Quotes about prevention

A collection of quotes on the topic of prevention, use, doing, people.

Quotes about prevention

“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

“As touching the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, nor how they are featured; for there is much to prevent our knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.”

Protagoras (-486–-411 BC) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Opening lines of Concerning the Gods (DK 80 B4).
Variant translation: "As to the Gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist, or if they do, what they are like."

Life, God

“The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent such slaughter — it is the Art of Peace, the power of love.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

Speaking of a vision of the "Great Spirit of Peace" in 1942, during World War II, as quoted in Adjusting Though Reflex : Romancing Zen (2010) by Rodger Hyodo, p. 76
Context: The Way of the Warrior has been misunderstood. It is not a means to kill and destroy others. Those who seek to compete and better one another are making a terrible mistake. To smash, injure, or destroy is the worst thing a human being can do. The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent such slaughter — it is the Art of Peace, the power of love.

Love, Peace, Art, Way

“What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again.”

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

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Life, Star, Tear, Sun

“Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. Do you see that from drunkenness comes fornication, from fornication adultery, from adultery murder? Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you contemn the gift of God, and fight with His laws? What is a curse, do you seek as though it were a blessing? Do you make the anteroom of birth the anteroom of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is given to you for the procreation of offspring to perpetrate killing? That she may always be beautiful and lovable to her lovers, and that she may rake in more money, she does not refuse to do this, heaping fire on your head; and even if the crime is hers, you are the cause. Hence also arise idolatries. To look pretty many of these women use incantations, libations, philtres, potions, and innumerable other things. Yet after such turpitude, after murder, after idolatry, the matter still seems indifferent to many men–even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks, invocations of demons, incantations of the dead, daily wars, ceaseless battles, and unremitting contentions.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 24 on the Epistle to the Romans [PG 60:626-27] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2017/10/contraception-early-church-teaching-william-klimon.html

Money, God, Law, Dead

“Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

A New Earth (2005)
Variant: Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now, and if the past cant prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Past

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Wisdom, Justice, Law, Idea

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Change

“The only preventative measure one can take is to live irregularly.”

Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf

Source: Mein Kampf

“We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.”

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

Source: The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

Fate, Fight

“Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

“Union busting has become a major industry with more than a thousand consulting firms teaching companies how to prevent workers from organizing and how to get rid of existing unions.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

2 MEDIA AND CULTURE, Giving Labor The Business, p. 122
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

“Our task is to prevent the present generation, torn asunder by its conflicts, from becoming perverted and from perverting new generations.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)
Context: Our task is to prevent the present generation, torn asunder by its conflicts, from becoming perverted and from perverting new generations. We must not bring into being either docile servants of official thought or scholarship students who live at the expense of the state — practising "freedom." Already there are revolutionaries coming who will sing the song of the new man in the true voice of the people. This is a process, which takes time.

“We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”

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

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

War, Way, History, Star

“We are the pilots of our life, we only know how to manage life. But from time to time, the fog prevents us from performing incredible tricks.”

Nikita Vasilyevich Smirnov (28)

Time, Life

“Truth and expansion go hand in hand. Truth creates growth. Lies and illusion prevent it.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Truth

“People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn't stop you having your own opinions. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn't be prevented from saying what they think.”

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

2 March 1944
(1942 - 1944)
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

People, Thinking

“You should never let your fears prevent you from doing what you know is right.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

For women, Fear

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

Life, Children, People, Lie

“No social co-operation under the division of labour is possible when some people or unions of people are granted the right to prevent by violence and the threat of violence other people from working. When enforced by violence, a strike in vital branches of production or a general strike are tantamount to a revolutionary destruction of society.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

People

“We love the indomitable bellicose patriotism that sets you apart; we love the national pride that guides your muscularly courageous race; we love the potent individualism that doesn't prevent you from opening your arms to individualists of every land, whether libertarians or anarchists.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

1910's, Futurist Speech to the English' (1910)

