Great Throughts Treasury

"The way to prevent irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." - Thomas Jefferson

"There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him." - Thomas Jefferson

"We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise." - Thomas Jefferson

"Were I to undertake to answer the calumnies of the newspapers, it would be more than all my own time, and that of twenty aids could effect. For while I should be answering one, twenty new ones would be invented. I have thought it better to trust the justice of my country-men, that they would judge me by what they see of my conduct on the stage where they have placed me." - Thomas Jefferson

"The more reliant we become upon computers and information systems, the more vulnerable we become to cyber-terrorists who will conceive unlimited ways to cripple our infrastructure, our power grids, our banking systems, our financial markets, our space based communications systems." - William Cohen, fully William Sebastian Cohen

"I would rather lose in a cause that I know some day will triumph than to triumph in a cause that I know some day will fail." - Wendell Lewis Willkie

"It is an essential part of our social tragedy that people, like farmers, the industrial workers, the medical profession, etc., influence the social process not only by their work, but also — and even predominantly — by political ideologies. For political activity hampers objective, rational activity; it splits professional organizations into warring ideological groups; it disorganizes the industrial workers: it restricts the work of the physician and harms the patients, etc. In brief, political activity prevents precisely what it pretends to achieve: peace, work, security, international cooperation, objective expression of opinion, freedom of belief, etc." - Wilhelm Reich

"It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results." - Walter Bagehot

"It was in the recognition that there is in each man a final essence, that is to say an immortal soul, which only God can judge, that a limit was set upon the dominion of men over men." - Walter Lippmann

"Parents teach in the toughest school in the world — The School for Making People. You are the board of education, the principal, the classroom teacher, and the janitor." - Virginia Satir

"Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on." - Thucydides NULL

"We're on the wrong track in Iraq. As many of our most distinguished former generals and anti-terrorism experts now observe, our occupation makes a political solution impossible by fueling the insurgents." - Eli Pariser

"We brought ten thousand head of cattle to the Sierra one day and said to the peasants, simply, "Eat". And the peasants, for the first time in years and years, some for the first time in their lives, ate beef." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

"The soldier is well paid for doing mischief." - Italian Proverbs