Below left inset picture is headline in Philadelphia Inquirer 1863

       This summer marks the 150th anniversery of the Battle of Gettysburg, which will be remembered long after the United States has dissappeared into the pages of history.
       The spring of 1863 saw Robert E. Lee lead the confederate army to two stunning victories at Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville despite being heavily outnumberd by the Yankee army. In fact the Confederate army had won every battle in the eastern theater since the war began. Yet both Lee and Confederate president Jefferson Davis knew they were losing the war. They understood that the overwhelming northern superiority in manpower and industry would eventually wear the south down. In the west the northern armies had won a number of victories and controlled the whole Mississippi River except Vicksburg which was now coming under attack. Many in the Confederate government wanted to send their scarce reserves west to prevent the fall of Vicksburg. Lee wanted the last Confederate reserves to strengthen his army of Northern Virginia for an invasion of the North. A successful invasion, he argued, would oblige Lincoln to make peace and recognize the independence of the South. In the end Davis gave the reserves to Lee, which almost assured the catastrophic loss of Vicksburg, he was staking everything on Lee's invasion of the North.

Lee's plan was to invade Pennsylvania and engage the Union Army in a decisive battle. Lee had two contingency plans after he had destroyed the Union army. One was to turn right and go to Delaware and destroy the gunpowder factories and thus destroy the Union Army's ability to make war. The other was to turn left and burn the city of Pittsburgh to the ground with its steel mills and munition factories. Had Lee won at Gettsyburg he almost certainly would have chosen the first option since going to Pittsburgh would have meant crossing the formidable barrier of the Allegheny Mountains in the days before motorized transportation. It was a good plan which could have worked, had Lee destroyed the Northern Army's ability to make war, Washington would have had little choice but to recognize the independence of the Confederacy or face the prospect of Lee's army cutting a Sherman's March like path of destruction through the urban northeast corrider.
       Lee had 75000 men against the Union army's 90000 yet Lee was very confident he would win. The individual Confederate soldier was much superior to the Union Soldier. The Confederacy was very much a rural agricultural society with little industry. Prior to the civil war the great plains were very sparsely inhabited. Most of the food for the U. S. came from the southern states. The Confederate soldier was much heartier and physically stronger from the farm upringing, they had been much more well fed than their northern counterparts since birth, than the urbanized union soldier, many of whom were blue collar factory workers. The Confederate soldier had been shooting rifles from early childhood hunting for food while many of the union soldiers had never fired a gun in their lives before joining the army. The Confederate government was so confident of Lee's victory that Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens was 90 miles from Washington D.C. ready to go to the capitol after Lee's victory with a peace offer that included Confederate independence.
       Lee's army started out in what is now West Virginia, crossed the Potomac near Harper's Ferry, went through Western Maryland and crossed into Pennsylvania before settling at Chambersburg. ( see Gettyburg campaign map ) The Union army, per Lincoln's orders, shadowed Lee's army making sure to keep itself between Lee and Washington D. C. On July 1 Lee sent part of his army to Gettysburg looking for supplies. They ran into the vangaurd of the Army of the Potomac west of Gettysburg, now under the command of George Meade , who took command after three different men turned down Lincoln's request to assume command. There was a hot fight with heavy casualties on both sides, with the very much outnumbered union army eventually obliged to retreat from the battlefield. The south had won the first day on the battlefield, but the small northern army vangaurd had extended the firefight long enough for the entire Union army to come up and occupy the high ground east of Gettysburg.
