Quotes about million (2186 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“There’s no way that Michael Jackson or whoever Jackson should have a million thousand droople billion dollars and then there’s people starving. There’s no way! There’s no way that these people should own planes and there people don’t have houses. Apartments. Shacks. Drawers. Pants! I know you’re rich. I know you got 40 billion dollars, but can you just keep it to one house? You only need ONE house. And if you only got two kids, can you just keep it to two rooms? I mean why have 52 rooms and you know there’s somebody with no room?! It just don’t make sense to me. It don’t.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

People , Way , Sense , Housing

“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Variants: One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic.
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
When one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is a statistic.
In Портрет тирана (1981) (Portrait of a Tyrant), Soviet historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko attributes the following version to Stalin: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." This is the alleged response of Stalin during the 1943 Tehran conference when Churchill objected to an early opening of a second front in France.
In her review "Mustering Most Memorable Quips" of Konstantin Dushenko's 1997 Dictionary of Modern Quotations (Словарь современных цитат: 4300 ходячих цитат и выражений ХХ века, их источники, авторы, датировка), Julia Solovyova states: "Russian historians have no record of the lines, 'Death of one man is a tragedy. Death of a million is a statistic,' commonly attributed by English-language dictionaries to Josef Stalin."
This quotation may originate from "Französischer Witz" (1925) by Kurt Tucholsky: "Darauf sagt ein Diplomat vom Quai d'Orsay: «Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!»" ("To which a Quai d'Orsay diplomat replies: «The war? I can't find it so terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!»")
Another possible source or intermediary may be the concluding words of chapter 8 of the 1956 novel The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque: "Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik." ("But probably the reason is that one dead man is death—and two million are only a statistic." 1958 Crest Book reprint)
Mary Soames (daughter of Churchill) claims to have overheard Stalin deliver a variant of the quote in immediate postwar Berlin (Remembrance Sunday Andrew Marr interview BBC 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hP2tpw9XEw
See also Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist, 1939: "Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
In an interview given for the 1983 three-part documentary Der Prozeß by Norddeutscher Rundfunk on the Third Majdanek trial, Simon Wiesenthal attributes the quote to the unpublished auto-biography of Adolf Eichmann. According to Wiesenthal, Eichmann had been asked by another member of the Reich Main Security Office during WWII what they should answer would they be questioned after the war about the millions of dead Jews they were responsible for, to which Eichmann according to his own testimony had replied with the quote.
Misattributed
Variant: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

Death

“You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man. And that is the most bitter type of loneliness, success has brought me world idolisation and millions of pounds. But it's prevented me from having the one thing we all need: A loving, ongoing relationship.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

As quoted in "Rock On Freddie" (1985) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_XX-XX-1985_-_Unknown.

Love , World , Success , Loneliness

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in O<sub>2</sub> : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, Ch. 4 : Artisans of Hope: Stepping into God's Kingdom Story, p. 63; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote. It is also used in <i> The White Rose </i> (1991) by Lillian Garrett-Groag, a monologue during Sophie's interrogation.
Disputed
Context: The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

Men , Peace

“The Rock: I am married to savannah mullins; I need to take this moment, and I need to tell you something as Dwayne. It's been a long time since I've been back. Seven years to be exact; but I want to take this moment, in the middle of this ring, to tell you why I'm back. It's not because of the money. It's not to promote a movie. I am back in the middle of this ring because of you. When I left - when I left the WWE seven years ago I dreamed big, and you guys dreamed big with me. You helped me accomplish my goals - accomplish my dreams - because you never. left. my side; and I wanna take this moment to tell you all here - you're live here - millions watching around the world. I wanna tell you thank you. I love you, and it is because of you that I am back in this ring, and it is because of you - and I give you my word - I am never ever going away. Simply put, ladies and gentlemen, The Rock is back!”

