Category: Thought

With most men who have moulded, hacked, and chiselled the world into history, to think has been to act.

Francis Marion Crawford, The Novel: What It Is (1893), p. 93.

You know, every election cycle we talk about ‘this is the most election of our lifetime’ — Lawrence, this one is.

Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States, talking to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday’s Last Word.

Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold.

Theodore Parker, A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion (1842).

A weak man has doubts before a decision, a strong man has them afterwards.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most.

Theodore Parker, as quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers’ Wisdom (2007) by Erin Gruwell and Frank McCourt, p. 496.

Europe was a heap of swords piled as delicately as jackstraws; one could not be pulled out without moving the others.

Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August, Chapter 2, “Let the Last Man on the Right Brush the Channel with His Sleeve” (p. 22).

There is what I call the American idea. I so name it, because it seems to me to lie at the basis of all our truly original, distinctive, and American institutions. It is itself a complex idea, composed of three subordinate and more simple ideas, namely: The idea that all men have unalienable rights; that in respect thereof, all men are created equal; and that government is to be established and sustained for the purpose of giving every man an opportunity for the enjoyment and development of all these unalienable rights. This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government after the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness’ sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom.

Theodore Parker, “The American Idea,” a speech at New England Anti-Slavery Convention, Boston (May 29, 1850).

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Of all liars, the smoothest and most convincing is memory.

Harlan Ellison, The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay.