Quotable Quotes

by Editors of Reader's Digest

  —MARGARET MEAD

  No man is free who is not master of himself.

  —EPICTETUS

  No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

  —MARGARET SANGER

  Freedom always carries a burden of proof, always throws us back on ourselves.

  —SHELBY STEELE

  The Content of Our Character

  Patriotism is not so much protecting the land of our fathers as preserving the land of our children.

  —JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET

  If everything would be permitted to me, I would feel lost in this abyss of freedom.

  —IGOR STRAVINSKY

  Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.

  —MOSHE DAYAN

  Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON

  We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free.

  —CICERO

  To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

  —WILLIAM FAULKNER

  Essays, Speeches and Public Letters

  The defect of equality is that we desire it only with our superiors.

  —HENRY BECQUE

  It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.

  —CARL T. ROWAN

  TO PREVENT INJUSTICE . . .

  There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

  —ELIE WIESEL

  History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

  —REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

  Stride Toward Freedom

  There is no happiness for people at the expense of other people.

  —ANWAR EL-SADAT

  Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

  —REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

  Equal rights for the sexes will be achieved only when mediocre women occupy high positions.

  —FRANÇOISE GIROUD

  To do injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer it.

  —PLATO

  A great many people in this country are worried about law-and-order. And a great many people are worried about justice. But one thing is certain: you cannot have either until you have both.

  —RAMSEY CLARK

  What is morally wrong cannot be politically right.

  —WILLIAM GLADSTONE

  In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.

  —THURGOOD MARSHALL

  As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.

  —MARIAN ANDERSON

  One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

  —BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

  Justice may be blind, but she has very sophisticated listening devices.

  —EDGAR ARGO

  in Funny Times

  Justice is the insurance we have on our lives, and obedience is the premium we pay for it.

  —WILLIAM PENN

  A minority group has “arrived” only when it has the right to produce some fools and scoundrels without the entire group paying for it.

  —CARL T. ROWAN

  We are not bitter, not because we have forgiven but because there is so much to be done that we cannot afford to waste valuable time and resources on anger.

  —GOVAN MBEKI

  Johannesburg Weekly Mail (South Africa)

  Efficiency can never be substituted for due process. Is not a dictatorship the more “efficient” form of government?

  —THURGOOD MARSHALL

  It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

  —VOLTAIRE

  Most lawyers who win a case advise their clients that “we have won” and, when justice has frowned upon their cause, that “you have lost.”

  —LOUIS NIZER

  Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

  —H. L. MENCKEN

  Prejudices

  That old law about “an eye for an eye” leaves everybody blind.

  —REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

  Stride Toward Freedom

  I would uphold the law if for no other reason but to protect myself.

  —THOMAS MORE

  I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.

  —CALVIN COOLIDGE

  The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable.

  —REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

  The worst form of injustice is pretended justice.

  —PLATO

  THE REAL BEAUTY OF DEMOCRACY . . .

  The real beauty of democracy is that the average man believes he is above average.

  —MORRIE BRICKMAN

  Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

  —REINHOLD NIEBUHR

  Democracy’s real test lies in its respect for minority opinion.

  —ELLERY SEDGWICK

  in Jersey Journal

  The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.

  —RALPH W. SOCKMAN

  Consensus means that lots of people say collectively what nobody believes individually.

  —ABBA EBAN

  in Montreal Gazette

  Democracy without morality is impossible.

  —JACK KEMP

  Democracy does not guarantee equality, only equality of opportunity.

  —IRVING KRISTOL

  Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.

  —HARLAN F. STONE

  One has the right to be wrong in a democracy.

  —CLAUDE PEPPER

  Democracy is a small hard core of common agreement, surrounded by a rich variety of individual differences.

  —JAMES B. CONANT

  Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.

  —Michael Novak

  I like the noise of democracy.

  —JAMES BUCHANAN

  Democracy, like any noncoercive relationship, rests on a shared understanding of limits.

  —ELIZABETH DREW

  Washington Journal: The Events of 1973–1974

  Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.

  —WINSTON CHURCHILL

  Democracy is not a matter of sentiment, but of foresight. Any system that doesn’t take the long run into account will burn itself out in the short run.

  —CHARLES YOST

  I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it.

  —ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT

  People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote—a very different thing.

  —WALTER H. JUDD

  Democracy, like love, can sur
vive any attack—save neglect and indifference.

  —PAUL SWEENEY

  There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

  —RALPH NADER

  Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

  —SYDNEY J. HARRIS

  Every private citizen has a public responsibility.

  —MYRA JANCO DANIELS

  in Newsweek

  We will all be better citizens when voting records of our Congressmen are followed as carefully as scores of pro-football games.

  —LOU ERICKSON

  in Atlanta Journal

  The most important political office is that of private citizen.