Dwayne Johnson (1972) American actor and professional wrestler

The Rock's return to WWE Raw as host of WrestleMania XXVII (14 February, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ejiG5-BtA&feature=related.

Love , Money , World , Dreams

“The death of one is a tragedy, but death of a million is just a statistic.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Being from Manson's Fight Song of Holy Wood, this is actually a quote from German writer Erich Maria Remarque, also often misattributed to Josef Stalin.
Misattributed

Death

“It'a an immense joy to be here today. I have received from millions of male and female Brazilians the most important mission of my life. This fact, beyond myself, is a demonstration of the democratic development of our country because for the first time a woman will rule Brazil.”

Dilma Rousseff (1947) 36th President of Brazil

First speech http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/01/dilma-rousseff-wins-brazil-president after being elected President, October 31.
2010

Life , Time , Joy , Country

“The reason I sell 6 million records, the reason I could go to jail and come out without a scratch, the reason I can walk around, the reason I am who I am today is because I can look directly in to my face and find my soul, it's there, it's not sold, i didn't sell it, it's still within me, I still feel it, my heart is still connected to my body.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Interview on the set of Gang Related (1996)

Feeling , Soul , Heart

“I'm not smart. I try to observe. Millions saw the apple fall but Newton was the one who asked why.”

Bernard Baruch (1870–1965) American businessman

New York Post (24 June 1965)

“Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Sad , People , World , Loneliness

“if you learn to hate one or two persons… you'll soon hate millions of people.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Hate , People , Learning , Personality

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

British Telecom advertisement (1993), part of which was used in Pink Floyd's Keep Talking (1994) and Talkin' Hawkin'<nowiki/> (2014)
Context: For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

Imagination , Learning , Animals

“America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 62–75.
Collected Works
Source: A Letter to American Workingmen: From the Socialist Soviet Republic of Russia

People , Country

“If I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder.. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding onto whatever scraps she had left.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Stupidity , World , Way , Star

“Our total reality and total existence are beautiful and meaningful…. We should judge reality by the little which we truly know of it. Since that part which conceptually we know fully turns out to be so beautiful, the real world of which we know so little should also be beautiful. Life may be miserable for seventy years and happy for a million years: the short period of misery may even be necessary for the whole.”

Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics

Life , World , Beauty , Reality

“First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once again trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

1990s, Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders (1998)

War , People , Past , Fight

“Tell us you lost 6 million. Historians, scholars, scientists, they went to some of the death camps. It wasn't 6 million, it wasn't 5 million, it wasn't 4 million, it wasn't even 3 million. Some of them say we'd be hard-pressed to get 1 1/2 million. Reports on the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were bloated, exaggerated, probably fabricated.”

Khalid Abdul Muhammad (1948–2001) American activist

Speech in Brooklyn, New York (29 March 1994) quoted in Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present (2002) by Marvin Perry and Frederick Schweitzer

Death

“On the surface it may seem that wars are caused by economic and political questions, but in fact they are caused by our wholesale slaughter of animals. The laws of justice are inexorable, and human beings are going to have to pay with their own blood … We kill animals, but nature is an organic whole, and by killing animals we are, as it were, affecting certain glands in that organism. When this happens, the balance of the organism is disrupted, and it is not surprising that before long war breaks out among men. Yes, human beings have slaughtered millions of animals for their meat, without realizing that on the invisible plane those animals are linked to other human beings, and it is they who will now have to share the fate of the animals. When we slaughter animals we are slaughtering human beings. Everybody agrees that it is time to establish the reign of peace in the world, that there must be no more wars. Yes, but war will go on just as long as we continue to slaughter animals, because by destroying them we are destroying ourselves.”

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (1900–1986) Bulgarian philosopher

The Yoga of Nutrition, Editions Prosveta, 2012 ebook edition, pp. 24 https://books.google.it/books?id=jnoVCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT24-25.

