Quotations
Used in the 'WMail' Newsletter
and the Dateline Chamesa blog

Alphabetical by Author

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After WMail Issue #72 in October 2007, essays & quotations & news are being posted to the
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Authors: Last Names Beginning With 'A'

baseball great Hank Aaron
“It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.”  {blog 8/2013 & 7/2022}

eco-activist Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey [1927-89]
Edward Abbey Quotations Page at Working Minds
Edward Abbey Page at 'Readers of The Purple Sage' Western Bookstore

basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
“There are always people who think [that] they have a hilarious height joke [that] you haven't heard before.”  {blog 4/2016}

Bella Abzug [1920-98]
“The establishment is made up of little men, very frightened.”  {blog 9/2014}

Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe [1930-2013]
“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the
human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.”  {blog 5/2013}

Lord Acton [1834-1902]
• • “And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters
get control. History has proven that. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are
almost always bad men.”  – full text of the famous 'Dictum of Lord Acton'  [blog 10/2007}
• • “The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is
the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “Liberty is not the means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”  {blog 8/2009}

author Ada Adams
“There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Some tunnels just happen to be longer than others.”  {blog 7/2013}

columnist Cecil Adams
“The second law of thermodynamics, simply put, is as follows: left to themselves, things tend
to go to hell in a handbasket.”  {blog 6/2012}

author Douglas Adams [1952-2001]
• • “If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.”  {blog 4/2013}
• • “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think [that] I have ended up where I needed to be.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “A common mistake that people make when trying to design something [that is] completely foolproof
is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”  {blog 2/2016 & 7/2022}  ¨
• • “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise [that] they make as they go by.”  {blog 8/2017}
• • “In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”  {blog 3/2018}

Franklin P. Adams [1881-1960]
• • “The best you get is an even break.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Nothing is more responsible for 'the good old days' than a bad memory.”  {blog 4/2012}

Henry Adams [1838-1918]
“Chaos is the law of nature. Order is the dream of man.”  {blog 3/2013}

Jessi Lane Adams
“Coffee smells like freshly ground heaven.”  {blog 3/2016}

Joey Adams [1911-99]
“A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.”  {blog 1/2008}

John Adams [1735-1826]
Founding Father and second President of the United States, 1797-1801
• • “The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance
to the public than all the property of the rich men in the country.”  {Issue #36}
• • “This is a revolution, dammit, we're going to have to offend somebody.”
(during debates on the Declaration of Independence, 1776)  {Issues #48 & #58}
• • “Power always thinks [that] it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak,
and that it is doing God’s will when it is violating all His laws.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.”  {blog 8/2009}
• • “All the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arise, not from defects in the
Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright
ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “[T]he preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property
of all the rich men in the country.” - in "A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law" (1765)  {blog 5/2015}
• • “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion,
they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”  {blog 5/2015}
• • “Democracy has never been and can never be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy. There never was a democracy yet
that did not commit suicide.”  {blog 4/2016}
• • “Government is instituted for the common good: for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not
for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.”  {blog 1/2018}
• • “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  {blog 3/2018}

John Quincy Adams [1767-1848]
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”  {blog 11/2013 & 7/2017}

English clergyman Richard Adams [1626-98]
“The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal; but ideas are immortal.”  {blog 5/2015}

Samuel Adams [1722-1803]
• • “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless
minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds.”  {Issue #39}
• • “It does not take a majority to prevail . . . but rather an irate, tireless minority,
who keep on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”  {Issue #71}
• • “There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly terrible to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a free press.”  {blog 12/2017}

Samuel Hopkins Adams [1871-1958]
• • “We are living at a time when creeds and ideologies vary and clash. But the gospel of human sympathy is universal and eternal.”  {blog 8/2018}
• • “Medicine would be the ideal profession if it did not involve giving pain.” - in "The Health Master" [1913]  {blog 8/2019}

cartoonist Scott Adams
• • “Experience is just another word for losing hope.” (in "Dilbert" Sunday strip)  {blog 11/2009}
• • “They can't break you if you don't have a spine.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Sarcasm and reality have become one.” (in "Dilbert" comic strip)  {blog 3/2020}