       Meade deployed his troops in the now famous fishhook pattern from Little Round Top to Culp's Hill which was a very short line considering the Northern Army's numbers. Some of Meade's subordinates expressed dismay at this strategy but Meade held firm. Lee's strategy was to simultaneously attack both flanks of Meade's army and then turn in on the center like the Greeks had done at Marathon, like Hannibal had done at Cannae, and as the Russians were to do at Stalingrad in 1942. The battle began in the morning rather benignly but by mid-afternoon fighting was viscious all across the front. From mid-day July 2 until sundown the Confederates attacked both Union flanks. Time and again the Confederates breached the Union lines only to be pushed back by the prompt arrival of Union reserves. For six hours on July 2 the outcome of the battle , the fate of the Confederacy, and the future of humanity was in the balance. As night fell the Union lines held, but just barely, with horrific losses on both sides. The photos of the battlefield as the sun went down on July 2 are incredibly gruesome, you won't see them in Civil War books available to the general public. The intelligence of Meade's troop deployment now became apparent. The shortened lines and ample reserves allowed the Union to quickly and efficiently respond to any breach of the army's flanks with enough men to push back the Confederacy.
       The next morning July 3 at 10am the Confederates again attacked Culp's Hill but the ferocity of the previous day's attack was not there and the attack was easily repulsed. By noon it was clear that Lee's plan to turn the flank of the Union army had failed in this a battle the Confederacy absolutely had to win if they had any realistic chance of winning the war. It was desperation time for the Confederate Army. More out of hope than anything else Lee reasoned that the previous day's fighting had weakened the Union center. He decided on a last ditch frontal attack with the best and the bravest of his men. Lee sent his calvary, who had dominated the Northern Calvary throughout the war around the Union lines to support any breakthrough from the rear. On its way to the Union rear the Confederate horseman were confronted by Union Calvary led by none other than George Armstrong Custer of Custer's last stand fame. The engagement was hot and Custer's losses were heavy but the Confederate Calvary did not break through. Meanwhile about mid afternoon 15000 of Lee's best troops, many of them the sons of the wealthy and privileged of the Confederacy, boys who had excelled in the classroom and on the athletic fields of the country's finest schools, began the march from the trees across an open field facing massed union artillery on the high ground of cemetery ridge. History has not told us whether Meade guessed where the blow would fall or if he had advanced knowledge through some sort of spy network where Lee would strike, but Meade told his troops exactly when the march would begin and exactly what part of the Union line would be targeted. It is one thing to know where the blow would fall it is quite another to properly defend against it. Meade did not put artillery on the spot targeted by Lee. Instead the cannons were massed on either side of the targeted spot. When the Confederates came within range the Union artillery opened up creating a murderous fusillade crossfire whose cannonballs mowed down the Confederate infantry like tenpins. Still the Confederates kept on coming as their comrades fell around them in the thousands. At about 3pm the Confederates made some minor breakthroughs in the Union lines but with no calvary to support them the Union easily plugged up any holes in their lines. Historians have christianed this the high point of the Confederacy. Then, suddenly, the Confederate lines broke and they went running back across the field towards the trees. Of the 15000 who began Pickett's Charge about 4000 made it back to the Confederate lines. The best of the Confederacy lay dead and maimed on the field in front of cemetery ridge. Lee, whose imperturbable calm was such a big part of the great Confederate victories at Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville , was severely shaken by the carnage of Pickett's Charge. Deep down he knew the Confederacy was doomed.
       After Lee's shattered army retreated to Virginia Lee publicly proclaimed Gettysburg to be a qualified Confederate victory. Privately Lee took full personal blame for the disasterous defeat, sending a letter to Jefferson Davis resigning as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia which Davis wisely rejected. The Confederate army never again was able to mount a major offensive being forced to fight a purely defensive war which, given the huge northern superiority in manpower and industry, they could not hope to win. Nevertheless Lee's skillful generalship extended the war into the spring of 1865 hoping for a miracle which never came. Grant's surrender terms at Appomattox in April 1865 were incredibly lenient, the Confederate weapons were not confiscated, all of Lee's soldiers were required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Washington D. C. government and sign a parole promising to never again take up arms against the government of the United States, after which they could go home without further punishment. Even more amazing was the fact that the thirsting for revenge Union Army more or less honored the terms of surrender. In Lee's final speech to his men who worshipped him and who he worshipped in return, Lee with tears in his eyes, thanked his men for all their sacrifices and urged them to go home and become good citizens in the new political order.