Men , Fate , War , World

“Diego is Diego and for me he is the greatest player of all time. Even after a million years I am not even going to be close to Maradona. I have no intention of comparing myself with Maradona - I want to make my own history for something I have achieved.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

Response to the Maradona comparisons, 2010 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/players/lionel-messi/7527633/Barcelonas-Lionel-Messi-says-he-will-never-be-as-good-as-Diego-Maradona.html

History , Time

“Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union.… You are responsible, and your forebears, for 60 million to 100 million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about anybody, please.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

HUAC Testimony

People , Question

“The death of one man is a just death, the death of two millions is a statistic.”

Erich Maria Remarque book The Black Obelisk

Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.
Der schwarze Obelisk (1956)
A variant of this quote "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." has also been attributed to Joseph Stalin, but no source for this has been found. This version appeared in the English press not later than 1958. (Ремарк, Эрих Мария // Словарь современных цитат / составитель К. В. Душенко — Москва: изд-во «Эксмо», 2006)

Death

“At the turn of the [20th] century, of course, the Armenian people were subject to extremely heavy oppression by the Ottoman sultan. Entertaining tragically misguided hopes of being aided by the European powers, some inexperienced and naive Armenian leaders embraced a very regrettable strategy—one which even more regrettably has not been abandoned to this day: they attempted to enlist the imperialist powers to intervene on behalf of the w:Armenians… In an almost pathetic attempt to establish such a common ground, some Armenian intellectuals pulled religion and linguistics out of their hat… Well, subsequent events—and one and one-half million martyrs—show how convincing this line of argument was for our "Indo-European brothers."”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 6.

People , Religion , Hope

“I do not need your red sculpted lips,
Nor hair in loops like a serpent’s coils,
Nor a nape as graceful as a swan’s,
Nor narcissus eyes full of drunkenness,
Nor teeth as perfect as pearls of heaven,
Nor cheeks ruddy and full as pomegranates,
Nor a voice mellifluous as a sarinda,
Nor a figure as elegant as a poplar,
But show me just this one thing, my love,
I seek a heart stained like a poppy flower – Pearls by millions I would gladly cede,
For the sake of tears borne of love and grief.”

Ghani Khan (1914–1996) Pakistani poet

na may sta da nari shundi dy pakar
na da zulfi wal pa wal laka khamar
na da bati pashan danga ghari ghwaram
nargasay stargy na daki da khumar
na ghakhuna dy laluna da adan
na nangy dak sara sara laka anar
na pasti da sarindy pa shan khabari
na wajood laka da saar way mazadar
khu bas yow shai rata ra ukhaya dilbara
da lala pashan zargy ghawaram daghdar
yow dawa ukhaqi chi da ghum ao muhabat way
lakuno laluna dy karam zaar
Entreaty (1929)

Love , Flowers , Tear , Heart

“A million words cannot express what a glance can convey, and a million glances cannot express what a moment of silence can.”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (1956) spiritual leader

Narada Bhakti Sutras (2001)
Context: A million words cannot express what a glance can convey, and a million glances cannot express what a moment of silence can. A moment of silence conveys so much more than any other expression. Still, love is beyond silence too. You can describe silence to some extent, but that which is beyond silence cannot be expressed. You give, you hug... but still something remains unexpressed.

Silence

“Mira sang of her love for Krishna with such simplicity and directness that in her songs millions have found a voice and echo of their own God-yearning.”

Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet

Swarup, Ram (2000). Meditations: Yogas, gods, religions. p. 196

Love , Making love , God

“We became the target of attacks because we no longer want to submit ... and reject corruption. They tried to bribe us and millions were promised to me, but I refused, I did not take a single centime.”

Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961) Congolese Prime Minister, cold war leader, executed

Fighters for National Liberation: Political Profiles https://archive.org/details/fightersfornatliberation/page/138/mode/2up V.G. Khorosebal , Central Books Ltd, 1984, ISBN 0714720542, p 144. Lumumba in August 1960 from the United States.

