#sm

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road. ↗

— Voltaire

#disregard #ignorance #innovation #persecution #reformers

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#perseverance #progress #path

I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government. ↗

— Jorge Luis Borges

#government #anarchism

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else. ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#dissent #patriotism #truth-telling #president

What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender. ↗

— Terry Jones

#bushism #grammar #politics #terrorism #terrorism

Not that he regretted having killed the guy in Stockton. The one who'd been ready to shoot him over the five crumpled dollar bills in his jeans pocket. He was quite happy to have sent that particular home boy to hell. ↗

— L.J. Smith

#gabriel #lj-smith #the-possessed #vision

One must commit acts of the highest treason only when dressed in the most resplendent finery. ↗

— Grant Morrison

#dandyism #fashion #anarchism

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#definition #honesty #vision

Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical. American democracy has benefited from true conservatism, but authoritarianism offers potentially serious trouble for any democracy. ↗

— John W. Dean

#conservatism #democracy #politics #democracy

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#envy #equal #failure #gospel #ignorance