User:Sherurcij/Quotes

"I quit not my hold on the skirt of thy garmant though thou mayst verily smite me with a sharp sword. Besides thee, I have neither asylum nor defence; if I am to flee, I must take refuge with thee."
 * The Gulistan, Chapter V. by Author:Sa'di

"Happy the youth who sinks to rest With all his country's honors blest."

[WHF Lee] objected to the phrase too often used - South as well as North - that the Confederates fought for what they thought was right. They fought for what they knew was right. They, like the Greeks, fought for home, the graves of their sires, and their native land.

"That American beer will be the death of me! I wonder what they put in it to give it that gassy taste"
 * A Book of Burlesques, 1916

Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't, they'd be married too.

It is true that if a person drinks a little alcohol he will feel a burning in the throat, and presently a glowing heat on the skin. The alcohol has made the hot blood rush into the tiny tubes near the skin and he thinks it has warmed him. But if all this heat comes to the skin, the cold air has a chance to carry away more than usual. In a very little time, the drinker will be colder than before, though he may not realise it.
 * Health Reader, 1893 (Halifax)

...voters have no possibility of acquiring the encyclopaedic knowledge necessary to form independent judgments on the questions that come before the Imperial Parliament. They have their living to make, whether as colliers, grocers or unskilled labourers, as physicians, engineers or bankers; and therefore ignorance, bearing with it no stigma or reproach, is the necessary condition of the great mass of electors...only specialists within gtheir own limited spheres of thought and labour are competent to decide on the wisdom or folly of legislative measures.

In these circumstances, it is doubly deplorable that candidates for election should mould "the will of the people" with half-truths or deliberate misstatements, or should divert attention from wider issues by harping on the immediate gain to be reaped by the individual voter. Ignorant multitudes know the bitterness of their own needs, but know nothing of their causes; and but little of the difficulties and dnagers that surround all suggested methods for relieving them. They can by no means be trusted to select the alternative that is least likely to inflict injustice on individuals...if left to their own guidance, they will take the straightest and most wasteful course to the immediate satisfaction of their wants.
 * The New Democracy and the Constitution, William Sharp McKechnie, 1912

Whether any intelligence does much good or actually enhances a country's security is doubtful. After all, despite the success of Mossad, Israel still lives in a perpetual state of fear and terrorism. But the intelligence game is now an international affair where winning and point-scoring is the most important thing. No one dares ask whether any of it is worthwhile or could be done more cheaply. The king must not be seen without his clothes. James Rusbridger, The Intelligence Game

A too great inattention to past occurrences retards and bewilders our judgment in every thing; while on the contrary, by comparing what is past with what is present, we frequently hit on the true charactrer of both, and become wise with very little trouble. Thomas Paine, 1777.