       It was to be Northern society's system of values which was to shape the future of humanity.

April 5, 2013

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With the failure of Pickett's Charge Robert E. Lee had lost the Battle of Gettysburg, and the war.
Winston Churchill
circa 1953

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The ideas and beliefs expressed in these quotations do not necessarily reflect my own views. I selected different quotes for different reasons. Some were chosen for the manner in which they present their ideas as opposed to the ideas themselves. Others were chosen because I considered them thought provoking though I may not agree with their content. Still others were chosen for their whimsical nature and entertainment value. And of course some were chosen because I feel they are enlightening.

The sources of these quotes have not been confirmed. When perusing quotes from other sources I have often come across a quote in this list attributed to a different author. And I have received e-mails informing me that certain quotes should in fact be attributed to a different person.

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"If to look truth in the face and not resent it when it's unpalatable, and take human nature as you find it . . . is to be cynical, then I suppose I'm a cynic.": SOMERSET MAUGHAM
"What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness.": M. C. ESCHER
"Nature loves a burst of energy .": -BOE LIGHTMAN
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I..... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.": ROBERT FROST
The Road Not Taken
"Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.": YOGI BERRA
"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing .": THEODORE ROOSEVELT
"Dawn. When men of reason go to bed .": AMBROSE BIERCE
"I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.": ORSON WELLES
"As for me, I am rather often uneasy in my mind, because I think that my life has not been calm enough; all those bitter disappointments, adversities, changes keep me from developing fully and naturally in my artistic career.": VINCENT VAN GOGH
"The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr .": MUHAMMAD
"Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.": WILLIAM INGE
"I was a stricken deer that left the herd long since.": WILLIAM COWPER
"For busy, battered bureaucrat though I be, I am a staunch believer in the leisure of the theory class.": ADLAI STEVENSON
"Leisure is the mother of philosophy.": THOMAS HOBBES
"I believe that drugs are basically of more use to the audience than to the artist. I think that the illusion of oneness with the universe, and absorption with the significance of every object in your environment, and the pervasive aura of peace and contentment is not the ideal state for an artist. It tranquilizes the creative personality, which thrives on conflict and on the clash and ferment of ideas. The artist's transcendence must be within his own work; he should not impose any artificial barriers between himself and the mainspring of his subconscious. ": STANLEY KUBRICK
"It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.": MARK TWAIN
"My disdain for the establishment is exceeded only by my disdain for those who rebel against the establishment.": -ANONYMOUS
"I may as well confess myself the author
Of several books against the world in general": ROBERT FROST
"Frog. n. A reptile with edible legs. The first mention of frogs in profane literature is in Homer's narrative of the war between them and the mice. Skeptical persons have doubted Homer's authorship of the work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain frogs.": AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
"I cannot walk throught the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it supresses idle details, just as our memory does.": JORGES LUIS BORGES
"I watch a man shoot pool for an hour. If he misses more than one shot I know I can beat him.": LUTHER LASSITER, pool hustler
"The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.: W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
"To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody .": QUENTIN CRISP
"I exist between the superficial security adopted by the mainstream and the grave reality of the outer fringes. I do not fit into either category, but I am their mediator.": ELI KHAMOROV
"Hypertext is more significant to society than the invention of the printing press and the alphabet.": JAMES BURKE
" Question: What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?