George W. Addair [1931-2012]
“Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”  {blog 4/2015}

activist Jane Addams [1860-1935]
• • “Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good [that] we often might win, by fearing to attempt.”  {blog 10/2011}
• • “The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of one's self.”  {blog 9/2013}

Joseph Addison [1672-1719]
“Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”  {blog 5/2017}

Konrad Adenauer [1876-1967]
“History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided.”  {blog 9/2012}

Alfred Adler [1870-1937]
• • “It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “The only normal people [that] you know are the ones [that] you don't know very well.”  {blog 12/2018}

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler [1902-2001]
• • “In the case of good books, the point is not how many you can get thru, but rather how many can get thru to you.”  {blog 10/2012}
• • “The ultimate end of education is happiness or a good human life, a life enriched by the possession of every kind of good,
by the enjoyment of every type of satisfaction.”  {blog 2/2014}
• • “Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.”  {blog 3/2014}
• • “Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “The philosopher ought never to try to avoid the duty of making up his mind.”  {blog 8/2014}
• • “Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely.”  {blog 8/2014}
• • “The mind is not a receptacle; information is not education. Education is what remains after the information
that has been taught has been forgotten.”  {blog 9/2014}

author & film critic Renata Adler
“There is an idiocy in current discourse, which calls things about which people can be angry
or mistaken ‘controversial’.” - in 1972  {blog 1/2022}

Richard P. Adler
“All television is children's television.”  {blog 6/2012}

actress & teacher Stella Adler [1901-92]
“Life beats down and imprisons the soul, and art reminds you that you have one.”  {blog 3/2018}

German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno [1903-69]
• • “Skepticism about what is unproven can easily turn into a prohibition upon thinking.”  {blog 7/2016}
• • “History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.”  {blog 8/2016}
• • “Fascism is itself less ‘ideological’, in so far as it openly proclaims the principle of domination that is elsewhere concealed.”  {blog 2/2018}

American spiritual teacher Adyashanti (nee Steven Gray)
• • “The spiritual journey is over and over finding out that we were wrong.”  {blog 7/2017}
• • “Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth.
It's seeing through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything [that] we imagined to be true.”  {blog 11/2022}

Aeschylus [c. 525-c. 456 B.C.E.]
“It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.”  {blog 12/2008}

Aesop [620–564 B.C.E.]
• • “We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office.”  {Issue #36}
• • “Notoriety is often mistaken for fame.”  {blog 9/2013}
• • “No act of kindness no matter how small is ever wasted.” - in "The Lion and The Mouse"  {blog 8/2014}

tennis champion Andre Agassi
“What makes something special is not just what you have to gain, but what you feel there is to lose.”  {blog 10/2021}

James Agee [1909-55]
“The elementary beginning of true reason . . . resides in the ability to recognize oneself, and others, primarily
as human beings, and to recognize the ultimate absoluteness of responsibility of each human being.”  {Issue #62}

Bartolo Aglialoro [1909-89]
“You want to lose all of your customers? Lie to one of them.”  {blog 3/2015}

Irish novelist Cecelia Ahern
“That's the thing about lessons, you always learn them when you don't expect them or want them.”  {blog 5/2018}

Ilham Ahmed, co-president of the Democratic Council of Syria
“Skeptics warned me: 'The U.S has no friends, only interests' . . . Now it turns out that the pessimists were right. I was wrong.”  {blog 12/2019}

motivational speaker Idil Ahmed
“You know [that] great things are coming when everything seems to be going wrong. Old energy is clearing out
for new energy to enter. Be patient!”  {blog 9/2018}

artist Ai Weiwei
“To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is a reason.”  {blog 7/2012}

Howard Aiken [1900-73]
“Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”   {blog 5/2010}

novelist Catherine Aird
“If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.”  {blog 8/2012}

Abul Ala Al-Ma’arri [973-1057]
“The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and
those with religion, but no brains.”  {blog 9/2013}

playwright Edward Albee [1928-2016]
• • “Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back
a short distance correctly.” (in "Zoo Story", 1958)  {blog 9/2011}
• • “Our reality is determined by our usefulness.” in 1978  {blog 4/2012}
• • “All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be
escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time.”  {blog 5/2013}
• • “What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?”  {blog 5/2018}

Mitch Albom
• • “It is never too late or too soon, it is when it is supposed to be.”  {blog 8/2014}
• • “It's such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.”  {blog 7/2017}