“Millions of shadows walking into nothingness.”

Franco Battiato (1945) Italian singer-songwriter, composer, and filmmaker

Source: da La polvere del branco

“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

Chance , Time

“Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Way , Change

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

Love , Life , Death , God

“What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

War

“I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

July 1890, page 313
(From Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Second Series (1844) "Essay VI: Nature": "the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.")
John of the Mountains, 1938
Context: It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Travel , Tree , Sun

“Just remember, kid, you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Variant: You can quicker get back a million dollars that was stolen than a word that you gave away.
Source: A View from the Bridge: A Play in Two Acts

“Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhethoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution

Life

“And then many things became very clear… we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Life , Learning , Time

“Which way will the sunflower turn surrounded by millions of suns?”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems

Way , Sun

“Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns it calls me on and on across the universe.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Love , Universe , Sun

“It doesn't matter if a million people tell you what you can't do, or if ten million tell you no. If you get one yes from God that's all you need.”

Tyler Perry (1966) American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, producer, author, and songwriter

God , People

“If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.”

J. Paul Getty (1892–1977) American industrialist

As quoted in The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing (2003) by Pat Dorsey & ‎Joe Mansueto, p. 234
Attributed

Business , Problem

“If we had killed 10.3 million Jews, then I would have been satisfied and would say, good, we annihilated an enemy. … I wasn't only issued orders, in this case I'd have been a moron, but I rather anticipated, I was an idealist.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Post-war discussion with Willem Sassen in Eichmanns Memoiren. Ein kritischer Essay (Zuerst 2001) Frankfurt/M.: Fischer TB, 2004 ISBN 3-5961-5726-9

“The people of East Pakistan will owe it to the million who have died in the cyclone to make the supreme sacrifice of another million lives, if need be, so that we can live as a free people.”

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975) Bengali revolutionary, founder ("father") of Bangladesh

Addressing a rally before the 1970 general elections in Pakistan. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878408,00.html
Quote, Other

People

“Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.”

Jean Rostand (1894–1977) French writer

See also "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." (misattributed to Joseph Stalin)

Men , God

“Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile, and persecution, and the fresh memory of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, UN speech to General Assembly (September 2011)

Hate , War , Children , People

“The word anti-Semitism is another word which should be eliminated from the English language. "Anti-Semitism" serves only one purpose today. It is used as a smear word. When so-called or self-styled Jews feel that anyone opposes any of their objectives they discredit their victims by applying the word anti-Semite or anti-Semitic through all the channels they have at their command and under their control. I can speak with great authority on that subject. Because so-called or self-styled Jews were unable to disprove my public statements in 1946 with regard to the situation in Palestine, they spent millions of dollars to smear me as an anti-Semite hoping thereby to discredit me in the eyes of the public who were very much interested in what I had to say. Until 1946 I was a little saint to all so-called or self-styled Jews. When I disagreed with them publicly on the Zionist intentions in Palestine I became suddenly Anti-Semite No. 1.”

Benjamin H. Freedman (1890–1984) American businessman

Facts are Facts (1954)

Hope , Feeling

“It was a great thing to be a human being. It was something tremendous. Suddenly I'm conscious of a million sensations buzzing in me like bees in a hive. Gentlemen, it was a great thing.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Bee

“Acceptance of the Catholic position implies a certain willingness to see the present injustices of society continue… Individual salvation implies liberty, which is always extended by Catholic writers to include the right to private property. But in the stage of industrial development which we have now reached, the right to private property means the right to exploit and torture millions of one's fellow creatures. The Socialist would argue, therefore, that one can only defend property if one is more or less indifferent to economic justice.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: Review of Communism and Man by F. J. Sheed in Peace News (27 January 1939)

