Perhaps our supercilious disgust with existence is a cover for a secret disgust with ourselves; we have botched and bungled our lives, and we cast the blame upon the environment or the world, which have no tongues to utter a defense. The mature man accepts the natural limitations of life; he does not expect Providence to be prejudiced in his favor; he does not ask for loaded dice to play the game of life. He knows, with Carlyle, that there is no sense in vilifying the sun because it will not light our cigars. And perhaps, if we are clever enough to help it, the sun will even do that; and this vast neutral cosmos may turn out to be a pleasant place enough if we bring a little sunshine of our own to help it out. In truth, the world is neither with us or against us; it is but raw material in our hands, and can be heaven or hell according to what we are.
|
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.
|
Destroy it. There may be a redistribution of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as the old.
|
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing song.
|
No man who is in a hurry is quite civilized.
|
Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
|
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
|
The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate.
|
Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
|
Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principles.
|
Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.
|
Nothing is new except arrangement.
|
Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle.
|
Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.
|
Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it.
|
Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.
|
When liberty destroys order the hunger for order will destroy liberty.
|
Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
|
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
|
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
|
The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations.
|
The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes, rather than their minds.
|
It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
|
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
|
The family is the nucleus of civilization.
|