Herm Albright [1876-1944]
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”  {blog 2/2019 & 7/2022}

diplomat Madeleine Albright
• • “Anyone who thinks [that] the world would be a better place if it were run by women doesn't remember high school.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change.”  {blog 3/2017}
• • “There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.”  {blog 10/2018}

Louisa May Alcott [1832-88]
• • “I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now.”  {blog 6/2016}
• • “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship.” - in "Little Women" [1868 novel]  {blog 8/2016}
• • “It is amazing how lovely common things become, if one only knows how to look at them.”  {blog 1/2017}
• • “Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time
by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.”  {blog 10/2022}
• • “I ask not for any crown / But that which all may win; / Nor try to conquer any world / Except the one within.”  {blog 11/2022}
• • “Conceit spoils the finest genius.”- in "Little Women" [1868 novel]  {blog 4/2024}

sci-fi author Brian W. Aldiss [b. 1925]
“Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.”   {blog 9/2016}

Alessandra of France, who blogs as LaFeminista on DailyKos
“When you fly one of these rags {the Confederate flag} you are not being a rebel, you are being a racist.”  {blog 6/2015}

F.M. Alexander [1869-1955]
“People do not decide their future, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.”  {blog 7/2017}

children's author Lloyd Alexander [1924-2007]
“Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives change. We have other favorites that give us what we most need at that particular time. But we never lose the old favorites. They’re always with us. We just sort of accumulate them.”  {blog 7/2017}

Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich
“When I see a garden in flower, then I believe in God for a second. But not the rest of the time.”  {blog 10/2015}

boxing great Muhammad Ali [1942-2016]
• • “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.”  {blog 11/2013}
• • “I wish [that] people would love everybody else the way [that] they love me. It would be a better world.”  {blog 6/2016}
• • “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world [that] they've been given
than to explore the power [that] they have to change it.”  {blog 8/2016}
• • “I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll go to jail, so what? We've been in jail for 400 years.”  {blog 6/2017}
• • “No Viet Cong ever called me 'n*gger'.”  {blog 10/2017}
• • “If I was walking down the highway with a quarter in my pocket and a briefcase full of truth, I’d be so happy.”  {blog 12/2017}
• • “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world [that] they’ve been given than to explore
the power [that] they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential.
Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”  {blog 12/2017}
• • “I don’t count [all] my situps. I only start counting once it starts hurting.”  {blog 10/2021}
• • “Rest but never quit. Even the sun has a sinking spell each evening. But it always rises the next morning. At sunrise, every soul is born again.”  {blog 7/2022}
• • “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned
the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.”  {blog 4/2024}

Alice character as written by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98]
“Sometimes I have believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”  {blog 8/2016}

Fred Allen [1894-1956]
• • “A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing,
but together can decide that nothing can be done.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Man has made his bedlam; let him lie in it.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “She used to be a schoolteacher, but she has no class now.”  {blog 6/2012}

Jeffrey Allen
“Sometimes the fastest way to start doing what works for you is to stop doing what doesn't work.”  {blog 7/2018}

comedian Marty Allen [1922[2018]
“A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything was last year.”  {blog 5/2012}

entertainer Steve Allen [1921-2000]
“In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society
we insist [that] they be cheerleaders.”  {blog 8/2011}

cinema master Woody Allen
• • “If my films don't show a profit, I know I'm doing something right.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”  {blog 6/2009 & 7/2022}
• • “If my films make one more person miserable, I'll feel I have done my job.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “Confidence is what you have until you understand the problem.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “Show business is not so much 'dog eat dog' as 'dog doesn't return other dogs' phone calls'.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “The people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can't.”  {blog 11/2012}
• • “If it weren't for problems, the work day would be over by 10 a.m.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.”  {blog 8/2013 & 10/2018}
• • “If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”  {blog 8/2013}
• • “Life is a comedy, written by a sadistic comedy writer.” - in his new movie "Café Society", 2016  {blog 5/2016}
• • “I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government.”  {blog 5/2018}
• • “Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes,
comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.”  {blog 8/2019}
• • “I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.”  {blog 5/2020}
• • “Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.”  {blog 2/2021}
• • “Tradition is the illusion of permanance.”  {blog 10/2021}
• • “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”  {blog 12/2024}