Justice , Indifference

“As a nation-state, Iran has no problems with anybody. As a vehicle for the Khomeinist ideology it has problems with everybody, starting with the Iranian people. The Khomeinist regime makes no secret of its intense hatred for Iranian culture, which it claims has roots in “the age of ignorance” (jahiliyyah). To admire this regime because of Iranian culture is like admiring Hitler for Goethe and Beethoven and praising Stalin for Pushkin and Tchaikovsky. This regime has executed tens of thousands of Iranians, driven almost 6 million into exile, and deprived the nation of its basic freedoms. It has also killed more Americans, often through surrogates, than al Qaeda did on 9/11. Not a single day has passed without this regime holding some American hostages. Iran as a nation is a solid friend of America. Iran as a vehicle for the Khomeinist revolution is an eternal enemy of “The Great Satan.” The only realistic strategy for the United States would be to help it stop being the Islamic Republic and become Iran again. President Obama’s policy, however, points in the opposite direction. He has made it harder for the Iranian people to regain their human rights.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

What US leaders have never understood about Iran http://nypost.com/2015/07/19/what-us-leaders-have-never-understood-about-iran/, New York Post (July 19, 2015).
New York Post

People , Secret , Age , Problem

“During the first 3 years at Auschwitz, 2 million people were killed. Over the next 2 years, 3 Million.”

Witold Pilecki Witold's Report

Witold's Report. (1943)

People

“No person, not even the most simple one, takes seriously the lie of the six million Jews that were murdered”

Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) second president of Egypt

in the Holocaust
Source: [Satloff, Robert, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach Into Arab lands, PublicAffairs, 2007, 163, 9781586485108]
Source: [Laqueur, Walter, The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, Oxford University Press, 2006, 141, 9780195304299]

Lie , Personality

“For avoiding nonsense in general, we might accumulate millions of censors. For all we know, this "negative meta-knowledge" — about patterns of thought and inference that have been found defective or harmful — may be a large portion of all we know.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious (1980)

Knowledge

“When you meet the one among the millions, when amid millions of years, across the borderless wastes of time, you happen to catch him or her, neither a step too early nor a step too late, what else is there to do except to ask softly: "So you're here, too?"”

Eileen Chang (1920–1995) Chinese writer and screenwriter

10. "Love" (p. 79)
Liuyan [《流言》] (1968)

Time

“During the Spanish civil war I found myself feeling very strongly that a true history of this war never would or could be written. Accurate figures, objective accounts of what was happening, simply did not exist. And if I felt that even in 1937, when the Spanish Government was still in being, and the lies which the various Republican factions were telling about each other and about the enemy were relatively small ones, how does the case stand now? Even if Franco is overthrown, what kind of records will the future historian have to go upon? And if Franco or anyone at all resembling him remains in power, the history of the war will consist quite largely of "facts" which millions of people now living know to be lies.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please" (1943–1947)

War , People , Feeling , History

“However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U. S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

War , People , Failure , Understanding

“We want a fireworks theory of evolution. The last two thousand million years are slow evolution: they are the smoke and ashes of bright but very rapid fireworks.”

Georges Lemaître (1894–1966) Belgian scientist and priest

Article in Nature, 1931, vol 128, page 704

“By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad."”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Notes on Nationalism" (1945)
Context: By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

People , Confidence

“The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book Black Reconstruction

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 727
Context: The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West. They descended into Hell; and in the third century they arose from the dead, in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world had ever seen. It was a tragedy that beggared the Greek; it was an upheaval of humanity like the Reformation and the French Revolution. Yet we are blind and led by the blind. We discern in it no part of our labor movement; no part of our industrial triumph; no part of our religious experience. Before the dumb eyes of ten generations of ten million children, it is made mockery of and spit upon; a degradation of the eternal mother; a sneer at human effort; with aspiration and art deliberately and elaborately distorted. And why? Because in a day when the human mind aspired to a science of human action, a history and psychology of the mighty effort of the mightiest century, we fell under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future.

