With respect to the two words ‘general welfare’, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. James Madison
Category Archives: Quotations Freedom
Are you kidding? Lucille Ball Responding to RKO superior who told her …
Are you kidding?
Lucille Ball
Responding to RKO superior who told her to test for Scarlett in ‘Gone With the Wind’ (Dec 1939 release).
We are on strike against those who believe that one man must …
We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another. Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, 1905-1982
…
[The people] have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed. John Adams
1735-1826, American diplomat and 2nd President of the United States from 1797-1801
A committee may function very well indeed as a clearing house for …
A committee may function very well indeed as a clearing house for thoughts, but more commonly a committee or organization is just an elaborate means of fooling one’s self into believe that a spell spent in talking is the same as a spell spent in thinking. Harvey S. Firestone
Founder Firestone Tire and Rubber (1869-1938)
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our …
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploringĂ Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, remembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always – A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are infolded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one. T.S. Eliot
from Little GiddingĂ (in the Four Quartets) 1888-1965
My best friend was Richard, a queer. Twenty years ago, who’d …
My best friend was Richard, a queer. Twenty years ago, who’d have ever thought I’d be friends with a queer. I was friends with Richard for three days before I found out he was queer. He was a nice guy. I’m gonna keep in touch. Rudy Boesch
72-year old retired Navy SEAL on Survivor, August 2000
A representative government, responsible at short intervals of election … produces the greatest …
A representative government, responsible at short intervals of election … produces the greatest sum of happiness to mankind. Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826). (Investor’s Business Daily, November, 3, 1998)
Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a …
Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere. Thurgood Marshall
U.S. Supreme Court Justice in Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 (1908-1993) [not sourced]
Actually, it is foolish inconsistency that is the hobgoblin of little minds. …
Actually, it is foolish inconsistency that is the hobgoblin of little minds. Well considered consistency with all the evidence available is the hallmark of an ordered mind and ordered thought. Anyone who says otherwise is either too dumb to realize it or too dishonest to acknowledge it. Christian H F Riley
July 6, 1991