Timoleon: October 1901 Archives

"The unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates

George Washington

• A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.
• Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
• As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.
• Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation. It is better be alone than in bad company.
• Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.
• Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
• Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.
• Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
• Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
• Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
• Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.
• How soon we forget history... Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
• I have no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honors not founded in the approbation of my Country.
• I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
• I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture, its breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman's cares.
• I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.
• If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
• If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.
• It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.
• It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
• It is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief. (what is?)
• It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.
• It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
• Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.
• Lenience will operate with greater force, in some instances than rigor. It is therefore my first wish to have all of my conduct distinguished by it.
• Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.
• Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
• Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.
• Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.
• Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
• Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.
• My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.
• My manner of living is plain and I do not mean to be put out of it. A glass of wine and a bit of mutton are always ready.
• My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.
• My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.
• Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.
• Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
• The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.
• The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.
• The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
• The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.
• The tumultuous populace of large cities are ever to be dreaded. Their indiscriminate violence prostrates for the time all public authority, and its consequences are sometimes extensive and terrible.
• The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.
• To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
• True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity, before it is entitled to the appellation.
• War - An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.
• We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.
• When firearms go, all goes. We need them every hour.
• When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen.
• Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble. 

Martin Luther King Jr.

• In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

• MAGPIE, n. A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk.
• TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.

Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)

• Here stand I. I can do no other. 

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

·        He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.

·        Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

·        One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

·        Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.

·        The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.

·        A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience.

·        It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

·        A page of history is worth a volume of logic.

Henry David Thoreau

• I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
• I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.
• Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they are written.

George Orwell

• Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past
• If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear
• We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm
• To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle
• Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act
• The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it
• In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it" 'Syme'; a character from Orwell's 1984

Ralph Waldo Emerson

v     A hero is no braver than an ordinary man but he is braver five minutes longer

v     What is excellent is permanent.

v     Self-trust is the first secret of success.

v     Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

v     For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?  "Boston" Stanza 15

Confucius

• To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.
• Learn avidly. Question repeatedly what you have learned. Analyze it carefully. Then put what you have learned into practice intelligently.
• When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge.
• What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand.
• He who learns but does not think is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

Francis Bacon

v      Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man

v      Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested

v      Knowledge is power

Mark Twain

• When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
• The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
• There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.
• It is noble to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good -- and less trouble!
• It is easier to stay out than to get out.

John Milton, poet

• None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license
• Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

Samuel Johnson

• A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
• What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
• Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

·         Nothing is as frightening as ignorance in action. 

·         Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough we must do.

·         None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

Lao Tzu

• A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step

C. A. Helvetius

v      Education makes us what we are

John Locke

§         The only fence against the world is a through knowledge of it

John Ruskin

§         Which of us ... is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest - and for what pay?  Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?

Herbert Spencer

§         Education has for its object the formation of character

Aristotle

§         It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it

§         Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead

Jane Austen

• A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of

Epictetus

• First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Henry Adams

• Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man

Thomas Carlyle

• All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books

Charles Colton

• Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer

René Descartes

• It is not enough to have a good mind.  The main thing is to use it well.

John Maynard Keynes

• There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out

Bertrand Arthur William Russell

• Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
• Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man

Heraclitus

• You can't step twice into the same river

Book of Job

• 28:12 But where shall wisdom be found?  And where is the place of understanding?

Seneca

• Even while they teach, men learn

Thomas Edison

• There is no substitute for hard work
• Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration

Sören Kierkegaard

• Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards

Demosthenes

• Every advantage in the past is judged in the light of the final issue

Rudyard Kipling (Elephant's Child)

I keep six honest serving men

(They taught me all I knew)

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who

Horace

• Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work

Michelangelo

• If people only know how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all

Theodore Roosevelt

• What I am to be, I am now becoming

Plutarch

§         For water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow

Alvin Toffler

§         The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn

W. Edwards Deming

§         Learning is not compulsory but neither is survival

Douglas Adams

§         Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so

Lady Burton

v      Men are four:

·         He who knows not and knows not he knows not, he is a fool - shun him;

·         He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is simple - teach him;

·         He who knows and knows not he knows, he is asleep - wake him;

·         He who knows and knows he knows, he is wise - follow him!

Thomas Carruthers

·         A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary

St. Gregory the Great

·         Whatsoever one would understand what he hears, must hasten to put into practice what he has heard

Thomas Calyle

·         Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight

Bob Edwards

·         A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad

John Dewey

·         Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results

James Bennis

·         Don't just learn the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade

Carl Rogers

·         The only kind of learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered or self-appropriated learning - truth that has been assimilated in experience

John Cotton Dana

·         Who dares to teach must never cease to learn

Albert Einstein

§         Example isn't another way to teach, it is the only way to teach

William J. Durant

§         Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn

Effie Jones

§         Failing to plan is a plan to fail

William Arthur Ward

The mediocre teacher tells

The good teacher explains

The superior teacher demonstrates

The great teacher inspires

D. Blocher

§         Learning is not a spectator sport

Joyce Cary

§         It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a man knows, the more sure he is he knows everything

Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) GANDHI

• Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever
• The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within 

Abigail Adams

§         Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence

Marcel Proust

§         The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

§         The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage

Newton D. Baker

§         The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after

Piet Hein

·         The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less

Tyron Edwards

·         To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully

I don't know

·         All learning begins with the simple phrase, "I don't know"

Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President

·        America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Victor Frankl, author

• The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitudes.

James Madison, U.S. president

• I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

H. L. Mencken

v     The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

Hodding Carter

v     There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.

John P. Zenger

v     No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.

Patrick Henry

v     Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Somerset Maugham

v     If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

Thomas Jefferson

• A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
• I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Voltaire

• So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

William O. Douglas

v     Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

Siddhartha Gotoma, the BUDDHA

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love Born out of concern for all beings.

Arthur SCHOPENHAUER

v     Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world

Phillip Adams

v     Unless you're willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won't happen

George Allen

v     Health, happiness and success depend upon the fighting spirit of each person. The big thing is not what happens to us in life - but what we do about what happens to us.

Bruce Barton

v     Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity that was at hand.

Thomas J. Watson

v     Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that's where you will find success.

Vincent T. Lombardi

v     The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.

Mario Andretti - race car driver

v     Desire is the key to motivation, but it's the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to excellence - that will enable you to attain the success you seek

Zig Ziglar

v     What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination

v     The most practical, beautiful, workable philosophy in the world won't work - if you won't

Anonymous

v     An Unfailing Success Plan: At each day's end write down the six most important things to do tomorrow; number them in order of importance, and then do them

v     Everybody's a self-made man; but only the successful ones are ever willing to admit it

Proverbs

v     Chinese: Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness

v     Latin: If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup

v     Proverbs 12:1. To learn, you must want to be taught

v     Turkish: If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup

Arthur Ashe

v     One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation

Frederick Edwin Smith, Lord Birkenhead

v     Meet success like a gentleman and disaster like a man

Eddie Cantor

v     It takes 20 years to make an overnight success

Benjamin Disraeli

v     There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics

v     The secret of success is constancy to purpose

Dick Van Dyke

v     Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them

Dale Carnegie

v     Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get

v     The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore