Quotes about road
page 14

Hillary Clinton photo

“It's not easy, it's not easy. And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I've had so many opportunities from this country, I just don't want to see us fall backwards - no. So - you know, this is very personal for me. It's not just political, it's not just public. I see what's happening, and we have to reverse it. And some people think elections are a game, they think it's like who's up or who's down. It's about our country, it's about our kids' futures, and it's really about all of us together. You know some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds. And we do it, each one of us, because we care about our country. But some of us are right and some of us are wrong, some of us are ready and some of us are not, some of us know what we will do to do on day one and some of haven't really thought that through enough. And so when we look at the array of problems we have and the potential for it getting - really spinning out of control, this is one of the most important elections America's ever faced. So as tired as I am - and I am - and as difficult as it is to try to kind of keep up with what I try to do on the road like occasionally exercise and try to eat right - it's tough when the easiest food is pizza - I just believe so strongly in who we are as a nation. So I'm going to do everything I can to make my case and, you know, then the voters get to decide.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

In response to the question, "How do you do it?" from Marianne Pernold The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010702954.html
Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

John Millington Synge photo
Anthony Trollope photo

“There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.”

Source: Doctor Thorne (1858), Ch. 18

“Mountains, solitude and the moon
until the journey's end?
The river holds the lost road of the sky;
the shape of eternity?”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Song lyrics, Amarantine (2005)

Lucy Maud Montgomery photo
Han-shan photo
John Mayer photo

“What I've learned in my life, it's a very interesting social study for me, to go back and forth between being the guy at home and being the guy on the road and being the guy in studio and being the guy in the interview. The environment around you has so much to do with your character, and when I'm home, my character really changes quite a bit. I become very domesticated, it becomes riding my bike, and the music thing — the music thing doesn't leave but it's kind of less put upon me by other people as a musician.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

On whether or not he misses being home with friends and family when he is on tour.
Savino, Jessi, et al (2007) "John Mayer talks life on the road, latest album" http://media.www.nu-news.com/media/storage/paper600/news/2007/02/14/TheInside/John-Mayer.Talks.Life.On.The.Road.Latest.Album-2718892.shtml NU-News.com (accessed February 14, 2007)

George W. Bush photo
Norman Angell photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“The question therefore now comes forward, To what other objects shall these surpluses be appropriated, and the whole surplus of impost, after the entire discharge of the public debt, and during those intervals when the purposes of war shall not call for them? Shall we suppress the impost and give that advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures? On a few articles of more general and necessary use the suppression in due season will doubtless be right, but the great mass of the articles on which impost is paid are foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them.
Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of Federal powers. By these operations new channels of communications will be opened between the States, the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties. Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal, but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which though rarely called for are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country and some of them to its preservation.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Thomas Jefferson's Sixth State of the Union Address (2 December 1806). Advising the origination of an annual fund to be spent through new constitutional powers (by new amendments) from projected surplus revenue.
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

“Starting with the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, this flattering of Muslims by praising Islam culminated in Mahatma Gandhi’s sarva-dharma-samabhava - the opiate which lulled the Hindus into a deep slumber such as they had never known vis-à-vis Muslim aggression…. Anyone who questioned the pious proposition that the Quran was as good as the Vedas and the Puranas, ran the risk of being nailed down as an “enemy of communal harmony”….. That part of the “Muslim minority” which had voted for Pakistan but had chosen to stay in India, restarted the old game when India was proclaimed a secular state pledged to freedom of propagation for all religions. It revived its tried and tested trick of masquerading as a “poor and persecuted minority”. It cooked up any number of Pirpur Reports. The wail went up that the “lives, liberties and honour of the Muslims were not safe” in India, in spite of India’s “secular pretensions”. At the same time, street riots were staged on every possible pretext. The “communal situation” started becoming critical once again. …. And once again, the political leadership came out with a make-belief. The big-wigs from all political parties were collected in a “National Integration Council”. It was pointed out by the leftist professors that the major cause of “communal trouble” was the “bad habit” of living in the past on the part of “our people”. Most of the politicians knew no history and no religion for that matter. They all agreed with one voice that Indian history, particularly that of the “medieval Muslim period”, should be re-written. That, they pleaded, was the royal road to “national integration.””

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Dora Russell photo

“Marriage laws, the police, armies and navies are the mark of human incompetence. We have not yet found the right road to conquering ourselves and our environment.”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

Source: The Right to Be Happy (1927), p. 241

“Before I traveled my road I was my road.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Antes de recorrer mi camino yo era mi camino.
Voces (1943)

Anastacia photo
Annie Besant photo
Ahmed Shah Durrani photo

“Next morning the sun revealed a horrid spectacle on the vast plain south of PAnipat. On the actual field of the combat thirty-one distinct heaps of the slain were counted, the number of bodies in each ranging from 500 upwards to 1000 and in four up to 1500 a rough total of 28,000. In addition to these, the ditch round the Maratha camp was full of dead bodies, partly the victims of disease and famine during the long siege and partly wounded men who had crawled out of the fighting to die there. West and south of PAnipat city, the jungle and the road in the line of MarAtha retreat were littered with the remains of those who had fallen unresisting in the relentless DurrAni pursuit or from hunger and exhaustion. Their number - probably three-fourths non-combatants and one-fourth soldiers - could not have been far short of the vast total of those slain in the battlefield. 'The hundreds who lay down wounded, perished from the severity of the cold.'….
'After the havoc of combat followed massacre in cold blood. Several hundreds of MarAthas had hidden themselves in the hostile city of PAnipat through folly or helplessness; and these were hunted out next day and put to the sword. According to one plausible account, the sons of Abdus Samad Khan and Mian Qutb received the DurrAni king's permission to avenge their father's death by an indiscriminate massacre of the MarAthas for one day, and in this way nearly nine thousand men perished; these were evidently non-combatants. The eyewitness Kashiraj Pandit thus describes the scene: 'Every Durrani soldier brought away a hundred or two of prisoners and slew them in the outskirts of their camp, crying out, When I started from our country, my mother, father, sister and wife told me to slay so may kafirs for their sake after we had gained the victory in this holy war, so that the religious merit of this act [of infidel slaying] might accrue to them. In this way, thousands of soldiers and other persons were massacred. In the Shah's camp, except the quarters of himself and his nobles, every tent had a heap of severed heads before it. One may say that it was verily doomsday for the MarAtha people.'….
The booty captured within the entrenchment was beyond calculation and the regiments of Khans [i. e. 8000 troopers of AbdAli clansmen] did not, as far as possible, allow other troops like the IrAnis and the TurAnis to share in the plunder; they took possession of everything themselves, but sold to the Indian soldiers handsome Brahman women for one tuman and good horses for two tumans each.' The Deccani prisoners, male and female reduced to slavery by the victorious army numbered 22,000, many of them being the sons and other relatives of the sardArs or middle class men. Among them 'rose-limbed slave girls' are mentioned.' Besides these 22,000 unhappy captives, some four hundred officers and 6000 men fled for refuge to ShujA-ud-daulah's camp, and were sent back to the Deccan with monetary help by that nawab, at the request of his Hindu officers. The total loss of the MarAthas after the battle is put at 50,000 horses, captured either by the AfghAn army or the villagers along the route of flight, two hundred thousand draught cattle, some thousands of camels, five hundred elephants, besides cash and jewellery. 'Every trooper of the Shah brought away ten, and sometimes twenty camels laden with money. The captured horses were beyond count but none of them was of value; they came like droves of sheep in their thousands.”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.210-11

Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“Mr. Hoover, if you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you and you have to battle with only one of them.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

As recounted by Herbert Hoover ; from Coolidge: An American Enigma, Robert Sobel, Regnery Publishing (2000), p. 242 : ISBN 0895262479, 9780895262479
1920s

Fritz Todt photo
Van Morrison photo
Propertius photo

“I am climbing a difficult road; but the glory gives me strength.”
Magnum iter ascendo; sed dat mihi gloria vires

Propertius (-47–-16 BC) Latin elegiac poet

IV. 10. 3
Elegies

Spider Robinson photo
Jeane Kirkpatrick photo

“Decades, if not centuries are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. (for democracy) In Britain, the road to (democratic government) took seven centuries to traverse.”

Jeane Kirkpatrick (1926–2006) American diplomat and Presidential advisor

Dictatorship and Double Standards, Commentary (New York, Nov. 1979), quoted in The Economist , 23 December 2006:131

Bernie Sanders photo
Lucy Stone photo

“We have every reason to rejoice when there are so many gains and when favorable conditions abound on every hand. The end is not yet in sight, but it can not be far away. The road before us is shorter than the road behind.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

A letter read by her husband, suffragist Henry Blackwell, to the twenty-fifth annual convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association (1893); as quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 4 (1902) by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper

Michael Porter Jr. photo
Alfred Hitchcock photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“Speak to any small man of a high, majestic Reformation, of a high majestic Luther; and forthwith he sets about “accounting” for it; how the “circumstances of the time” called for such a character, and found him, we suppose, standing girt and road-ready, to do its errand; how the “circumstances of the time” created, fashioned, floated him quietly along into the result; how, in short, this small man, had he been there, could have per formed the like himself! For it is the “force of circumstances” that does everything; the force of one man can do nothing. Now all this is grounded on little more than a metaphor. We figure Society as a “Machine,” and that mind is opposed to mind, as body is to body; whereby two, or at most ten, little minds must be stronger than one great mind. Notable absurdity! For the plain truth, very plain, we think is, that minds are opposed to minds in quite a different way; and one man that has a higher Wisdom, a hitherto unknown spiritual Truth in him, is stronger, not than ten men that have it not, or than ten thousand, but than all men that have it not; and stands among them with a quite ethereal, angelic power, as with a sword out of Heaven's own armory, sky-tempered, which no buckler, and no tower of brass, will finally withstand.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Jefferson Davis photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
Tarkan photo

“No matter who you are or where you're from somewhere down the road you're gonna need someone.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

Touch
Come Closer (2006)

Paul McCartney photo

“The long and winding road that leads to your door
Will never disappear,
I've seen that road before it always leads me here,
Leads me to your door.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

"The Long and Winding Road" from Let It Be (1970)
Lyrics, The Beatles

Robert Sheckley photo
Edmund Blunden photo

“There is a road that turning always
Cuts off the country of Again.
Archers stand there on every side
And as it runs time's deer is slain
And lies where it has lain.”

Edwin Muir (1887–1959) British poet, novelist and translator

"The Road" http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/muire-journeysandplaces/muire-journeysandplaces-00-h.html#The_Road, Journeys and Places (1937)

John Fante photo
Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo

“[ Bazille.. ] had not died romantically, galloping over a Delacroix' battlefield…. but stupidly, during the retreat, on a muddy road…. that pure-hearted gentle knight.. [quote, shortly after 1870, on the death of Bazille].”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

as cited in Renoir, my Father, Jean Renoir; p. 124; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 83 + 94
1870's

Josip Broz Tito photo

“No country of people's democracy has so many nationalities as this country has. Only in Czechoslovakia do there exist two kindred nationalities, while in some of the other countries there are only minorities. Consequently in these countries of people's democracy there has been no need to settle such serious problems as we have had to settle here. With them the road to socialism is less complicated than is the case here. With them the basic factor is the class issue, with us it is both the nationalities and the class issue. The reason why we were able to settle the nationalities question so thoroughly is to be found in the fact that it had begun to be settled in a revolutionary way in the course of the Liberation War, in which all the nationalities in the country participated, in which every national group made its contribution to the general effort of liberation from the occupier according to its capabilities. Neither the Macedonians nor any other national group which until then had been oppressed obtained their national liberation by decree. They fought for their national liberation with rifle in hand. The role of the Communist Party lay in the first place in the fact that it led that struggle, which was a guarantee that after the war the national question would be settled decisively in the way the communists had conceived long before the war and during the war. The role of the Communist Party in this respect today, in the phase of building socialism, lies in making the positive national factors a stimulus to, not a brake on, the development of socialism in our country. The role of the Communist Party today lies in the necessity for keeping a sharp lookout to see that national chauvinism does not appear and develop among any of the nationalities. The Communist Party must always endeavour, and does endeavour, to ensure that all the negative phenomena of nationalism disappear and that people are educated in the spirit of internationalism. What are the phenomena of nationalism? Here are some of them: 1) National egoism, from which many other negative traits of nationalism are derived, as for example — a desire for foreign conquest, a desire to oppress other nations, a desire to impose economic exploitation upon other nations, and so on; 2) national-chauvinism which is also a source of many other negative traits of nationalism, as for example national hatred, the disparagement of other nations, the disparagement of their history, culture, and scientific activities and scientific achievements, and so on, the glorification of developments in their own history that were negative and which from our Marxist point of view are considered negative. And what are these negative things? Wars of conquest are negative, the subjugation and oppression of other nations is negative, economic exploitation is negative, colonial enslavement is negative, and so on. All these things are accounted negative by Marxism and condemned. All these phenomena of the past can, it is true, be explained, but from our point of view they can never be justified. In a socialist society such phenomena must and will disappear. In the old Yugoslavia national oppression by the great-Serb capitalist clique meant strengthening the economic exploitation of the oppressed peoples. This is the inevitable fate of all who suffer from national oppression. In the new, socialist Yugoslavia the existing equality of rights for all nationalities has made it impossible for one national group to impose economic exploitation upon another. That is because hegemony of one national group over another no longer exists in this country. Any such hegemony must inevitably bring with it, to some degree or other, in one form or another, economic exploitation; and that would be contrary to the principles upon which socialism rests. Only economic, political, cultural, and universal equality of rights can make it possible for us to grow in strength in these tremendous endeavours of our community.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Concerning the National Question and Social Patriotism http://www.marxists.org/archive/tito/1948/11/26.htm Speech held at the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, November 26, 1948, Ljubljana
Speeches