  —LOUIS BRANDEIS

  Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

  —HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK

  Democracy is not a mathematical deduction proved once and for all time. Democracy is a just faith fervently held, a commitment to be tested again and again in the fiery furnace of history.

  —JACK KEMP

  Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn’t.

  —BILL MOYERS

  in Newsweek

  Democracy is like a raft. It won’t sink, but you’ll always have your feet wet.

  —Quoted by RUSSELL LONG in The Washingtonian

  Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

  —MARK TWAIN

  Sometimes a majority simply means that all the fools are on the same side.

  —CLAUDE MCDONALD

  Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

  —E. B. WHITE

  in The New Yorker

  It’s not the hand that signs the laws that holds the destiny of America. It’s the hand that casts the ballot.

  —HARRY TRUMAN

  It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.

  —TOM STOPPARD

  Jumpers

  Anything that keeps a politician humble is healthy for democracy.

  —MICHAEL KINSLEY

  Democracy is the art of disciplining oneself so that one need not be disciplined by others.

  —GEORGES CLEMENCEAU

  IN POLITICS . . .

  In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

  —SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

  The bedfellows politics makes are never strange. It only seems that way to those who have not watched the courtship.

  —KIRKPATRICK SALE

  Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with nowadays.

  —WILL ROGERS

  Politicians and journalists share the same fate in that they often understand tomorrow the things they talk about today.

  —HELMUT SCHMIDT

  Politics is like coaching a football team. You have to be smart enough to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.

  —EUGENE MCCARTHY

  No man should enter politics unless he is either independently rich or independently poor.

  —ROBERT JAMES MANION

  Gentlemen, Players and Politicians

  The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.

  —ADLAI E. STEVENSON

  Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

  —ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

  The truly skillful politician is one who, when he comes to a fork in the road, goes both ways.

  —MARCO A. ALMAZAN

  Píldoras Anticonceptistas

  What’s real in politics is what the voters decide is real.

  —BEN J. WATTENBERG

  Values Matter Most

  Politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

  —GEN. CHARLES DE GAULLE

  Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

  —WILL ROGERS

  When things don’t go well they like to blame presidents; and that’s something that presidents are paid for.

  —JOHN F. KENNEDY

  Sincerity and competence is a strong combination. In politics, it’s everything.

  —PEGGY NOONAN

  in Catholic New York

  When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself as public property.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON

  Talk is cheap—except when Congress does it.

  —CULLEN HIGHTOWER

  A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.

  —DANIEL WEBSTER

  Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.

  —ADLAI E. STEVENSON

  When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.

  —ALSTON CHASE

  In a Dark Wood

  A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement.

  —ABBA EBAN

  Congress is continually appointing fact-finding committees, when what we really need are some fact-facing committees.

  —ROGER ALLEN

  in Grand Rapids Press

  Asking an incumbent member of Congress to vote for term limits is a bit like asking a chicken to vote for Colonel Sanders.

  —BOB INGLIS

  A politician without a prepared text is like a Boris Becker without a tennis racket, a dog biscuit without a dog, or opera glasses without an opera.

  —C. M. BOWRA

  When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

  —P. J. O’ROURKE

  Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.

  —KIN HUBBARD

  Election year is that period when politicians get free speech mixed up with cheap talk.

  —J. B. KIDD

  Politicians are like ships: noisiest when lost in a fog.

  —BENNETT CERF

  A politician is a person who can make waves and then make you think he’s the only one who can save the ship.

  —IVERN BALL

  in Modern Secretary

  Politicians say they’re beefing up our economy. Most don’t know beef from pork.

  —HAROLD LOWMAN

  Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.

  —JOHN QUINTON

  It’s extremely difficult to build a political platform that supports candidates without holding up taxpayers.

  —HAROLD COFFIN

  Washington is a place where politicians don’t know which way is up and taxes don’t know which way is down.

  —ROBERT ORBEN

  in The Wall Street Journal

  Politics is the art of getting money from the rich and votes from the poor, with the pretext of protecting one from the other.

  —Muy Interesante

  Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.

  —DOUG LARSON

  To create a housing shortage in a huge country, heavily wooded, with a small population—ah, that’s proof of pure political genius.

&nbs
p; —RICHARD J. NEEDHAM

  The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

  When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer “Present” or “Not guilty.”

  —THEODORE ROOSEVELT

  IF A GOVERNMENT COMMISSION HAD WORKED ON THE HORSE . . .

  If a government commission had worked on the horse, you would have had the first horse that could operate its knee joint in both directions. The only trouble is it couldn’t have stood up.

  —PETER DRUCKER

  Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.

  —JAVIER PASCUAL SALCEDO

  I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

  —WILL ROGERS

  Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking.

  —LAO-TZU

  A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.