Answer: Orestes, Hamlet, and Winston Smith.": -ANONYMOUS
"The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.": RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.": F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
"Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.": ROBERT BYRNE
"Truth; n. An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.": AMBROSE BIERCE
"The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder with the truth.": ALFRED ADLER
"Some lies are so well disguised to resemble truth, that we should be poor judges of the truth not to believe them .": ANONYMOUS
"Rational, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience, and reflection.": AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
"Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.": THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
"Just as the human eye sees only a small part of the light spectrum and the human ear can detect only a fraction of nature's sounds so that which is comprehensible to the human mind is only a small fraction of our reality.": RICHARD
"The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding .": FRANCIS BACON
"Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.": CICERO
"The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful .": EDWARD GIBBON
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
"Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire .": ANWAR EL- SADAT
"There is a virtual despair among the many who look beyond material success for the inner meaning of their lives.": BARRY GOLDWATER; 1964
"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook.": THOMAS JEFFERSON
"Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.": ALEXANDER POPE
"Pleasure is the carrot dangled to lead the ass to market; or the precipice.": ROBINSON JEFFERS
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.": E. W. DIJKSTRA
"The fantastic advances in the field of communication constitute a grave danger to the privacy of the individual.": EARL WARREN
"We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. ": CARL SAGAN
"Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination.": CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD
"Ignorance is curable; idiocy is chronic.": ANONYMOUS
"There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity .": SCHOPENHAUER
"To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.": VOLTAIRE
"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.": MARK TWAIN
"In the intellectually free-and-easy seventeenth century genius could spill where it fancied; in our century, specialization has become the counterfeit of brilliance.": RICHARD GORDON
"When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.": JONATHAN SWIFT
Thoughts on Various Subjects
"I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovaryisme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare .": T. S. ELLIOT
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.": CHURCHILL
(I have received many e-mails claiming that this quote should be atttributed to Albert Einstein - Ed)
"What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie .": EDMUND SPENSER
"The most important addition to the World Experience was the simple surprising fact of America. We have helped prepare mankind for all its later surprises.": DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
"While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.": CHARLES EVANS HUGHES
1908 U.S. Supreme Court Justice
"Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.": BARRY GOLDWATER
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.": DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
"This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast -- man's laws -- not God's -- and if you cut them down . . . do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?": SIR THOMAS MORE
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself .": ALEXANDER HAMILTON
The Federalist Feb.8, 1788
"...wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, [and] shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits.": THOMAS JEFFERSON
1801 Inaugural Address
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors": PLATO
"A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular.": ADLAI STEVENSON
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evilminded rulers.The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal well meaning but without understanding.": JUSTICE LOUIS D. BRANDEIS
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.": JAMES MADISON
" One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.": BERTAND RUSSELL
"Nothing is more damaging to a state than that cunning men pass for wise .": FRANCIS BACON
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.": VOLTAIRE
"Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked.": ROBERT D. SPRECHT
"It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume... that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.": H. L. MENCKEN
"To live outside the law you must be honest .": BOB DYLAN
"In times of tumult and discord bad men have the most power; mental and moral excellence require peace and quietness .": TACITUS
"...nomadism is the true condition of man, that natural selection has fitted the human race for wandering, not for a sedentary life, and that the ills of civilization issue from the neglect of this nomadic imperative.": JOHN RYE
encapsulating the philosophy of Bruce Chatwin
"The thin and precarious crust of decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the hell of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface .": ALDOUS HUXLEY
" . . .the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.": MENCKEN
"I used to think that it would be as well to separate the temporal and spiritual powers entirely. But I have learned that virtue without force is ludicrous.": Anonymous Vatican cardinal c. 1500
"Magic: n. an art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.": AMBROSE BIERCE; The Devil's Dictionary