Love, Courage

“Paddy and I had scarcely a wink of sleep, for there was a man near us who had some nervous trouble, shell-shock perhaps, which made him cry out 'Pip!' at irregular intervals. It was a loud, startling noise, something like the toot of a small motor-horn. You never knew when it was coming, and it was a sure preventer of sleep…. he must have kept ten or twenty people awake every night. He was an example of the kind of thing that prevents one from ever getting enough sleep when men are herded as they are in these lodging houses.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 29

Men, People, Sleep, Housing

“The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Some Thoughts on the Common Toad," Tribune (12 April 1946, page 10, last paragraph http://archive.tribunemagazine.co.uk/page/12th-april-1946/10)

Sun

“It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940) edited by Bernard DeVoto

History

“The body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement of food; and is also liable to diseases which overtake and impede us in the search after truth: and by filling us so full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies, and idols, and every sort of folly, prevents our ever having, as people say, so much as a thought.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Love, People, Truth, Fear

“O Lord, this earth groans and suffers; chaos has made this world its abode. The darkness is so great that Thou alone canst dispel it. Come, manifest Thyself, that Thy work may be accomplished. Solitude, a harsh, intense solitude, and always this strong impression of having been flung headlong into an inferno of darkness! … Sometimes … I cannot prevent my total sub-mission from taking a hue of melancholy, and the calm and mute converse with the Master within is transformed for a moment into an invocation almost suppliant, O Lord, what have I done that Thou throwest me thus into the sombre night?”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

Her entry in her diary when she left Pondicherry and on the tumultuous developments in the world for the War, quoted in "Diary notes and Meeting with Sri Aurobindo" and also in IV. Diary Notes And Meeting With Sri Aurobindo http://www.motherandsriaurobindo.org/Content.aspx?ContentURL=/_staticcontent/sriaurobindoashram/-04%20Centers/India/Pondicherry/Sri%20Aurobindo%20Society/Wilfried/The%20Mother%20-%20A%20Short%20Biography/007_Diary%20Notes%20and%20Meeting%20with%20Sri%20Aurobindo.htm, p. 21

World, Solitude, Strong, Suffering

“It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war.”

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) king of Prussia

1777; quoted by Bert L. Vallée, Alcohol in the Western World, Scientific American, Vol. 278, No. 6 (June), 1998, pp. 80-85

Money, War, Coffee, Drink

“There will always be a lost dog somewhere that will prevent me being happy.”

Jean Anouilh (1910–1987) French playwright

Il y aura toujours un chien perdu quelque part qui m'empêchera d'être heureux.
La Sauvage ["The Restless Heart"] (1938), Act 3.

Dogs, Happiness

“Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this?”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Said at the Dominican Monastery of Latour-Maubourg (1948); reported in Resistance, Rebellion and Death (translation by Justin O'Brien, 1961), p. 73

Children, World, Help

“This first stage of the life of the whole race is savagery, raw nature:… a condition in which man enjoys the most exquisite goods, equality and freedom, in full abundance, and would also enjoy them forever, if he would follow the hint of nature and understand the art of not abusing his powers and preventing the outbreak of his excessive passions.”

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati

Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten-Orden (1794) pp. 20-21.

Life, Art, Understanding, Nature

“Balthasar of Waldshit has fallen into prison here - a man not merely irreverent and unlearned, but even empty. Learn the sum of the matter. When he came to Zurich our Council fearing lest he should cause a commotion ordered him to be taken into custody. Since, however, he had once in freakishness of disposition and fatuity, lurked out in Waldshut against our Council, of which place he, by the gods, was a guardian [i. e., he has pastor there], until the stupid fellow disunited and destroyed everything, it was determined that I should discuss with him in a friendly manner the baptising of infants and Catabaptists, as he earnestly begged first from prison and afterwards from custody. I met the fellow and rendered him mute as a fish. The next day he recited a recantation in the presence of certain Councillors appointed for the purpose [which recantation when repeated to the Two Hundred it was ordered should be publicly made Therefore having started to write it in the city, he gave it to the Council with his own hand, with all its silliness, as he promised. At length he denied that he had changed his opinion, although he had done so before a Swiss tribunal, which with us is a capital offence, affirming that his signature had been extorted from him by terror, which was most untrue].
The council was so unwilling that force should be used on him that when the Emperor or Ferdinand twice asked that the fellow be given to him it refused the request. Indeed he was not taken prisoner that he might suffer the penalty of his boldness in the baptismal matter, but to prevent his causing in secret some confusion, a thing he delighted to do. Then he angered the Council; for there were present most upright Councillors who had witnessed his most explicit and unconstrained withdrawal, and had refused to hand to him over to the cruelty of the Emperor, helping themselves with my aid. The next day he was thrust back into prison and tortured. It is clear that the man had become a sport for demons, so he recanted not frankly as he had promised, nay he said that he entertained no other opinions than those taught by me, execrated the error and obstinacy of the Catabaptists, repeated this three times when stretched on the racks, and bewailed his misery and the wrath of God which in this affair was so unkind. Behold what wantonness! Than these men there is nothing more foolhardy, deceptive infamous - for I cannot tell you what they devise in Abtzell - and shameless. Tomorrow or next day the case will come up.”

