Category: Thought

Always drink upstream from the herd.

Will Rogers, in ‪The Friars Club Bible of Jokes, Pokes, Roasts, and Toasts‬ (2001), by Nina Colman, p. 316

I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live.

John Bright, from a speech in Birmingham (October 29, 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 274-275.

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

Epictetus,

Nothing increases the number of jobs so rapidly as labor-saving machinery, because it releases wants theretofore unknown, by permitting leisure.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

The truly honest man here and there to be found, is not only without thought of legal, religious, or social compulsion, when he discharges an equitable claim on him; but he is without thought of self-compulsion. He does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it; and is, indeed, impatient if anything prevents him from having the satisfaction of doing it.

Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics (1879), Ch. 7, “The Psychological View.”

“To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.”

Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia 1925.

The essential trait in the moral consciousness, is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings.

Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics (1879), Ch. 7, “The Psychological View.”

Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.

But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.