All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character or illustrates an existence.
As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur.
The race needs more responsible adults who can actually do the job.
No, it wasn't the same thing. What it was, Ellsberg's material wasn't classified in the same way.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day,
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution. Nothing is of greater importance in time of war than in knowing how to make the best use of a fair opportunity when it is offered.
The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation's effort to defeat Al Qaeda. But his death does not mark the end of our effort.
No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.
We do not have time for this kind of silliness. ... We're not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.
Your emotions get wrapped up in it. It reflected a particular moment in time in our lives.
Water is a very good servant, but it is a cruel master.
I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right.
We see the path to agreement as challenging because the gap between the parties remains wide.
Yesterday was a very bad day. I had hoped today would be different. Today is a very bad day, too.
Is it perfect? No. I'd be the first to admit it's flawed. But welcome to divided government.
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: "Whose?"
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?
They know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out -- except war -- which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war -- as they used to be. For they still believe that "winning" means something, although they never tell us what.
In the United States a handful of corporations centralize decisions and responsibilities that are relevant for military and political as well as economic developments of global significance. For nowadays the military and the political cannot be separated from economic considerations of power. We now live not in an economic order or a political order, but in a political economy that is closely linked with military institutions and decisions. This is obvious in the repeated "oil crisis" in the Middle East, or in the relevance of Southeast Asia and African resources for the Western powers.
My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.
Had this case proceeded in Manhattan or in an alternative venue in the United States, as I seriously explored in the last year, I am confident that our justice system could have performed with the same distinction that has been its hallmark for over 200 years. Now, unfortunately, since I made that decision, members of Congress have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States, regardless of the venue. As the President has said, those unwise and unwarranted restrictions undermine our counter-terrorism efforts and could harm our national security.
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and it's knowing how to use the information you get.
I call it the table of gore. There's plenty of protein up in that nest.
[T]he general root of superstition [is] namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.
What the opposition needs as much as anything right now is some training, some command and control, and some organization. It's pretty much a pickup ballgame at this point.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better."
It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.
Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the public unions.
If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.
As the report illustrates, the continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem, combined with forceful eviction of long-residing Palestinians, are creating an intolerable situation that can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing.
Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
I voted to uphold the death penalty. And I thought, at the time, that if the universe of defendants eligible for the death penalty is sufficiently narrow, so that you can be confident that the defendant really merits that severe punishment, that the death penalty was appropriate. But what happened over the years is the court constantly expanded the cases eligible for the death penalty, so that the underlying premise for my vote in those cases has disappeared, in a sense.
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society -- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers -- who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.
If Fukushima becomes another Three-Mile Island or Chernobyl, then we may never be going back.
There is no comparison between our weapons and theirs. They're trained, they're organized. They got their training in Russia and I don't know where. We're not an army, we're the people and even if we had weapons, we wouldn't even know how to use them.
We're all ready to die for him. He's done so much for us, after all.
What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the Department of Defence.
What was scariest was to look up at the skyscrapers all around. They were swaying like trees in the breeze.
People learn something every day, and a lot of times it's that what they learned the day before was wrong.
We have found over and over again: Mistakes have been made. Innocent people have been freed. It's not possible to create a perfect, mistake-free death penalty system.
A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient; nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in a fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.
It is not life and wealth and power that enslave men, but the cleaving to life and wealth and power.
Our task isn't easy. We don't have parties, we don't have a constitution, we don't have political organizations, we don't have an effective civil society. We have to create a completely new state and we have to do it in the middle of a war and revolution.
In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that he did not also limit his stupidity.
In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should "have his head examined," as General MacArthur so delicately put it.
Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after a horrific financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail--and that's wrong.
Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbors.
