“Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger.” – Gordon Dickson, Tactics of Mistake
“Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society” – Aristotle (384-322 BC)
“…And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were …
“Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee: thou shewest lovingkindness unto thousands, and recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them: the Great, the Mighty God, the Lord of hosts, is his name, great in counsel, and mighty in work: for thine eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men” – Jeremiah 32:17-19 (KJV)
“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” – William Goldman, in The Princess Bride (1973) and the film The Princess Bride (1987)
“Knowledge isn’t restrained by the limits of Malthus. Information doesn’t need topsoil to grow in, only freedom. Given eager minds and experimentation, it feeds itself like a chain react.” – David Brin, Earth
“It’s said that ‘power corrupts’, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.” – David Brin, The Postman
“In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur, in a lecture at the University of Lille (7 December 1854)
“What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back,—with a hinge in it.” – Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden (1870)
“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light: which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” – 1 Peter 2:9-10 (KJV)
“And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean. And in controversy they shall stand in judgment; and they shall judge it according to my judgments: and they shall keep my laws and my statutes in all mine assemblies; and they shall hallow my sabbaths.” – Ezekiel 44:23-24 (KJV)
“No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.” – Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden (1870)
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” – Albert Camus
“You can’t give the government the power to do good without also giving it the power to do bad – in fact, to do anything it wants.” – Harry Browne
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” – Frederick Douglass