Beauty , History

“I am not ashamed or afraid to say that I wish more sympathy had been shown on both sides towards the Chartists. … I am not ashamed to say that I sympathise with millions of my fellow-subjects.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech in the House of Commons (28 January 1840), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 485
1840s

“A man of many parts - a learned and deeply religious person, a very fine and powerful actor who swayed millions of people, a orator and above all, a man of the masses.”

N. T. Rama Rao (1923–1996) Indian actor and Andhra Pradesh former chief minister

By Narasimha Rao in "Obituary: N. T. Rama Rao".
About NTR

Parting , Personality , People , Learning

“Was there no sword, nothing with which to batter down these walls, this protection, this begetting of children and living behind curtains, and becoming daily more involved and committed, with books and pictures? Better burn one’s life out like Louis, desiring perfection; or like Rhoda leave us, flying past us to the desert; or choose one out of millions and one only like Neville; better be like Susan and love and hate the heat of the sun or the frost-bitten grass; or be like Jinny, honest, an animal. All had their rapture; their common feeling with death; something that stood them in stead. Thus I visited each of my friends in turn, trying, with fumbling fingers, to prise open their locked caskets. I went from one to the other holding my sorrow — no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life — for their inspection. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken — I to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. There I sat.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Bernard, section IX
The Waves (1931)

Tree , Hate , Making love , Sun

“I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

World , Feeling , Thinking , Suffering

“Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned--in search of what? It is the same with books. What do we seek through millions of pages?”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

Books , Search , Housing

“Don't blame you," said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Every moment there are a million miracles happening around you: a flower blossoming, a bird tweeting, a bee humming, a raindrop falling, a snowflake wafting along the clear evening air. There is magic everywhere. If you learn how to live it, life is nothing short of a daily miracle.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Life , Flowers , Bird , Learning

“You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was, ‘But we’ve always done it this way.’ A million dead people can’t have been wrong, can they?”

Terry Pratchett book The Fifth Elephant

Source: The Fifth Elephant

People , Way , Dead

“Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.”

Terry Pratchett book Soul Music

Source: Soul Music

Music , Forgetting

“Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”

Susan Ertz (1887–1985) British writer

Anger in the Sky (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943), p. 134.

“Million-to-one chances… crop up nine times out of ten.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

Chance , Time

“This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

World , Hope , Music , Way

“Adiyogi’s legacy offers you the licence to believe in the god of your choice, or not to believe at all. And if you do not find a god to your taste, it allows you the freedom to create one. That is how the Indian subcontinent arrived at an exuberant 330 million gods and goddesses at last count! To see the divine in a tree, rock or elephant is not considered absurd because every speck of creation is seen as a portal to the ultimate reality. These”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga

God , Reality , Tree , Freedom

“Jesus tells us to keep our eyes open so we are not fooled by the signs indicating that the End Times are near. As we get closer to the End Times, many people are going to claim to be the Messiah and claim to have the answers for a troubled world. Additionally, the book of Revelation tells us to expect a period of ceaseless, unending, terrible war. It appears that we are already preparing for this time as fifty percent of all research scientists today are involved in arms development and there is at least one military weapon and four thousand pounds of explosives for every man, woman, and child on earth. Finally, there will be more and more disease and devastation. Today, as you read this, millions of people in the world are being afflicted by insufficient food, the spread of new diseases, and the devastating effects of natural disasters. As we get closer to the End Times, there will be more and more famine. There will also be an increase in earthquakes and natural disasters. Christ also spoke of pestilence: the spread of new diseases. Our world will experience a spate of tragic new diseases that we will be unable to control.”

David Jeremiah

Source: The Prophecy Answer Book

War , People , Books , World

“That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.”

John Fowles (1926–2005) British writer

Courage , Evil

“It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don't know anything outside their own business.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Men , Business

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.”

