Never, ever go near power. Don’t become friends with anyone who has real power. It’s dangerous.
Quoted by Christiane Kubrick, in “After Kubrick,” The Guardian (August 18, 2010). See also “The Shining — Kubrick’s Gold Story,” Part Two, by Rob Ager.
It never ought to be forgotten, that, in every country, there is ‘a Few,’ and there is ‘a Many’; that in all countries in which the government is not very good, the interest of ‘the Few’ prevails over the interest of ‘the Many,’ and is promoted at their expence. ‘The Few’ is the part that governs; ‘the Many’ the part that is governed.
“Apply reason to difficulties; harsh circumstances can be softened, narrow limits can be widened, and burdensome things can be made to press less severely on those who bear them cleverly.”
“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.”
“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”
We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
L’homme est libre au moment qu’il veut l’être.
Man is free at the instant he wants to be.
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694 – 1778), Brutus, act II, scene I (1730).
Voyager upon life’s sea:—
To yourself be true,
And whate’er your lot may be,
Paddle your own canoe.
There is a scale in the meaning of the word socialist. In France it means about the same thing as a communist, when one uses plain language. When one uses the language of Monsieur Drumont, it means a Jew. In England a socialist is equal to a French conservative republican. In America it means a thief. In Germany it means an ingenious individual of restricted financial resources, who generally fails to blow up some important personage with wet dynamite. In Italy a socialist is an anarchist pure and simple, who wishes to destroy everything existing for the sake of dividing a wealth which does not exist at all. It also means a young man who orders a glass of water and a toothpick at a cafe, and is able to talk politics for a considerable time on this slender nourishment.
Francis Marion Crawford, Marzio’s Crucifix (1887).