Defense
- We are confident that we can penetrate any enemy defenses with our missiles. We know that we are more than the equal of any nation in the world.
-- Robert McNamara
- If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.
-- George Washington
- That is not to say that we can relax our readiness to defend ourselves. Our armament must be adequate to the needs, but our faith is not primarily in these machines of defense but in ourselves.
-- Chester Nimitz
- To be prepared for War is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.
-- George Washington
- The power and diversity of the Armed Forces, active Guard and Reserve, the resolve of our fellow citizens, the flexibility in our command to navigate international waters that remain troubled are all essential to our security.
-- Gerald R. Ford
Delusion
- The worst deluded are the self-deluded.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee
- No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee
Democracy
- Democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed?
-- John Cotton
- In free countries, every man is entitled to express his opinions and every other man is entitled not to listen.
-- G. Norman Collie
- Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
-- John Quincy Adams
- Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- ... government that "substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
-- George Bernard Shaw
- Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
-- James Russell Lowell
- Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
-- H. L. Mencken
- You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton
- Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
-- H. L. Mencken
- As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick
- Too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it.
-- Walter Winchell
- Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
-- Jawaharlal Nehru
- Democracy ... is a system of self-determination. It's the right to make the wrong choice.
-- John Patrick
- In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
-- Norman Cousins
- Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
Dependence
- The ship of heaven guides itself and will not accept a wooden rudder.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.
-- Samuel Johnson
- Depend on no man, on no friend but him who can depend on himself. He only who acts conscientiously toward himself, will act so toward others.
-- Johann Kaspar Lavater
- There is no dependence that can be sure but a dependence upon one's self.
-- John Gay
- There is no one subsists by himself alone.
-- Owen Felltham
Desire
- By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
-- Claude Adrien Helvétius
- All human activity is prompted by desire.
-- Bertrand Russell
- We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee
- What man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants.
-- Joseph Wood Krutch
- While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Every human mind is a great slumbering power until awakened by a keen desire and by definite resolution to do.
-- Edgar F. Roberts
- There are two tragedies in life. One is not get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.
-- François de La Rochefoucauld
- You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.
-- James Allen
- Desire is the essence of a man.
-- Benedict Spinoza
- Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Despair
- Despair is like forward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness. It grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head.
-- Pierre Charron
- Despair ruins some, presumption many.
-- Benjamin Franklin
- The fact that God has prohibited despair gives misfortune the right to hope all things, and leaves hope free to dare all things.
-- Anne Sophie Swetchine
- The man who lives only by hope will die with despair.
-- Italian Proverb
- Despair is the conclusion of fools.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
- It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, and many things to fear.
-- Francis Bacon
- When we are flat on our backs there is no way to look but up.
-- Roger W. Babson
- What we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
-- George Eliot
- It becomes no man to nurse despair, but, in the teeth of clenched antagonisms, to follow up the worthiest till he die.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation ... A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
-- Henry David Thoreau
Destiny
- One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it.
-- French Proverb
- Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice: It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
-- William Jennings Bryan
- Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call Destiny.
-- John Oliver Hobbes
- Destiny. A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
-- Ambrose Bierce
- Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.
-- Orison S. Marden
- Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
-- Kin Hubbard
- If a man is destined to drown, he will drown even in a spoonful of water.
-- Yiddish Proverb
- Men are what their mothers made them.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Difference
- The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
-- Mark Twain
- The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act even when it has worked.
-- H. L. Mencken
- Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
-- Mahatma Gandhi
- Where there is no difference, there is only indifference.
-- Louis Nizer
- If by saying that all men are born equal, you mean that they are equally born, it is true, but true in no other sense; birth, talent, labor, virtue, and providence, are forever making differences.
-- Eugene Edwards
- The difference between a man and his valet: they both smoke the same cigars, but only one pays for them.
-- Robert Frost
- The difference is no less real because it is of degree.
-- Benjamin Nathan Cardozo
- If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.
-- Joseph Addison
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