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) leader of the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland, and founder of the Swiss Reformed Churches

Letter to Capito, January 1, 1526 (Staehelin, Briefe ausder Reformationseit, p. 20), ibid, p. 249-250

Men, God, Secret, Stupidity

“Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Life, People, Books, Way

“I have not said anything about politics today. I don't propose to say anything about politics. You have a right to elect whom you please; vote for the man you think best, and I think, when that is done, that you and I are freemen. Do as you consider right and honest in electing men for office. I did not come here to make you a long speech, although invited to do so by you. I am not much of a speaker, and my business prevented me from preparing myself. I came to meet you as friends, and welcome you to the white people. I want you to come nearer to us. When I can serve you I will do so. We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment. Use your best judgement in selecting men for office and vote as you think right.”

Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821–1877) Confederate Army general

1870s, Speech before the Pole-Bearers Association (1875)

Men, People, Color, Business

“Knowledge is a collection of facts. Wisdom is the use of knowledge. Without facts there is no knowledge. Without knowledge there is no wisdom. Facts prevent what nothing can cure. Facts are Man's best defense mechanism. Without them men fumble, falter and fail. Without them nations decline and fall. Wisdom wins wars before they start. Knowledge aborts national hostilities. Wisdom obviates racial antipathies. Knowledge effaces religious animosities. Emancipation from bigotry prefaces peace. Intolerance takes all and gives nothing. Peace rewards reciprocal respect and regard. To all Men of Good Will, "Pax Vobiscum!"”

Benjamin H. Freedman (1890–1984) American businessman

Facts are Facts (1954)

Wisdom, Men, Hostility, War

“I think what the Nobel committee is doing is going beyond war and looking at what humanity can do to prevent war. Sustainable management of our natural resources will promote peace.”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

Interview in TIME (10 October 2004)

War, Peace, Nature, Thinking

“Strictly speaking, as a Nationalist, he was an enemy, but since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence — which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action whatever — he could be regarded as "our man."”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

In private this was sometimes cynically admitted. The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away. How reliable such calculations are in the long run is doubtful; as Gandhi himself says, "in the end deceivers deceive only themselves"; but at any rate the gentleness with which he was nearly always handled was due partly to the feeling that he was useful.
Reflections on Gandhi (1949)

“Equality requires Institutions so well adapted, as to prevent the Rich from oppressing those who are not so wealthy as themselves”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Proposals for a New Law Code (1768)
Context: The Equality of the Citizens consists in this; that they should all be subject to the same Laws.
This Equality requires Institutions so well adapted, as to prevent the Rich from oppressing those who are not so wealthy as themselves, and converting all the Charges and Employments intrusted to them as Magistrates only, to their own private Emolument.... <!-- Items 34 - 35

“The Arya Samaj was the first Hindu movement to take up a bold stand in this context. Maharshi Dayanand himself had showed up Muhammad for the sort of man he was. Soon after, however, the Arya Samaj was silenced effectively by a series of murders, notably that of Pandit Lekhram and Swami Shraddhananda. The British were inclined to permit fair criticism, particularly that which was based on Islamic sources. But they could not prevent Muslim assassins from taking the law in their own hands.”

