Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire

So true!

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last! -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)

From Robert Reich as a "quote of the day" ~ Sooz

“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”
~ Jane Addams, founder of Hull House (1910)

“When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government”

― Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. -Robert M. Pirsig, author and philosopher (b. 1928)

The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television, that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of industrial waste? -Dave Barry, author and columnist (b. 1947)

Then there's the exception - Bernie Sanders

This explains exactly how I feel and, now, with the water shortages and droughts, I feel even stronger. What a waste of water in the eternal quest for that perfect lawn.

I am not a lover of lawns. Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn. -William Henry Hudson, author and naturalist (1841-1922)

What you are thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

If only this was true today...

America has been called a melting pot, but it seems better to call it a mosaic, for in it each nation, people or race which has come to its shores has been privileged to keep its individuality, contributing at the same time its share to the unified pattern of a new nation. -King Baudouin of Belgium (1930-1993)

“In church it occurred to me that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many.”

-- Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United States (1877-1881)

Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels but they live like men. -Samuel Johnson

"No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent." - Susan B. Anthony

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."
~ Aristotle

love it!

on a similar note:

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. -Abraham Lincoln

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.” – Harry Frankfurt

"With guns, you can kill terrorists. With education, you can kill terrorism."
~ Malala Yousafzai

This quote immediately hurtled me back to my youth. Even the date is spot on with that time in my life. I used to ride my bike the 8-10 blocks to the local library, load up my basket and spend long, hot summer days escaping into all kinds of scenes and worlds.....Those were perfect days to me too.

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -Dwight David Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969

I'm ashamed to admit I knew nothing about this man until I saw this quote and looked him up.

One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read. -John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006)

Here is a link to several of his wonderful quotes

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/autho ... raith.html

The World is divided into armed camps ready to commit genocide just because we can't agree on whose fairy tales to believe. -Ed Krebs, photographer (b. 1951)

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too."
~ Voltaire

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. -Arthur C. Clarke,

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.... John Rogers