"Most people are willing to pay more to be amused than to be educated .": ANONYMOUS
"Men are willing to credit what they wish, and encourage rather those who gratify them with pleasure than those that instruct them with fidelity": SAMUEL JOHNSON
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.": ALBERT EINSTEIN
"Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.": ANNA FREUD
"Education: n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.": AMBROSE BIERCE
"Learning: n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.": AMBROSE BIERCE
"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.": OSCAR WILDE
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest .": CONFUCIUS
"Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep-herding .": EZRA LOOMIS POUND
"To qualify students for personal success and direct usefulness in life; and to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence on behalf of humanity and civilization, teaching the blessings of liberty regulated by law, and inculcating love and reverence for the great principles of government as derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.": LELAND STANFORD; Statement on the objectives of Stanford University
"At the root of the present troubles of the world we must find a pervasive materialism, a devastating desire for material goods. We know now that mechanical and technical progress is not identical with civilization. We must conclude in fact, that our faith that technology will take the place of justice has been naive. We look upon our neighbor either as customer or competitor or an instrument of production. We must reconstruct education, directing it to virtue and intelligence, To formulate, to clarify, to animate the ideals which should animate mankind - this is the incredibly heavy burden which rests, even in total war, upon the universities. If they cannot carry it, nobody else will; for nobody else can. If it cannot be carried, civilization cannot be saved. The task is stupendous.": ROBERT MAYNARD HUTCHINS; President University of Chicago 1943; Education for Freedom
"These people, like the overindulgent guardians who spend the child';s inheritance catering to adolescent whims and desires, are now naively amazed at what their overindulgence has produced.": BARRY GOLDWATER; Responding to presidential candidate John Kennedy's lamentation that Americans have become soft; 1960
"Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them .": JAMES BALDWIN
"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher .": SOCRATES
"A man who marries a bad wife will be miserable, a man who marries a good wife will get a mix of good and bad, and a man who is unmarried will be lonely, uncared-for, and without direct heirs.": HESIOD
"In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order": WILL DURANT
"The cynics are right nine times out of ten.": H. L. MENCKEN
"Irony is the hygiene of the mind .": ELIZABETH BIBESCO
"To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.": ST. AUGUSTINE
"Whom the gods would destroy, they first call 'promising' .": CYRIL CONNOLLEY
"Either you think--or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you .": F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
"He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.": RAYMOND HULL
"Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent .": JOHN DEWEY
"Inferior intellects generally succeeded best. For, aware of their own deficiencies, and fearing the capacity of their opponents, for whom they were no match in powers of speech, and whose subtle wits were likely to anticipate them in contriving evil, they struck boldly and at once. But the cleverer sort, presuming in their arrogance that they would be aware in time, and disdaining to act when the could think, were taken off their guard and easily destroyed.": THUCYDIDES
History of the Peloponnesian War
"The tendancy of liberals is to create bodies of men and women-of all classes-detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion-mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.": T.S. ELIOT
"To win without risk is to triumph without glory.": PIERRE CORNEILLE
". . . the inability to view the validations of unpopular views, because the focus of their casuistry has been reduced to mindless invalidation .": ELI KHAMAROV
"...Two and two are four . Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane .": GEORGE ORWELL
1984
"Do as most do, and men will speak well of you .": THOMAS FULLER
"Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing .": GEORGE ORWELL
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.": ANATOLE FRANCE
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.": ALBERT EINSTEIN
" Mad; adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.: AMBROSE BIERCE
"The extreme limit of wisdom--that is what the public calls madness .": JEAN COCTEAU
"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.": C. G. JUNG
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.": THOMAS PAINE
"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom .": ALBERT EINSTEIN
"The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up .": OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
"That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of our time .": JOHN STUART MILL; On Liberty
"A great step toward independence is a good humored stomach .": SENECA
"Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other ones invariably slink in after it.": BALTASAR GRACIAN
"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking .": JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
"Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth .": OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
"Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a sheperd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.": WINSTON CHURCHILL
"Art.....the end result of perception, wisdom, intelligence, discipline, hard work, passion, luck, accident, and coincidence .": ANONYMOUS
" The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly an feel nobly .": ALDOUS HUXLEY
