A. J. Muste (1885–1967) Christian pacifist and civil rights activist
Statement of 1941, as quoted in A People's History (1980) by Howard Zinn, p. 416; also in The Twentieth Century : A People's History (2003) by Howard Zinn, p. 159.
1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)
Context: Our popular Government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled — the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains — its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
A. J. Muste (1885–1967) Christian pacifist and civil rights activist
Statement of 1941, as quoted in A People's History (1980) by Howard Zinn, p. 416; also in The Twentieth Century : A People's History (2003) by Howard Zinn, p. 159.
Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Variant: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.
Source: Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 19: Hamburgers,Skyline and Deadline
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Context: Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy. Sure, I'd gotten tired of this tiny space, but I'd had a good home here. In the time it takes to swill two cans of beer, all had had sublimed like morning mist. My job, my whiskey, my peace and quiet, my solitude, my Sormerset Maugham, and John Ford collections-all of it trashed and worthless.
“Time waxing old can many a lesson teach.”
Variant translations:
Time brings all things to pass.
Time as he grows old teaches all things.
Source: Prometheus Bound, line 981 (tr. E. H. Plumptre).
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech in Manchester (12 September 1918), quoted in The Times (13 September 1918), p. 8
Prime Minister
“You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit.”
Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister
Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 12
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
Source: " A Case of Voluntary Ignorance http://www.christiebooks.com/ChristieBooksWP/2013/11/a-case-of-voluntary-ignorance-by-aldous-huxley/" in Collected Essays (1959)
“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.”
Philip Roth book American Pastoral
Source: American Pastoral
“This is the most valuable lesson one can teach a fanatic: that fanaticism is self-defeating.”
Matthew Stover book Traitor
Vergere, p. 291
Traitor (2002)
Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran
As quoted by Nadezhda Popova, Reza Pahalavi, Son Of The Last Shah Of Iran: “No War Is Needed – We Will Topple This Regime Ourselves” http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=22&page=6, Izvetsiya, May 29, 2006. <br class="br">Interviews, 2006
Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology
Personality Lectures