Nora Ephron book Heartburn

Source: Heartburn

Dreams , Fools , Reality

“Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Money , Happiness

“It is better to be loved by one person who knows your soul than millions who don't even know your phone number.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Walk

Love , Soul , Personality

“So, you wrecked Alcatraz Island, made Mount St. Helens explode, and displaced half a million people, but at least you're safe."
"Yep, that pretty much covers it.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

People

“A million candles burnt in him without his being at the trouble of lighting a single one”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Light

“Satan hasn't a single salaried helper; the Opposition employs a million.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“I’d a million times rather live and risk and have it all end badly than stay in the box I’ve been in for the past two years.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Time , Past , Box

“Making a million legally has always been difficult. Making a million illegally has always been a little easier. Keeping a million when you have made it is perhaps the most difficult of all.”

Jeffrey Archer book Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

Source: Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

“… for the human brain can become the best torture house of all those it has invented, established and used in a millions of years, in millions of lands, on millions of howling creatures.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Source: Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

Housing

“What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think. I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, my cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. (p. 17)

Thinking , Time , Happiness

“I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

Thinking , Time , Happiness

“I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

World

“To those who oppose the steps I’m announcing today, let me say that I respect your passion and share your commitment to liberty and democracy. The question is how we uphold that commitment. I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result. Moreover, it does not serve America’s interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse. Even if that worked — and it hasn’t for 50 years — we know from hard-earned experience that countries are more likely to enjoy lasting transformation if their people are not subjected to chaos. We are calling on Cuba to unleash the potential of 11 million Cubans by ending unnecessary restrictions on their political, social, and economic activities. In that spirit, we should not allow U. S. sanctions to add to the burden of Cuban citizens that we seek to help.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

People , Democracy , Question , Passion

“And rising inequality and declining mobility are also bad for our families and social cohesion -- not just because we tend to trust our institutions less, but studies show we actually tend to trust each other less when there’s greater inequality. And greater inequality is associated with less mobility between generations. That means it’s not just temporary; the effects last. It creates a vicious cycle. For example, by the time she turns three years old, a child born into a low-income home hears 30 million fewer words than a child from a well-off family, which means by the time she starts school she’s already behind, and that deficit can compound itself over time.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Remarks on Economic Mobility (December 2013)

School , Family , Home , Study

“It is absolutely critical that we understand this is not just a challenge, it's an opportunity, because if we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily, here in the United States.
It can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades.
And we can do it, but we're going to have to make an investment. The same way the computer was originally invented by a bunch of government scientists who were trying to figure out, for defense purposes, how to communicate, we've got to understand that this is a national security issue, as well.
And that's why we've got to make some investments and I've called for investments in solar, wind, geothermal.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Comments on energy and environmental policies, in the Second Presidential Debate (7 October 2008) http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/07/presidential.debate.transcript
2008

Way , Communication , Understanding , Future

“One murder made a villain,
Millions a hero. Princes were privileged
To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime.”

Beilby Porteus (1731–1809) Bishop of Chester; Bishop of London

Source: Death: A Poetical Essay (1759), Line 154. Compare: "One to destroy is murder by the law, And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; To murder thousands takes a specious name, War’s glorious art, and gives immortal fame", Edward Young, "Love of Fame", Satire vii, line 55.

“The failure of a free press in most countries is usually blamed on the readers. Every nation gets the government—and the press—it deserves. This is too facile a remark. The people deserve better in most governments and press. Readers, in millions of cases, have no way of finding out whether their newspapers are fair or not, honest or distorted, truthful or colored….”

George Seldes (1890–1995) American journalist

Lords of the Press (1938)
Incorporates the famous observation of Joseph de Maistre that "every nation gets the government it deserves."