Aldo Leopold photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Dennis Lehane photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo

“where the noon is a charged battery, and evening’s a visionary gloom’ ( St Cyril Road, Bombay )”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

St Cyril Road and Other Poems (2005)

Orrin H. Pilkey photo
Warren Farrell photo
Thomas Chandler Haliburton photo

“It seems to me, all created critters look down on each other. The British and French look down on the Yankees, and colonists look down upon niggers and Indians, while we look down upon them all. It's the way of the world, I do suppose; but the road ain't a pleasant one.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

Sam Slick, in Sam Slick's wise saws and modern instances: or, What he said, did, or invented, Volumen 1 https://archive.org/details/samslickswisesaw00haliuoft (1853), p. 185, Hurst and Blackett.

Martin Firrell photo

“The road to freedom is bordered with sunflowers.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

after Willa Cather, in her novel "My Antonia".
"The Question Mark Inside" (2008)

Robert Musil photo

“Questions and answers click into each other like cogs of a machine. Each person has nothing but quite definite tasks. The various professions are concentrated at definite places. One eats while in motion. Amusements are concentrated in other parts of the city. And elsewhere again are the towers to which one returns and finds wife, family, gramophone, and soul. Tension and relaxation, activity and love are meticulously kept separate in time and are weighed out according to formulae arrived at in extensive laboratory work. If during any of these activities one runs up against a difficulty, one simply drops the whole thing; for one will find another thing or perhaps, later on, a better way, or someone else will find the way that one has missed. It does not matter in the least, but nothing wastes so much communal energy as the presumption that one is called upon not to let go of a definite personal aim. In a community with energies constantly flowing through it, every road leads to a good goal, if one does not spend too much time hesitating and thinking it over. The targets are set up at a short distance, but life is short too, and in this way one gets a maximum of achievement out of it. And man needs no more for his happiness; for what one achieves is what moulds the spirit, whereas what one wants, without fulfillment, only warps it. So far as happiness is concerned it matters very little what one wants; the main thing is that one should get it. Besides, zoology makes it clear that a sum of reduced individuals may very well form a totality of genius.”

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

J. R. D. Tata photo
Walther Funk photo
David Lloyd George photo

“The Budget…is introduced not merely for the purpose of raising barren taxes, but taxes that are fertile, taxes that will bring forth fruit—the security of the country which is paramount in the minds of all. The provision for the aged and deserving poor—was it not time something was done? It is rather a shame for a rich country like ours—probably the richest in the world, if not the richest the world has ever seen—should allow those who have toiled all their days to end in penury and possibly starvation. It is rather hard that an old workman should have to find his way to the gates of the tomb, bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns of poverty. We cut a new path for him—an easier one, a pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn. We are raising money to pay for the new road—aye, and to widen it, so that 200,000 paupers shall be able to join in the march. There are so many in the country blessed by Providence with great wealth, and if there are amongst them men who grudge out of their riches a fair contribution towards the less fortunate of their fellow-countrymen they are very shabby rich men.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 145.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Bruce Springsteen photo
Aubrey Beardsley photo
Michelle Lambert photo
Michael Moorcock photo
William D. Nordhaus photo
Nate Diaz photo

“It's been a long road and I'm still going strong.”

