“A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.”
Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN
Quoted in The Fine Art of Political Wit by Leon Harris (1964)
“No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day.”
Civil Disobedience (1849)
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Henry David Thoreau385
1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862Related quotes
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 2: The Place of Science in a Liberal Education
Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) American architect
Emotional Architecture as Compared to Intellectual (1894)
Context: No complete architecture has yet appeared in the history of the world because men, in this form of art alone, have obstinately sought to express themselves solely in terms either of the head or of the heart.
I hold that architectural art, thus far, has failed to reach its highest development, its fullest capability of imagination, of thought and expression, because it has not yet found a way to become truly plastic: it does not yet respond to the poet's touch. That it is today the only art for which the multitudinous rhythms of outward nature, the manifold fluctuations of man's inner being have no significance, no place.
Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter
George Balanchine in Nabokov, Ivan and Carmichael, Elizabeth. "Balanchine, An Interview". Horizon, January 1961, pp. 44-56. (M).
Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune
Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.38
Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921) British poet
"Light" (popularly known as "The Night has a Thousand Eyes"), published in The Spectator (October 1873).
Context: p>The Night has a thousand eyes,
And the Day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.</p
Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist
You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)
Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland
The Confession (c. 452?)
Context: Therefore be amazed, you great and small who fear God, and you men of God, eloquent speakers, listen and contemplate. Who was it summoned me, a fool, from the midst of those who appear wise and learned in the law and powerful in rhetoric and in all things? Me, truly wretched in this world, he inspired before others that I could be — if I would — such a one who, with fear and reverence, and faithfully, without complaint, would come to the people to whom the love of Christ brought me and gave me in my lifetime, if I should be worthy, to serve them truly and with humility.
Alfred De Vigny (1797–1863) French poet, playwright, and novelist
La presse est une bouche forcée d'être toujours ouverte et de parler toujours. De là vient qu'elle dit mille fois qu'elle n'a rien à dire.
Page 48.
Journal d'un poète (1867)