Swami Shraddhanand (1856–1926) Indian monk and philosopher

Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1998). Freedom of expression: Secular theocracy versus liberal democracy. https://web.archive.org/web/20171026023112/http://www.bharatvani.org:80/books/foe/index.htm Ch. 6

Silence, Law

“The ultimate courage is fighting a battle one knows they will lose; but they confront the adversary, to prevent them from winning.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1978

Fight, Courage

“Good does not amount to complete eradication of evil, but rather to decent prevention of its manifestations according to criteria of good.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Evil

“Head of Christ by Morales, exactly as in the description in the pseudo letter of the Roman Proconsul. Morales well entitled to his surname of Divino... [T]he auburn locks seem only prevented from growing over the countenance by the moiety of the star which forms the glory: everything which can even be conceived as necessary to the formation of a face of perfect beauty, but nothing earthly in the appearance. You could not mistake the head for an Apollo or an Adonis. The eyes, beaming with human beauty, are nevertheless bright with the effulgence of celestial light, and fixed upon no particular object. They seem looking on the world. The nose is exquisitely formed, and the flesh tints seem immortal.”

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

Source: Diary entry while in Aix (c. 16 August 1824), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), pp. 52-53

Star, Perfection, Light, Appearance

“People often refuse to see, accept and tell the truth. Unfortunately, because of this, they and everyone around them are prevented from growth.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

People, Truth

“Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.”

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

Girl, Boy

“Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings

Women

“In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Age, Dreams, Personality

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Thinking, Teachers, Universe

“Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

“I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it,
if there were not a friend?
The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: The Signature of All Things

Pain, Feeling

“As a woman you are better off in life earning your own money. You couldn't prevent your husband from leaving you or taking another wife, but you could have some of your dignity if you didn't have to beg him for financial support.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel

Life, Money, Support

“Do not dwell upon the sins and mistakes of yesterday so exclusively as to have no energy and mind left for living rightly today, and do not think that the sins of yesterday can prevent you from living purely today.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

Source: Byways of Blessedness

Thinking

“I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Night

“Life is a nightmare that prevents one from sleeping.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Life, Sleep

“Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely.”

Louise Labé (1524–1566) female French poet of the Renaissance, born in Lyon

Women, Men, Education, Law

“When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

As quoted in "On The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" by Hillary Rodham Clinton in Issues of Democracy Vol. 3, No. 3 (October 1998), p. 11

“Sergeant Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard was on duty. He was guarding the Brass Bridge, the main link between Ankh and Morpork. From theft.

When it came to crime prevention, Sergeant Colon found it safest to think big.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Thinking

“Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Understanding, Perfection

“Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 10: Recrudescence of Puritanism

Pleasure

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

War

“It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Principles of Social Reconstruction [Originally titled Why Men Fight : A Method Of Abolishing The International Duel], Ch. VIII : What We Can Do, p. 257
1910s
Context: It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. The State and Property are the great embodiments of possessiveness; it is for this reason that they are against life, and that they issue in war. Possession means taking or keeping some good thing which another is prevented from enjoying; creation means putting into the world a good thing which otherwise no one would be able to enjoy. Since the material goods of the world must be divided among the population, and since some men are by nature brigands, there must be defensive possession, which will be regulated, in a good community, by some principle of impersonal justice. But all this is only the preface to a good life or good political institutions, in which creation will altogether outweigh possession, and distributive justice will exist as an uninteresting matter of course.
The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession.

Men

“But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know, that you know what, maybe this isn't going to help, maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.

And those kinds of decisions between doctors and patients, and making sure that our incentives are not preventing those good decisions and that the doctors and hospitals all are aligned for patient care — that's something we can achieve.”

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

2009-06-24
Questions for the President: Prescription for America
ABC News
TV
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/story?id=7920012
2009

Moms, Decision, Help

“We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?
This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”

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

2015, Remarks after the Umpqua Community College shooting (October 2015)

Love, Death, Family, Law

“I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.”

Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French novelist and philosopher

Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue (1787)

God, Fear, Thinking, Evil

“It should not be hidden from you that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusaders alliance and their collaborators; to the extent that the Muslims blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, Philippines, Pattani, Ogaden, Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watch and hear, and not only didn't respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its' allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves. The people of Islam awakened and realized that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world.”

