Ronald Reagan
(1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
“There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself.”
The Task of Social Hygiene, ch. 10
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British physician, writer, and social reformer 1859–1939Related quotes
Laura Bush
(1946) First Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009
Remarks at UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS (June 2, 2006)
John Wesley
(1703–1791) Christian theologian
Speech in the West Riding of Yorkshire, reported in the Leeds Intelligencer (4 May 1790), quoted in Robert F. Wearmouth, Methodism and the Common People of the Eighteenth Century (Epworth Press, 1945), p. 257
1790s
Bertrand Russell
(1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Henri Barbusse
(1873–1935) French novelist
The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVII
Context: Who shall compose the Bible of human desire, the terrible and simple Bible of that which drives us from life to life, the Bible of our doings, our goings, our original fall? Who will dare to tell everything, who will have the genius to see everything?
I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs. The more incapable of it I feel myself, the more I believe it to be possible. The sad splendour with which certain memories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible. Sometimes I myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so strong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like a forest, and there have been moments, in truth, when the silence cried out.
But I have stolen all this, and I have profited by it, thanks to the shamelessness of the truth revealed. At the point in space in which, by accident, I found myself, I had only to open my eyes and to stretch out my mendicant hands to accomplish more than a dream, to accomplish almost a work.
Arun Jaitley
(1952–2019) Indian politician
On the allegations of religious intolerance in India, as quoted in " There’s complete peace in country, no intolerance: Arun Jaitley http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/there-s-complete-peace-in-country-no-intolerance-arun-jaitley/story-XQ67gItBTSD6TDbMm4QsiL.html", Hindustan Times (3 November 2015)
Fulton J. Sheen
(1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter
Source: The Armor of God (1943), Ch. 1, p. 4
Samuel Adams
(1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher
Essay published in The Advertiser (1748) http://thingsabove.freerovin.com/samadams.htm and later reprinted in The Life and Public Service of Samuel Adams, Volume 1 (1865), by William Vincent Wells <!-- Little, Brown, and Company; Boston -->
Context: Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man. We must not conclude merely upon a man's haranguing upon liberty, and using the charming sound, that he is fit to be trusted with the liberties of his country. It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves. It is not, I say, unfrequent to see such instances, though at the same time I esteem it a justice due to my country to say that it is not without shining examples of the contrary kind; — examples of men of a distinguished attachment to this same liberty I have been describing; whom no hopes could draw, no terrors could drive, from steadily pursuing, in their sphere, the true interests of their country; whose fidelity has been tried in the nicest and tenderest manner, and has been ever firm and unshaken.
The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.
Benjamin Disraeli
(1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Speech in the House of Lords (10 December 1876), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 1273.
Woodrow Wilson
(1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)
“ Princeton for the Nation's Service http://books.google.com/books?id=9vQtAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA1326&dq=%22It+has+never+been+natural%22” (21 October 1896)
1890s
Context: It has never been natural, it has seldom been possible, in this country for learning to seek a place apart and hold aloof from affairs. It is only when society is old, long settled to its ways, confident in habit, and without self-questioning upon any vital point of conduct, that study can affect seclusion and despise the passing interests of the day.