William Allingham [1824-89]
“Round the world and home again, that's the sailor's way!”  {blog 1/2022}
~~ from the poem "Homeward Bound" [1866]

Eric Alterman
• • “With [George W.] Bush, we're left with the perennial unanswerable question:
dishonest, moronic, or both?”  {Issue #47}
• • “The real opposition to this administration is normative reality and the U.S. Constitution.”  {Issue #61}
• • “The problem with Fox [News] is not that it's conservative. It's that it lies.”  {blog 7/2011}

Italian journalist Corrado Alvaro [1895-1956]
“The blackest despair that can take hold of any society is the fear that living honestly is futile.”  {blog 10/2011}

Republican Cong. Justin Amash [MI-03]
“The public is not behind us, and that’s a real problem for our party.” - in 2015  {blog 9/2015}

Stephen E. Ambrose [1936-2002]
“God created man with a penis and a brain, but only gave him enough blood to run one at a time.”   {blog 7/2011}

Oscar Ameringer [1870-1943]
“Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.”  {blog 8/2019}

Wally 'Famous' Amos
“Life is a mirror - what you see out there, you must first see inside of you.”  {blog 11/2013}

Baba Amte of India
“Victory is his who even in defeat never surrenders, and so victory will be the people's.”  {Issue #62}

New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya
• • “The battle of good and evil is always for the soul.”  {Issue #21}
• • “Man does not live on enchiladas alone.” (in mystery novel "Zia Summer", 1995)  {blog 11/2007}
• • “Words, like bread, are sacred.”  {blog 7/2013}
• • “I believe that every writer needs a guide, because writing is an exploration and the exploration is not only for me, it's for the reader.”  {blog 4/2016}
• • “Books are the mirror in which we see ourselves.”  {blog 4/2016}

Hans Christian Andersen [1805-75]
• • “Everyone's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers.”  {blog 2/2016}
• • “The whole world is a series of miracles . . . but we’re so used to them we call them ordinary things.”  {blog 4/2017}
• • “Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.”  {blog 6/2017}
• • “When we get to the end of the story, you will know more than you do now . . . ”  {blog 9/2017}
• • “The sun shines upon good and bad alike.”  {blog 11/2017}
• • “To be of use to the world is the only way to be happy.”  {blog 12/2017}
• • “Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead.”  {blog 1/2018}
• • “Imperfections we all have, but we also have compensations.”  {blog 2/2018}

Ross Andersen, writing in The Atlantic Magazine
“We are always changing, sometimes even for the better.”  {blog 12/2023}

baseball manager George 'Sparky' Anderson [1934-2010]
• • “I've got my faults, but living in the past isn't one of them. There's no future in it.”  {blog 11/2010}
• • “Losing hurts twice as bad as winning feels good.”  {blog 12/2010}

Glenn Anderson
“The actor first feels, then thinks, then responds.”  {Issue #70}

author Laurie Halse Anderson
“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.” - in "Speak" [1999]  {blog 10/2016}

author Kevin J. Anderson
“Dune is the bestselling science fiction book of all time. It's something [that] you really need to read in your lifetime.
If you're going to read The Lord of The Rings, which everyone should, then you have to read Dune too.”  {blog 5/2020}

Mike Anderson
“After I drink coffee I like to show my empty mug to the I.T. guy to tell him that I have successfully installed Java. He hates me.”  {blog 12/2017}

minimalist sculptor Carl Andre
• • “Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “Capitalism must be holy because religion is a business.”  {blog 12/2011}

Dale Andreatti
“The optimist thinks [that] the glass is half full. The pessimist thinks [that] the glass is half empty.
The engineer knows the real truth: that the glass is twice as large as it should be for optimum
utilization of resources.”  {blog 1/2010}

racecar driver Mario Andretti
• • “If everything's under control, you're going too slow.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Everything comes to those who wait . . . except a cat.”  {blog 4/2013}
• • “Desire is the key to motiviation, but it is determination and commitment to an unrelenting goal – a commitment
to excellence – that will enable you to attain the success [that] you seek.”  {blog 2/2016}

Marcia Angell, MD
“Blanket cynicism gives the illusion of understanding.”  {blog 12/2013}