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

1990s, Declaration of War against the Americans (1996)

People, World, Suffering, Memory

“If Congress alters the law and directs me to replace on the coins the sentence in question the direction will be immediately put into effect; but I very earnestly trust that the religious sentiment of the country, the sprit of reverence in this country, will prevent any such action being taken.”

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

1900s, "In God we Trust" letter (1907)

Law, Question, Country

“Finally, it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others. The supreme difficulty in connection with developing the peace work of The Hague arises from the lack of any executive power, of any police power to enforce the decrees of the court. In any community of any size the authority of the courts rests upon actual or potential force: on the existence of a police, or on the knowledge that the able-bodied men of the country are both ready and willing to see that the decrees of judicial and legislative bodies are put into effect.”

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

1910s, Nobel lecture (1910)

Men, Peace, Communication, Knowledge

“Is it not proven beyond all dispute that there is no limit to the enormities which men will commit when they are once persuaded that they are keepers of other men's consciences? To spread religion by any means, and to crush heresy by all means is the practical inference from the doctrine that one man may control another's religion. Given the duty of a state to foster some one form of faith, and by the sure inductions of our nature slowly but certainly persecution will occur. To prevent for ever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out for ever.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Inquisition, 1868 The Sword and the Trowel http://www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/inq.htm

Men, World, Faith, Religion

“Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so excellent that, even when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses; because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element, this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits. But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Truth, Dreams, Lying, Fraud

“I refuse to accept the notion that we couldn’t have prevented some of those murders, and suicides, and kept more families whole. I know we won’t all agree on this issue. But it’s time to be honest — fewer gun safety laws don’t mean more freedom, they mean more fallen officers. They mean more grieving families, and more Americans terrified that they or their loved ones could be next.”

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

Obama Police Chiefs (10-27-2015) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-police-chiefs_us_562fa716e4b06317990f8af3?654mfgvi= <br class="br">2015

Love, Family, Law, Suicide

“We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don’t work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.
We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.”

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

2015, Remarks after the Umpqua Community College shooting (October 2015)

Death, Law, Way, Country

“Send me 300 francs; that sum will enable me to go to Paris. There, at least, one can cut a figure and surmount obstacles. Everything tells me I shall succeed. Will you prevent me from doing so for the want of 100 crowns?”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Letter to his uncle, Joseph Fesch (June 1791), as quoted in A Selection from the Letters and Despatches of the First Napoleon. With Explanatory Notes (1884) edited by D. A. Bingham, Vol. I, p. 24

“We cannot prevent equilibrium from producing its effects. We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.”

Jules Verne book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

On ne saurait empêcher l'équilibre de produire ses effets. On peut braver les lois humaines, mais non résister aux lois naturelles.
Part II, ch. XV: Accident or Incident?
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)

Law, Nature

“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

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Funeral Blues (1936)

Dogs, Silence

“The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population. No other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens; it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them.”

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

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population. No other kind can fight the battles of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens; it must possess American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of 'Let alone' which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two standpoints. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under it.

Men, War, Peace, Justice

“We must now take precautions to prevent you from being embarrassed by something in which the ignorant majority is at fault for lack of proper consideration, and so from supposing with them, that man has not been created truly good simply because he is able to do evil. … If you reconsider this matter carefully and force your mind to apply a more acute understanding to it, it will be revealed to you that man's status is better and higher for the very reason for which it is thought to be inferior: it is on this choice between two ways, on this freedom to choose either alternative, that the glory of the rational mind is based, it is in this that the whole honor of our nature consists, it is from this that its dignity is derived.”

Pelagius (360–420) British monk

Letter to Demetrias

Way, Understanding, Nature, Freedom

“At present, many of the ablest minds are trying to devise expedients for preventing a repetition of the awful conflict which is only theoretically ended and the duration and main issues of which I have correctly predicted in an article printed in the Sun of December 20, 1914. The proposed League is not a remedy but, on the contrary, in the opinion of a number of competent men, may bring about results just the opposite. It is particularly regrettable that a punitive policy was adopted in framing the terms of peace, because a few years hence, it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible, to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit. Any city, at a distance, whatsoever, from the enemy, can be destroyed by him and no power on earth can stop him from doing so.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Men, Peace, Sun, Fight

“Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels.”