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.": BERTRAND RUSSELL
"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him .": JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY
"So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal .": WILLIAM BURROUGHS
"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world .": OSCAR WILDE
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.": RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"My mother groan'd, my father wept
Into the dangerous world I leapt,
Helpless, naked, piping load,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.": WILLIAM BLAKE
"The eagle soaring majestically
Beholds the lion prowling
From now until eternity
The philosopher shall be howling
And the hoi polloi shall be scowling ": - ANONYMOUS
"I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking.": KATHERINE CEBRIAN
"There's only one way to find out if a man is honest; ask him. If he says yes, you know he's a crook.": GROUCHO MARX
"Never do anything standing that you can do sitting, or anything sitting that you can do lying down.": Chinese Proverb
"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.": THEODORE ROOSEVELT
"The good effects wrought by founders of cities, law givers, fathers of the peoples, extirpators of tyrants, and heroes of that class, extend but for short times; whereas the work of the Inventor, though a thing of less pomp and show, is felt everywhere and lasts forever.": FRANCIS BACON
"Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.": E. M. CIORAN
"The believer is happy; the doubter is wise.": Hungarian proverb
"Professional men are trained to conceal their thoughts.": WILLIAM MULHALLAND
"A first sign of the beginning of understand is the wish to die.": FRANZ KAFKA
"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way .": FRANKLIN P. ADAMS
"Infancy: n. The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, 'Heaven lies about us.' The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward .": AMBROSE BIERCE
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center .": KURT VONNEGUT
"[The New World Order] cannot happen without U.S. participation, as we are the most significant single component. Yes, there will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change it's perceptions.": HENRY KISSINGER; 1994
"To be great is to be misunderstood .": RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"I respect only those who resist me, but I cannot tolerate them.": CHARLES DE GAULLE
"Royalty has always been an unconscious but all-consuming goal of the European immigrant .": VINE DELORIA JR.
"I will not criticize another until I have walked a mile in his mocassins .": native american quote
"One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil. To think is to do.": VICTOR HUGO
"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing .": THOMAS EDISON
"If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off . . . Regardless of what they say .": BARBARA MCCLINTOCK
"Only the educated are free .": EPICTETUS
"Freedom is a limited commodity .": -ANONYMOUS
"The foolish and the uneducated have little use for freedom .": - ANONYMOUS
"Only in truth is there true freedom, but truth is also the greatest taskmaster.": from Druid law
"That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust .": GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
"Laziness:n. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.": AMBROSE BIERCE
"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.": AYN RAND
"I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.": ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT
" Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel .": H. L. MENCKEN
"The universe is not indifferent to intelligence, it is actively hostile to it.": ANONYMOUS
"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value .": ARTHUR C. CLARKE
"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.": SAMUEL JOHNSON
"In the act of stealing there is a nervousness provoked by fear, and sometimes by anxiety, that makes for a state akin to religious moods.": JEAN GENET
"We move from one stage of self-deception to another".: SARTRE
"The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.": NIETZSCHE
"The easiest person to deceive is yourself.": ANONYMOUS
"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us .": PAUL VALÉRY
"Who's in or out, who moves the grand machine,
Nor stirs my curiosity, or spleen;
Secrets of state no more I wish to know
Than secret movements of a puppet-show;
Let but the puppets move, I've my desire,
Unseen the hand which guides the master wire .": CHURCHILL
"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.": PETER F. DRUCKER
"You'll come to learn a great deal if you study the Insignificant in depth .": ODYSSEUS ELYTIS
"The superfluous is very necessary.": VOLTAIRE
"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time .": BERTRAND RUSSELL
"The best way to fill time is to waste it .": MARGUERITE DURAS
"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.": J. R. R. TOLKIEN
"Fortune is a great deceiver. She sells very dear the things she seems to give us.": VINCENT VOITURE
"From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned .": IMMANUEL KANT
"The living is a species of the dead; and not a very attractive one.": FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spake Zarathustra
"A man that should call everything by its right name, would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy .": LORD HALIFAX
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. ": ALDOUS HUXLEY
"The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusion .": MAURICE CHAPELAIN
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face - forever.": GEORGE ORWELL
"by the time a man reaches 30 life should be sad, meaningless, and hopeless.": from the movie War and Peace
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.": GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

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