People , Truth , Color , Way

“I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions… Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

The New York Times (26 November 1978)

Learning , Reading

“I know what I'm about to say now is controversial, but I have to say it. This nation cannot continue turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the taking of some 4,000 unborn children's lives every day. That's one every 21 seconds. One every 21 seconds. We cannot pretend that America is preserving her first and highest ideal, the belief that each life is sacred, when we've permitted the deaths of 15 million helpless innocents since the Roe versus Wade decision. 15 million children who will never laugh, never sing, never know the joy of human love, will never strive to heal the sick, feed the poor, or make peace among nations. Abortion has denied them the first and most basic of human rights. We are all infinitely poorer for their loss. There's another grim truth we should face up to: Medical science doctors confirm that when the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing. This nation fought a terrible war so that black Americans would be guaranteed their God-given rights. Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some could decide whether others should be free or slaves. Well, today another question begs to be asked: How can we survive as a free nation when some decide that others are not fit to live and should be done away with? I believe no challenge is more important to the character of America than restoring the right to life to all human beings. Without that right, no other rights have meaning. "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of God."”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

I will continue to support every effort to restore that protection including the Hyde-Jepsen respect life bill. I've asked for your all-out commitment, for the mighty power of your prayers, so that together we can convince our fellow countrymen that America should, can, and will preserve God's greatest gift.
Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters (30 January 1984) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=40394 · YouTube - Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Elph9CfsKs
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

Love , Life , Death , God

“Now through the vagaries of fortune, most of these 10.3 million Jews remained alive, so I say to myself: fate wished it so. I have to subordinate myself to fate and destiny. I am just a little man and don't have to fight against this, and I couldn't, and I don't want to.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Argentina Audiotapes (1957)

Fate , Fight

“If the auto industry advanced as rapidly as the semiconductor industry, a Rolls Royce would get half a million miles per gallon, and it would be cheaper to throw it away than to park it.”

Gordon Moore (1929) American businessman, co-founder of Intel and author of the eponym law

Moore's Law | ZEISS International http://www.zeiss.com/semiconductor-manufacturing-technology/en_de/products-solutions/lithography-optics/about-optical-lithography/moore_s-law.html (quoting an unidentified statement pertaining to Moore's Law.)

“The human being should be the absolute priority. It seems it is more important to reach the planet Mars than prevent 13 million Africans dying of hunger. Why would I want to know if there is water on Mars if we are polluting the water here on Earth, or doing nothing to avoid it? Priorities need to be redefined, but there is no chance of this, if we don't confront the need to know what democracy is.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Quoted in New African (IC Magazines Limited, 2003), p. 25.

Hunger , Democracy , Water , Chance

“We don't owe the white man nothing in South Africa. He's killed millions of our women, our children, our babies, our elders.… If he won't get out of town by sundown, we kill everything white that ain't right that's in sight in South Africa. We kill the women, we kill the children, we kill the babies. We kill the blind, we kill the crippled, we kill them all … and kill them a-god-damn-gain because they didn't die hard enough.”

Khalid Abdul Muhammad (1948–2001) American activist

Kean College speech

Women , God , Children , Baby

“I'll cut out government spending that's not working, that we can't afford, but I'm also going to ask anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton, back when our economy created 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history and everybody did well. Just like we've tried their plan, we tried our plan — and it worked. That's the difference. That's the choice in this election. That's why I'm running for a second term.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Campaign speech http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/24/remarks-president-campaign-event, Oakland, California, , quoted in
Partially quoted as "We tried our plan and it worked. That's the difference. That's the choice in this election. That's why I'm running for a second term." in Mitt Romney " It Worked http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0etEmiCL8M" campaign ad ()
2012

History

“Since I know that about a million people have been killed by the government of Iraq, I do not need much those weapons of mass destruction.”

Martti Ahtisaari (1937) Finnish politician and former President of Finland

Defending the US government decision to invade Iraq, as quoted in "Nobel Finn" in Wall Street Journal (11 October 2008) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122367870922824537.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

People

“The beauty of America, neither cool jazz nor devoured Egyptian
heroes, lies in
lives in the darkness I inhabit in the midst of sterile millions.”

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer

Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets (l. 34-36) (1960).

Beauty