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The Words I Live By
Cool Quotes

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"While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty."

-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes
(1862-1948) former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
"And this I must fight against: any idea, religion or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system."

-- John Steinbeck
(1902-1968) Author
Source: East of Eden, 1952
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation"
-Oscar Wilde
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
-- George Orwell
[Eric Arthur Blair] (1903-1950) British author
"I hate a roman called Status Quo"
-Fahrenheit 451
"I may not agree with what you say, but to your death I will defend your right to say it."
-- Voltaire
[François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778)
"By doubting we come to inquiry, and by inquiring we percieve the truth"
-Peter Abelard
"The pen is mightier than the sword, and also considerably more easy to write with"
"If you think you're too small to make a difference, you haven't been in bed with a mosquito."


-- Anita Roddick
"I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give."

-- Thomas Jefferson
"Knowledge is power, and i plan to be formidably armed"
Thanks to Niamh for this one -- she wrote it in my yearbook
"To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying 'Amen' to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive."

-- Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850 - 1895)
"Those who cannot remeber history are doomed to repeat it"
- George Santayana
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and  intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
-Galileo Galilei
"To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave."

-- Frederick Douglass
[Frederick Baily] (1818-1895), escaped slave, Abolitionist, author, editor of the North Star and later the New National Era
"Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read. Forget I mentioned it... Rise for the flag salute."

-- Frank Zappa
(1940-1993), Musician
"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason."

-- Sir John Harrington
(1561-1612) English courtier, wit, poet and satirist Source: Epigrams, Book iv. Ep. 5.