, "Language Models and Musical Analysis", p.39.

title: Harold Powers


text:
Talk:Bill Clinton

Are there any quotes that don't involve Monica Lewinsky? =) –Matt 03:52, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Yes. I added 6. There are many more. Is this a biased site that only shows one side, or an objective perspective site?

 * It is a site that the user's create… as they edit within the Wikimedia guidelines for fairness and legality. Nearly any significant and genuine quotations are welcome from any notable figure (that are not so extensive as to exceed the limits of fair use). No one is required to provide balance, or to insure that it is provided, but a fair or proper balance should be an aim that is promoted by any fair-minded person. People across the political spectrums are free to make comments upon the project and what it contains, and how they feel it might be improved within the talk pages, and to make additions to the articles with genuine quotations of noted figures. Preferably additions should be provided with a source, and any deletions that are made should be done for a reason of lack of authenticity, (or perhaps conceivably, a generally agreed to lack of importance…), not merely because they might irritate some sensitivities. I am sure that there are many positive and noteworthy things said by Bill Clinton, and about him by famous people; thus far the majority of editors on this article seem to have been people interested in deriding him. You are entirely free to alter that balance. (This actually reminds me that I have to post some quotes of Hillary Clinton that i had been working on formatting, but keep forgetting to finish.) I personally much prefer that people say what positive things that they can by or about nearly anyone, or remain silent, and only emphasize the negative when it seems very clearly prominent, important, and under-indicated. ~ Kalki 07:17, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Corrected inaccurate quote - see http://www.snopes.com/quotes/clinton.htm

EO?
I'll rule this country by executive order if Congress won't adopt my agenda. Bill Clinton, 7/4/98

Saw this on the web, but don't know the legitimacy of it. Yes, no?

Mr. Clinton, I am Kelly K. 12 year old student at Eisenhower Middle School, I was wondering when you where president what did Bosnia have to do with anything? I'm not sure how this thing works but, if you edit this, please let me know. -Kelly K.

--Bosnia is where I buy my cheeses from. It was a big deal at the time. - B. Clinton.

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 Bill Clinton. --Antiquary 17:04, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

 * I think the country could be spared a lot of agony and the government could worry about inflation and a lot of other problems if [Nixon would] go on and resign. [There is] no question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI and the CIA is an impeachable offense.
 * While campaigning for a Congressional seat in Arkansas, about Richard Nixon

 * Today, future belongs to freedom, not to fear.
 * During campaigning for John Kerry in 2004 presidential election

 * It didn't happen under my administration. It happened under me.
 * In Rwanda, when a local reporter asked Clinton about his administration's failures during the 1994 genocide that left up to 1,000,000 dead

title: Talk:Bill Clinton


text:
Lillian Smith (author)

Lillian Eugenia Smith (December 12, 1897 – September 28, 1966) was an American author and social activist.

Quotes

 * She stood at the gate, waiting; behind her the swamp, in front of her Colored Town, beyond it, all Maxwell. Tall and slim and white in the dusk, the girl stood there, hands on the picket gate.
 * Strange Fruit (1944) First lines

 * Segregation is evil; there is no pattern of life which can dehumanize men as can the way of segregation.
 * Acceptance speech for the Charles S. Johnson Award at Fisk University in 1966

 * We in America – and men across the earth – have trapped ourselves with that word equality, which is inapplicable to the genus man. I wish we would forget it. Stop its use in our country: Let the communists have it. It isn’t fit for men who fling thei...r dreams across the skies. It is fit only for a leveling down of mankind.
 * "Killers of the Dream" Lillian Smith

 * The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.
 * Killers of the Dream, Chapter 1: "When I Was a Child", pp 25-26

Quotes about Lillian Smith

 * Lillian Smith is a very great, and heroic, and very lonely figure. Obviously. She has very few friends in that little hamlet in Georgia where she carries on so gallantly. She has paid a tremendous price for trying to do what she thinks is right. And the price is terribly, terribly high. The only way the price can become a little bit less is for more people to do it.
 * 1961 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)

title: Lillian Smith (author)


text:
Ron Reagan

Ronald Prescott Reagan (born May 20, 1958) is a journalist and political activist. He is the son of Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan.

Quotes

 * I would be unelectable. I'm an atheist. As we all know, that is something people won't accept.
 * Response on being asked if he would like to be President, in Deborah Solomon, "The Son Also Rises", New York Times (27 June 2004).

 * In private, you got what you got in public. He treated everyone the same. He was just a very warm man, and he worked hard to impress upon his children the value of kindness. He was biologically incapable of gossip. There was no smallness in him.
 * On his father, Ronald Reagan, in Deborah Solomon, "The Son Also Rises", New York Times (27 June 2004).

 * If you are going to call yourself a Christian—and I don't—then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture?  Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash?  How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have been asked to fight— it has put them in greater danger.
 * On the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, New York Times (27 June 2004).

 * Limbaugh hasn't had a natural erection since the Nixon Administration; think he's compensating for something? Now, I wouldn't pick on him for any of this stuff, not his blubbiness, not his man-boobs, not his inability to have a natural erection -- none of that stuff -- to me, off limits until! until! -- Mr. Limbaugh, you turn that sort of gun on somebody else -- once you start doing that, you're fair game, fat boy. Absolutely, you jiggly pile of mess. You're just fair game, and you're going to get it, too. [Laughs] You'd better watch what you say, Limbaugh, because it can come back the other way.
 * On Rush Limbaugh - '"The Ron Reagan Show'' (18 May 2009).

title: Ron Reagan