Dr. Maya Angelou [1928-2014]
Dr. Maya Angelou Quotations Page at Working Minds

Anonymous cyber collective
“Freedom of speech and opinion is non-negotiable.” – in a video, 2015  {blog 3/2015}

Jean Anouilh [1910-87]
“One cannot weep for the entire world. It is beyond human strength. One must choose.”
- in the stageplay "Cecile" (1954)  {blog 9/2009}

Carol Anshaw
“Taking on a pet is a contract with sorrow.”  {blog 5/2013}

Estonian lawmaker Andrus Ansip
“Fake news is bad, but a Ministry of Truth is worse.”  {blog 10/2022}

suffragist  Susan B. Anthony [1820-1906]
• • “Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.”  {blog 3/2014}
• • “Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.”  {blog 2/2016}
• • “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice [that]
it always coincides with their own desires.”  {blog 2/2019}

Antisthenes [446?-366? B.C.E.], Greek Stoic philosopher and star pupil of Socrates [470?-399 B.C.E.]
• • “When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life.”  {blog 7/2022}
• • “Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.”  {blog 10/2022}

Guillaume Apollinaire [1880-1918]
“Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”  {blog 12/2013}

Jacob M. Appel
“That was the heart of the problem: every choice made sense from some vantage point.”  {blog 9/2018}

American artist Thomas Gold Appleton [1812-84]
“Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.”  {blog 1/2022}

Thomas Aquinas [circa 1225-1274]
“There can be no joy of life without joy of work.”  {Issue #19}

columnist Gustavo Arellano
“Hate mail is far more entertaining than valentines.”  {blog 4/2018}

Joni Arends, anti-nuclear activist
“The devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was catastrophic. But we have to realize that
the United States bombed New Mexico first.”  {blog 1/2010}

German historian & philosopher Hannah Arendt [1906-75]
• • “Few girls are as well-shaped as a good horse.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer
distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is,
without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”  {blog 7/2024}

Italian satirist Pietro Aretino [1492-1556]
• • “I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them.”  {blog 4/2013}

Aristides the Just [530-468 BCE]
“Temples are to be dedicated to the gods, and books to good men.”  {Issue #55 & blog 1/2013}

Greek philosopher Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
Aristotle Quotations Page at Working Minds
Greek philosopher Aristotle Page at Maison d'Être Philosophy Bookstore

fashion designer Giorgio Armani
“Elegance is not about being noticed, it's about being remembered.”  {blog 5/2016}

fantasy author Jennifer Armintrout
“Strength comes from choosing your own path and living with the consequences.”  {blog 8/2023}

N.A.S.A. astronaut Neil Armstrong [1930-2012]
“There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers.
There are places to go beyond belief.”  {blog 11/2020}

T. Alan Armstrong, band teacher in Georgia (USA)
“Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months, and years they spend preparing for it.
The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.”  {blog 6/2017}

Matthew Arnold [1822-88]
“Resolve to be thyself, and know that he who finds himself loses his misery.”  {blog 11/2013}

Raymond Aron
“[Politics] is never a struggle between good and evil, but between the preferable
and the detestable.”  {Issue #56}

Robert G. Arthur of Kings Park, NY
“As a high school English teacher, I can testify that . . . [television] is so poisonous and hypnotic
that the disease of illiteracy is rampant.” (circa 1984)  {blog 9/2008}

Mary Kay Wagner Ash [1918-2001], founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics
• • “Stop spending dollar time on penny jobs.”  {Issue #51}
• • “Don't let the negatives of life control you. Rise above them. Use them as your stepping stones to go higher
than you ever dreamed possible.”  {blog 4/2017}
• • “People are definitely a company's greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product
is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.”  {blog 7/2017}