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

Todo o romance é isso, desespero, intento frustrado de que o passado não seja coisa definitivamente perdida. Só não se acabou ainda de averiguar se é o romance que impede o homem de esquecer-se ou se é a impossibilidade do esquecimento que o leva a escrever romances.
Source: The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989), p. 47

Past, Forgetting

“Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

As quoted in Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1992) by Peace Pilgrim, p. 113.

War, Dead

“Freedom exalts power; and, as is always the collateral effect of increasing strength, tends to induce a spirit of liberality. Coercion stifles power, and engenders all selfish desires, and all the mean artifices of weakness. Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a portion of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 8

Beauty, Freedom, Selfishness

“I was thinking of preparing my palette and my brushes to resume work, but relapses and further bouts of pain prevented it. I'm not giving up that hope and am occupying myself with some major alterations in my studios and plans to perfect the garden [in Giverny ]. All this to show you that, with courage, I'm getting the upper hand.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

three months before Monet died
Quote from Monet's letter to Georges Clemenceau, Sept. 1926; as cited in: K.E. Sullivan. Monet: Discovering Art, Brockhampton press, London (2004), p. 79
1920 - 1926

Pain, Hope, Courage, Thinking

“For cruelty to animals, vegetarianism is the great thing to get rid of that. For the planet, to prevent depleting the water and the land and everything, it’s a great idea. And I think it’s a great thing for your health, and doctors nowadays agree with that. There are plenty of great books and organizations, so no matter where you are, there is someone to help you. That’s your first step, and I think your second step is just look in the supermarket for good vegetarian food, and I think it’s so much more readily available now.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Sir Paul McCartney and PETA VP Dan Mathews Reflect on Two Decades of Activism http://www.peta.org/features/paul-mccartney-interview/ (April 2005)

Health, Books, Food, Idea

“An infinite number of men will sell publicly and unhindered things of the very highest price, without leave from the Master of it; while it never was theirs nor in their power; and human justice will not prevent it.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

"Of Selling Paradise"
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

Men, Justice

“The first step to get this noble and manly steadiness, is… carefully keep children from frights of all kinds, when they are young. …Instances of such who in a weak timorous mind, have borne, all their whole lives through, the effects of a fright when they were young, are every where to be seen, and therefore as much as may be to be prevented.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 115
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Children

“Wisdom cannot prevent a fall, but may cushion it.”

Mason Cooley (1927–2002) American academic

City Aphorisms, Twelfth Selection (1993)

Wisdom

“In 1933, the Jhansi Heroes decided to participate in the Beighton Cup hockey tournament. My life’s ambition was to win the Beighton Cup, as I had always regarded this competition as the blue riband of Indian hockey. In my opinion it is perhaps the best organized hokey event in the country. Calcutta is indeed lucky that it has at least three of four first class hockey grounds on the maidan, and this is a great advantage to run a tournament on schedule instituted since 1895, this tournament had a non-stop run. World Wars I and II did not affect the tournament. Threats of Japanese bombs and actual bombings in Calcutta while the hockey season was on also did not prevent from the tournament from being held. That being said, it is sad to think that the tournament had to yield to the communal frenzy, which gripped the nation in 1946-47.”

Dhyan Chand (1905–1979) Indian field hockey player

While writing on the Beighton Cup held in 1952 and he was playing for the Jhansi Heroes cited in page 35
Quote, India and the Olympics

Life, War, World, Sadness

“Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, rather thrown away, five shillings, besides.
“Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.
“Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and three pence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.”
“Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.
“The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump. ‘It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.’
“Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience.
“For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.
“He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.
“He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.
“He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.
“He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money.””

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Money, Pain, People, Lie

“Science knows no boundaries, and efforts to create barriers – whether to keep new ideas within or to prevent new ones from entering from the outside – have universally proved harmful to progress.”