Nate Diaz (1985) American mixed martial artist

As quoted in "Nate Diaz discusses win over Conor McGregor" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg6NkqFPOyY (5 March 2016), UFC on FOX, FOX

Paulo Freire photo

“The road to revolution involves openness to the people, not imperviousness to them; it involves communion with the people, not mistrust.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 4, on revolution

Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Stanisław Lem photo
Mikha'il Na'ima photo
Natalie Merchant photo
Basil Hume photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Edgar Degas photo

“In our beginnings, Fantin, Whistler and I were all on the same road, the road from Holland [Dutch 17th century painters]”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote of Degas, later recalled by Paul Poujaud (written in his letter to Marcel Guérin, 11 July 1936); as quoted by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 54
Degas is recalling his early works of the 1860's
quotes, undated

Daniel McCallum photo
Tom Tancredo photo

“I trust those conversions when they happen on the road to Damascus and not on the road to Des Moines.”

Tom Tancredo (1945) American politician

On Republican candidates' changes in position during the campaign for the 2008 U.S. Presidency, alluding to political bellwether state Iowa
[Liz, Sidoti, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/16/ap/politics/main2812292.shtml, Analysis: Second GOP debate contentious, CBSNews.com, 16 May 2007, 2007-05-16]

Gordon Brown photo

“There are as many Scottish roads to Socialism as there are predictions of Britain's economic doom - but most of them demand three things: a coherent plan for an extension of democracy and control in society and industry which sees every reform as a means to creating a socialist society; a harnessing of the forces for industrial and community self-management within a political movement; and a massive programme of education by the Labour Movement as a whole.

Gramsci's relevance to Scotland today is in his emphasis that in a society which is both mature and complex, where the total social and economic processes are geared to maintaining the production of goods and services (and the reproduction of the conditions of production), then the transition to socialism must be made by the majority of the people themselves and a socialist society must be created within the womb of existing society and prefigured in the movements for democracy at the grass roots. Socialists must neither place their faith in an Armageddon or of capitalist collapse nor in nationalisation alone. For the Jacobin notion of a vanguard making revolution on behalf of working people relates to a backward society (and prefigures an authoritarian and bureaucratic state), then the complexity of modern society requires a far reaching movement of people and existing conditions and as a co-ordinator for the assertion of social priorities by people at a community level and control by producers at an industrial level. In such a way political power will become a synthesis of – not a substitute for – community and industrial life.

This requires from the Labour Movement in Scotland today a postive commitment to creating a socialist society, a coherant strategy with rhythm and modality to each reform to cancel the logic of capitalism and a programme of immediate aims which leads out of one social order into another. Such a social reorganisation - a phased extension of public control under workers' sustained and enlarged, would in EP Thompson's words lead to "a crisis not of despair and disintegration but a crisis in which the necessity for a peaceful revolutionary transition to an alternative socialist logic became daily more evident."”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Introduction to "The Red Paper On Scotland", 1975.

Ambrose Bierce photo
Dimitris Lyacos photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“There are men who cry out, 'We must sacrifice'. Well, let us rather ask them: Who will they sacrifice? Are they going to sacrifice the children who seek the learning, or the sick who need medical care, or the families who dwell in squalor now brightened by the hope of home? Will they sacrifice opportunity for the distressed, the beauty of our land, the hope of our poor? Time may require further sacrifices. And if it does, then we will make them. But we will not heed those who wring it from the hopes of the unfortunate here in a land of plenty. I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam. But if there are some who do not believe this, then, in the name of justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the fullness of our blessing, rather than try to strip it from the hands of those that are most in need. And let no one think that the unfortunate and the oppressed of this land sit stifled and alone in their hope tonight. Hundreds of their servants and their protectors sit before me tonight here in this great chamber. The Great Society leads us along three roads—growth and justice and liberation. First is growth—the national prosperity which supports the well-being of our people and which provides the tools of our progress. I can report to you tonight what you have seen for yourselves already—in every city and countryside. This nation is flourishing. Workers are making more money than ever—with after-tax income in the past five years up 33 percent; in the last year alone, up 8 percent. More people are working than ever before in our history—an increase last year of two and a half million jobs. Corporations have greater after-tax earnings than ever in history. For the past five years those earnings have been up over 65 percent, and last year alone they had a rise of 20 percent. Average farm income is higher than ever. Over the past five years it is up 40 percent, and over the past year it is up 22 percent alone.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Paul LePage photo
B.K.S. Iyengar photo
Ben Kowalewicz photo

