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Quotable Neiman

Consider what you mean when you tell someone: be realistic. It’s another way to say: lower your expectations. It’s also connected with a view of maturity that holds growing up to be a process of becoming resigned.

— PHILOSOPHER SUSAN NEIMAN (IN THE BOSTON GLOBE, 2008)

Quotable King

There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

— REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Quotable Thoreau

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU (JOURNAL ENTRY, 1961)

Quotable Kennedy

We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. [...N]o official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.

— PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, SPEECH TO AMERICAN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION (1961)

Quotable Tutu

If you are neutral on situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

— DESMOND TUTU

 

Quotable Emerson

It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. […]

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? […] Insist on yourself; never imitate.

— RALPH WALDO EMERSON, IN SELF-RELIANCE (1841)

 

Quotable Godard

 

All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.

— JEAN-LUC GODARD (b. 1930)

 

Quotable Comey

In 1975, the Atomic Industrial Forum had invited David Comey to tell the nuclear industry how it could be more credible with the public. He was a high-priced consultant; not a lobbyist, an historian. Comey gave them his standard answer: To become credible you must tell the truth.

— Albert Bates quoting Comey at The Great Change [h/t Moisha Blechman]

Quotable Sagan

It often happens that scientists say: “You know, that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken.” And then they actually change their minds, and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

— Carl Sagan (CSICOP Keynote Address, 1987)

Quotable Simon

Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don’t vote.

— U.S. Treasury Secretary William E. Simon (1927-2000) 

Quotable West

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

— Attributed to novelist Rebecca West, née Cicely Isabel Fairfield (1892-1983)

Quotable Douglass

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.

— FREDERICK DOUGLASS (WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION SPEECH, 1857)