Sidney Drell (1926–2016) American physicist

in a tribute to Andrei Sakharov, Address at the National Academy of Science, November 13, 1988

Idea, Effort, Universe, Science

“I especially denounce the terrible mass murders, which I cannot understand … I never ordered any killing or tortures where I had the power to prevent such actions!”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

Göring's closing statement to the Nuremberg tribunal (31 August 1946); as quoted in Witness to Nuremberg (2006) by Richard Sonnenfeldt, p. 70

Understanding

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer results. We drink too much; smoke too much; spend too recklessly; laugh too little; drive too fast; get too angry; stay up too late; get up too tired; read too seldom; watch TV too much and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values; we fly in faster planes to arrive there quicker, to do less and return sooner; we sign more contracts only to realize fewer profits; we talk too much; love too seldom and lie too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things; we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice; we write more, but learn less; plan more, but accomplish less; we make faster planes, but longer lines; we learned to rush, but not to wait; we have more weapons, but less peace; higher incomes, but lower morals; more parties, but less fun; more food, but less appeasement; more acquaintances, but fewer friends; more effort, but less success. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; drive smaller cars that have bigger problems; build larger factories that produce less. We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, but short character; steep in profits, but shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure and less fun; higher postage, but slower mail; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces; these quick trips, disposable diapers, cartridge living, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies and pills that do everything from cheer, to prevent, quiet or kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stock room.”

Bob Moorehead

"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp <br class="br">Words Aptly Spoken (1995)

Love, Life, Men, Lie

“Rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, that is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and better suited to provoke than to prevent deformities.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Source: The Discovery of the Child (1948), Ch. 1

Soul

“It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, First Principles of Government (1795)

Men, Nature

“Of the complete biological inferiority of the negro there can be no question—he has anatomical features consistently varying from those of other stocks, & always in the direction of the lower primates... Equally inferior—& perhaps even more so—is the Australian black stock, which differs widely from the real negro... In dealing with these two black races, there is only one sound attitude for any other race (be it white, Indian, Malay, Polynesian, or Mongolian) to take—& that is to prevent admixture as completely & determinedly as it can be prevented, through the establishment of a colour-line & the rigid forcing of all mixed offspring below that line. I am in accord with the most vehement & vociferous Alabaman or Mississippian on that point … Other racial questions are wholly different in nature—involving wide variations unconnected with superiority or inferiority. Only an ignorant dolt would attempt to call a Chinese gentleman—heir to one of the greatest artistic & philosophic traditions in the world—an "inferior" of any sort... & yet there are potent reasons, based on wide physical, mental, & cultural differences, why great numbers of the Chinese ought not to mix into the Caucasian fabric, or vice versa. It is not that one race is any better than any other, but that their whole respective heritages are so antipodal as to make harmonious adjustment impossible. Members of one race can fit into another only through the complete eradication of their own background-influences—& even then the adjustment will always remain uneasy & imperfect if the newcomer's physical aspect froms a constant reminder of his outside origin. Therefore it is wise to discourage all mixtures of sharply differentiated races—though the color-line does not need to be drawn as strictly as in the case of the negro, since we know that a dash or two of Mongolian or Indian or Hindoo or some such blood will not actually injure a white stock biologically.... As a matter of fact, most of the psychological race-differences which strike us so prominently are cultural rather than biological. If one could take a Japanese infant, alter his features to the Anglo-Saxon type through plastic surgery, & place him with an American family in Boston for rearing—without telling him that he is not an American—the chances are that in 20 years the result would be a typical American youth with very few instincts to distinguish him from his pure Nordic college-mates. The same is true of other superior alien races including the Jew—although the Nazis persist in acting on a false biological conception. If they were wise in their campaign to get rid of Jewish cultural influences (& a great deal can be said for such a campaign, when the dominance of the Aryan tradition is threatened as in Germany & New York City), they would not emphasize the separatism of the Jew but would strive to make him give up his separate culture & lose himself in the German people. It wouldn't hurt Germany—or alter its essential physical type—to take in all the Jews it now has.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

However, that wouldn't work in Poland or New York City, where the Jews are of an inferior strain, & so numerous that they would essentially modify the physical type.
Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (22 November 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 77
Non-Fiction, Letters