“You get bored on the road and even a bottle, of water can be fun, if you're bored enough.”

Ben Kowalewicz (1975) musician

From "The Diary of Billy Talent":

Sofia Samatar photo

““A book,” says Vandos of Ur-Amakir, “is a fortress, a place of weeping, the key to a desert, a river that has no bridge, a garden of spears.” Fanlewas the Wise, the great theologian of Avalei, writes that Kuidva, the God of Words, is “a taskmaster with a lead whip.” Tala of Yenith is said to have kept her books in an iron chest that could not be opened in her presence, else she would lie on the floor, shrieking. She wrote: “Within the pages there are fires, which can rise up, singe the hair, and make the eyelids sting.” Ravhathos called the life of the poet “the fair and fatal road, of which even the dust and stones are dear to my heart,” and cautioned that those who spend long hours engaged in reading or writing should not be spoken to for seven hours afterward. “For they have gone into the Pit, into which they descend on Slopes of Fire, but when they rise they climb on a Ladder of Stone.” Hothra of Ur-Brome said that his books were “dearer than father or mother,” a sentiment echoed by thousands of other Olondrians through the ages, such as Elathuid the Voyager, who explored the Nissian coast and wrote: “I sat down in the wilderness with my books, and wept for joy.” And the mystic Leiya Tevorova, that brave and unfathomable soul, years before she met her tragic death by water, wrote: “When they put me into the Cold, above the white Lake, in the Loathsome Tower, and when Winter came with its cruel, hard, fierce, dark, sharp and horrible Spirit, my only solace was in my Books, wherein I walked like a Child, or shone in the Dark like a Moth which has its back to a sparkling Fire.””

Source: A Stranger in Olondria (2013), Chapter 3, “Doorways” (p. 19; the first sentence is echoed on p. 273)

Adam Smith photo

“The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article I, p. 786 (See also.. Public-private partnerships).

Frank Buchman photo

“There is no road to the land without roads.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

Aphorism #99
Interglacial (2004)

Jordan Peterson photo
Kingoro Hashimoto photo

“Follow the road behind the Emperor. We must build the world for Japan's sake, heaven ordered Japan to achieve this great mission.”

Kingoro Hashimoto (1890–1957) officer of Imperial Japanese Army and politician

Quoted in "The China Monthly Review" - Page 47 - East Asia - 1917

John Buchan photo
Seth Lloyd photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Freeman Dyson photo

“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Disturbing the Universe (1979)
Context: If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives. <!-- Pt. 1, Ch. 1

Alan Watts photo
Max Born photo

“I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed.”

Max Born (1882–1970) physicist

Experiment and Theory in Physics (1943), p. 44
Context: I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed. We do not find signposts at crossroads, but our own scouts erect them, to help the rest.

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby.”

The Language of the Night (1979)
Context: I have never found anywhere, in the domain of art, that you don't have to walk to. (There is quite an array of jets, buses and hacks which you can ride to Success; but that is a different destination.) It is a pretty wild country. There are, of course, roads. Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction — you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart.

Helen Thomas photo
Louis Riel photo

“I know that through the grace of God I am the founder of Manitoba; I know that though I have no open road for my influence, I have big influence concentrated, as a big amount of vapour in an engine.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

Address to Grand Jury (1885)
Context: I know that through the grace of God I am the founder of Manitoba; I know that though I have no open road for my influence, I have big influence concentrated, as a big amount of vapour in an engine. I believe by what I suffered for 15 years, by what I have done for Manitoba and the people of the North-West that my words are worth something, if I give offence I do not speak to insult. Yes, you are the pioneers of civilization, the Whites are the pioneers of civilization, but they bring among the Indians demoralization. Do not be offended ladies, do not be offended. Here are the men that can cure that evil, and if at times I have been strong against my true friends and Fathers, the Reverend Priests of the Saskatchewan, it is because my convictions are strong. There have been witnesses to show that immediately after great patience, I could come back to the respect I have for them.