American poet John Ashbery
“The longest way is the most efficient way.”  {blog 4/2016}

tennis pro Arthur Ashe [1943-93]
“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.”  {blog 12/2017}

author Isaac Asimov [1920-92]
• • “Ignorance must be battled.”  {Issue #33}
• • “The creationists' . . . case is so weak that the only way [that] they can feel sure of maintaining it
is to make sure their victims never hear of anything else.”  {Issue #53}
• • “Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed
and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”  {Issue #62}
• • “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' (I found it) - but 'That's funny . . .'.”  {Issue #66}
• • “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”  {blog 7/2008}
• • “Every stick points in two directions, one opposed to the other.” {attributed}  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “There is an art to science, and science in art; the two are not enemies,
but different aspects of the whole.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul,
if not quite inventions of the devil - but there is no way around them.”  {blog 2/2012}
• • “Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”  {blog 12/2015}
• • “That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all.”  {blog 12/2015}
• • “I write for the same reason that I breathe – because if I did not I would die.”  {blog 3/2016}
• • “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”  {blog 7/2017}
• • “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant
thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance
is just as good as your knowledge'.”  {blog 9/2017 & 1/2022}
• • “Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.”  {blog 2/2018}
• • “Education is not something [that] you can finish.”  {blog 9/2018}
• • “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”  {blog 2/2019 & 1/2022}
• • “Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.”  {blog 5/2022}

Julian Assange
“Courage is contagious.”  {blog 8/2013}

Viscountess Nancy Astor [1879-1964]
“The penalty of success is to be bored by people who used to snub you.”  {blog 7/2013}

Gordon Atkinson
“Love is something [that] you do, not something [that] you feel.”  {blog 5/2010}

The Atlantic Magazine [est. 1857]
• • “If you want to succeed in business, don't get an MBA. Study philosophy instead.” - subhead in June 2006  {Issue #60}
• • “The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken.”  {blog 5/2020}
• • “Procrastinate wisely.”  {blog 1/2022}

author Margaret Atwood
• • “Wanting to meet an author because you like his books is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.”   {blog 12/2011}
• • “A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there is less of you.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “Stupidity is the same as evil, if you judge by the results.”  {blog 9/2013}
• • “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “The answers [that] you get from literature depend on the questions [that] you pose.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so [that] I will have enough, when the time comes.”  {blog 11/2016}
• • “Why is it that when we grab for heaven – socialist or capitalist or even religious – we so often produce hell.”  {blog 11/2016}
• • “A word after a word after a word is power.”  {blog 2/2017}
• • “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”  {blog 5/2022}

W.H. Auden [1907-1973]
• • “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “Knowledge may have its purposes, but guessing is always more fun than knowing.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “Evil is unspectacular and always human.”  {blog 4/2016}

Michel Audiard [1920-85]
“An idiot will try anything. That is how you know [that] he is an idiot.”  {blog 5/2012}

Berthold Auerbach [1812-82]
“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”   {blog 4/2012}

motivational speaker Darren August
“Imagine what our children could do tomorrow, if they discover their greatness today.”  {blog 1/2018}

Saint Augustine of Hippo [354-430 C.E.]
• • “Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would.
The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.”  {Issue #46}
• • “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”  {blog 2/2018}
• • “The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.”  {blog 10/2018}

Marcus Aurelius (Antoninus) [121-180 C.E.]
• • “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself
in the ranks of the insane.”  {Issue #65 & blog 12/2013 & 5/2017}
• • “The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.”  {blog 11/2007}
• • “Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “Everything [that] we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything [that] we see is a perspective, not the truth.”  {blog 8/2016}
• • “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”  {blog 12/2017 & 1/2023}
• • “Accept the things to which fate binds you, love the people with whom fate brings you together - but do this with all your heart !”  {blog 3/2018}
• • “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”  {blog 4/2018}
• • “Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.”  {blog 5/2018}
• • “Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues
[that] you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone,
but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones..”  {blog 7/2021}
• • “Frequently consider the connection of all things in the universe.”  {blog 8/2023}
• • “When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love . . .”
- in "Meditations" [circa IInd Century]  {blog 12/2023}
• • “There is but one thing of real value - to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.”  {blog 7/2024}

Sri Aurobindo [1872-1950]
“The logic of facts is always superior to any other logic.”  {blog 4/2017}

British author Jane Austen [1775-1817]
• • “A large income is the best recipe for happiness.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.”  {blog 4/2017}
• • “Why not sieze the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”  {blog 1/2022}
• • “If a book is well written, I always find it too short.”  {blog 4/2024}

novelist Paul Auster
“The real is always way ahead of what we can imagine.”  {blog 1/2013}

A.J. Ayer [1910-89]
“All utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical.”  {blog 9/2008}

Quotations Used in the 'WMail' Newsletter and the Dateline Chamesa blog - Alphabetical by Author

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