People, Youth, World, Family

“The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted the provision, that "the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government." But if a State may lawfully go out of the Union, having done so it may also discard the republican form of government; so that to prevent its going out is an indispensable means to the end of maintaining the guaranty mentioned; and when an end is lawful and obligatory the indispensable means to it are also lawful and obligatory.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)

Law

“To the Youth in Europe and North America,
The recent events in France and similar ones in some other Western countries have convinced me to directly talk to you about them. I am addressing you, [the youth], not because I overlook your parents, rather it is because the future of your nations and countries will be in your hands; and also I find that the sense of quest for truth is more vigorous and attentive in your hearts.
I don’t address your politicians and statesmen either in this writing because I believe that they have consciously separated the route of politics from the path of righteousness and truth.
I would like to talk to you about Islam, particularly the image that is presented to you as Islam. Many attempts have been made over the past two decades, almost since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to place this great religion in the seat of a horrifying enemy. The provocation of a feeling of horror and hatred and its utilization has unfortunately a long record in the political history of the West.
Here, I don’t want to deal with the different phobias with which the Western nations have thus far been indoctrinated. A cursory review of recent critical studies of history would bring home to you the fact that the Western governments’ insincere and hypocritical treatment of other nations and cultures has been censured in new historiographies.
The histories of the United States and Europe are ashamed of slavery, embarrassed by the colonial period and chagrined at the oppression of people of color and non-Christians. Your researchers and historians are deeply ashamed of the bloodsheds wrought in the name of religion between the Catholics and Protestants or in the name of nationality and ethnicity during the First and Second World Wars. This approach is admirable.
By mentioning a fraction of this long list, I don’t want to reproach history; rather I would like you to ask your intellectuals as to why the public conscience in the West awakens and comes to its senses after a delay of several decades or centuries. Why should the revision of collective conscience apply to the distant past and not to the current problems? Why is it that attempts are made to prevent public awareness regarding an important issue such as the treatment of Islamic culture and thought?
You know well that humiliation and spreading hatred and illusionary fear of the “other” have been the common base of all those oppressive profiteers. Now, I would like you to ask yourself why the old policy of spreading “phobia” and hatred has targeted Islam and Muslims with an unprecedented intensity. Why does the power structure in the world want Islamic thought to be marginalized and remain latent? What concepts and values in Islam disturb the programs of the super powers and what interests are safeguarded in the shadow of distorting the image of Islam? Hence, my first request is: Study and research the incentives behind this widespread tarnishing of the image of Islam.
My second request is that in reaction to the flood of prejudgments and disinformation campaigns, try to gain a direct and firsthand knowledge of this religion. The right logic requires that you understand the nature and essence of what they are frightening you about and want you to keep away from.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

Message of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei To the Youth in Europe and North America http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2001, Khamenei.ir (January 21, 2015) <br class="br">2015

War, People, Truth, Youth

“A consciousness of the fact that war means practically total destruction is the reason, I think, for the rising tide to prevent what seems such a senseless procedure. I understand that it is perhaps difficult for some people, whose lives have been lived with a sense of the need for military development, to envisage the possibility of being no longer needed. But the average citizen is beginning to think more and more of the need to develop machinery to settle difficulties in the world without destruction or the use of atomic bombs.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

20 December 1961
My Day (1935–1962)

War, People, World, Understanding

“In such cases, moreover, it is well to remember that the criminal not merely sins against humanity in inexpiable and unpardonable fashion, but sins particularly against his own race, and does them a wrong far greater than any white man can possibly do them. Therefore, in such cases the colored people throughout the land should in every possible way show their belief that they, more than all others in the community, are horrified at the commission of such a crime and are peculiarly concerned in taking every possible measure to prevent its recurrence and to bring the criminal to immediate justice. The slightest lack of vigor either in denunciation of the crime or in bringing the criminal to justice is itself unpardonable.”

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

1900s, Letter to Winfield T. Durbin (1903)

People, Justice, Color, Way

“The great mass of society are far from being depraved; for if a large majority were criminal or inclined to break the laws, where would the force or power be to prevent or constrain them? And herein is the real blessing of civilization, because this happy result has its origin in her bosom, growing out of her very nature.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)