Alessandro Manzoni photo

“But what is history, Don Ferrante would often say, without politics? A guide who walks on and on with no one following to learn the road, so that his every step is wasted; just as politics without history is like a man who walks along without a guide.”

Ma cos'è mai la storia, diceva spesso don Ferrante, senza la politica? Una guida che cammina, cammina, con nessuno dietro che impari la strada, e per conseguenza butta via i suoi passi; come la politica senza la storia è uno che cammina senza guida.
Variant translation:
"But," said he often, "what is history without politics? a guide who conducts without teaching any one the way; as politics without history, is a man without a guide to conduct him."
Richard Bentley translation (1834)
Source: The Betrothed (1827; 1842), Ch. 27, p. 374

Robert H. Jackson photo
Ron Paul photo

“A grand absurdity, a great deception, a delusion of momentous proportions based on preposterous notions and on ideas whose time should never have come. Simplicity, grossly distorted and complicated. Insanity, passed off as logic. Grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff. Evil described as virtue. Ignorance pawned off as wisdom. Destruction and impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism. Violence, the tool of change. Preventive wars used as a road to peace. Tolerance delivered by government guns. Reactionary views in the guise of progress. An empire replacing the republic. Slavery sold as liberty. Excellence and virtue traded for mediocrity. Socialism to save capitalism. A government out of control, unrestrained by the constitution, the rule of law or morality. Bickering over petty politics as we descend into chaos.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Is this reality or just a bad dream? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdXh6ASMfpc (19 May 2009)
2000s, 2006-2009
Context: The title to my special order tonight is 'Current Conditions or Just a Bad Dream'.
Could it all be a bad dream or a nightmare? Is it my imagination or have we lost our minds? It's surreal, it's just not believable. A grand absurdity, a great deception, a delusion of momentous proportions based on preposterous notions and on ideas whose time should never have come. Simplicity, grossly distorted and complicated. Insanity, passed off as logic. Grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff. Evil described as virtue. Ignorance pawned off as wisdom. Destruction and impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism. Violence, the tool of change. Preventive wars used as a road to peace. Tolerance delivered by government guns. Reactionary views in the guise of progress. An empire replacing the republic. Slavery sold as liberty. Excellence and virtue traded for mediocrity. Socialism to save capitalism. A government out of control, unrestrained by the constitution, the rule of law or morality. Bickering over petty politics as we descend into chaos. The philosophy that destroys us is not even defined.
We have broken from reality a psychotic nation. Ignorance with a pretense of knowledge replacing wisdom. Money does not grow on trees, nor does prosperity come from a government printing press or escalating deficits. We are now in the midst of unlimited spending of the people's money. Exorbitant taxation, deficits of trillions of dollars spent on a failed welfare-warfare system. An epidemic of cronyism. Unlimited supplies of paper money equated with wealth. A central bank that deliberately destroys the value of the currency in secrecy, without restraint, without nary a whimper, yet cheered on by the pseudo-capitalists of Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, and Detroit.
We police our world empire with troops on 700 bases and in 130 countries around the world. A dangerous war now spreads throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Thousands of innocent people being killed as we become known as the torturers of the 21st century. We assume that by keeping the already known torture pictures from the public's eye, we will be remembered only as a generous and good people. If our enemies want to attack us only because we are free and rich, proof of torture would be irrelevant. The sad part of all this is that we have forgotten what made America great, good and prosperous. We need to quickly refresh our memories and once again reinvigorate our love, understanding, and confidence in liberty. The status quo cannot be maintained considering the current conditions. Violence and lost liberty will result without some revolutionary thinking. We must escape from the madness of crowds now gathering.
The good news is that reversal is achievable through peaceful and intellectual means, and fortunately the number of those who care are growing exponentially. Of course it could all be a bad dream, a nightmare, and that I'm seriously mistaken, overreacting, and that my worries are unfounded. I hope so. But just in case, we ought to prepare ourselves for revolutionary changes in the not-too-distant future.
I yield back the balance of my time.