Friday's Quotations | Food for Weekend Thought 2009-07-03

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FRIDAY'S QUOTATIONS - "Food For Weekend Thought" 2009-07-03 From: R. VARGA

FRIDAY’S QUOTATIONS // July 3rd, 2009

"It is now the moment when by common consent we pause…to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

- C. S. Lewis

"Democracy is a device designed to ensure we are governed no better than we deserve."

- George Bernard Shaw

"The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it."

- Edward Dowling

"You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong."

- Warren Buffett

"Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories."

- Felix Cohen

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."

- St. Thomas Aquinas

"I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous."

- Yogi Berra

"When nobody around you seems to measure up, it’s time to check your yardstick."

- Bill Lemley

"A committee should consist of three men, two of whom are absent."

- Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree

"They are not all saints who use holy water."

- English Proverb

"What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it."

- Ezra Pound

"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."

- Robert Lynd

"Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking."

- H. L. Mencken

"It is impossible to go through life without trust. That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all - oneself."

- Graham Greene

"My grief lies all within, and these external manners of lament are merely shadows to the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul."

- William Shakespeare

"And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

- I Corinthians 13:13

"If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners – let us thank heaven for hypocrisy."

- Aldous Huxley

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Patriotism

by Alexis de Tocqueville (1835)

There is one sort of patriotic attachment which principally arises from that instinctive, disinterested, and undefinable feeling which connects the affections of man with his birthplace. This natural fondness is united with a taste for ancient customs and a reverence for traditions of the past; those who cherish it love their country as they love the mansion of their fathers. They love the tranquility that it affords them; they cling to the peaceful habits that they have contracted within its bosom; they are attached to the reminiscences that it awakens; and they are even pleased by living there in a state of obedience. This patriotism is sometimes stimulated by religious enthusiasm, and then it is capable of making prodigious efforts. It is in itself a kind of religion: it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and sentiment. In some nations the monarch is regarded as a personification of the country; and, the fervor of patriotism being converted into the fervor of loyalty, they take a sympathetic pride in his conquests, and glory in his power. power was a time under the ancient monarchy when the French felt a sort of satisfaction in the sense of their dependence upon the arbitrary will of their king; and they were wont to say with pride: "We live under the most powerful king in the world."

But, like all instinctive passions, this kind of patriotism incites great transient exertions, but no continuity of effort. It may save the state in critical circumstances, but often allows it to decline in times of peace. While the manners of a people are simple and its faith unshaken, while society is steadily based upon traditional institutions whose legitimacy has never been contested, this instinctive patriotism is wont to endure.

But there is another species of attachment to country which is more rational than the one I have been describing. It is perhaps less generous and less ardent, but it is more fruitful and more lasting: it springs from knowledge; it is nurtured by the laws, it grows by the exercise of civil rights; and, in the end, it is confounded with the personal interests of the citizen. A man comprehends the influence which the well-being of his country has upon his own; he is aware that the laws permit him to contribute to that prosperity, and he labors to promote it, first because it benefits him, and secondly because it is in part his own work.