Favorite Historical Quotes

[Drang]

A quick Google search finds several sites saying it's as accurate as the Abraham Lincoln Internet quote. Since the terms "conservative" and "liberal" weren't used then the way they are now, I find it thoroughly believable.

[41magfan]

A quick Google search finds several sites saying it's as accurate as the Abraham Lincoln Internet quote. Since the terms "conservative" and "liberal" weren't used then the way they are now, I find it thoroughly believable.

Yep, that's certainly plausible. Thank you for that.

[41magfan]

Here's a few more:

“Equality before the law is probably forever unattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights, but privileges.”
HL Mencken

“Happiness is not a reward. It is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment. It is a result.”
Robert Green Ingersoll

“Just because you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.”
George Carlin

“Some have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam, but only with ‘… violent Islamist extremists.’ Fourteen-hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise!”
Samuel P Huntington

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams

“Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.”
George Jean Nathan


“It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I’m readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I’ll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials as they do now, after-the-fact.”
Robert E Lee

Some things never change, do they?

[SD]

have always wondered about General A. McAuliffe famous reply for the request to surrender was "cleaned up", for circulation by the media? I believe we all know the other words that usually accompany the statement "nuts"? (R U Fa-King nuts)?

Heraclitus
“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”

John Paul Jones
"I have not yet begun to fight."

General Anthony McAuliffe at Bastogne
"Nuts."

Theodore Roosevelt
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. "

Issac Newton
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction."

[blues]

have always wondered about General A. McAuliffe famous reply for the request to surrender was "cleaned up", for circulation by the media? I believe we all know the other words that usually accompany the statement "nuts"? (R U Fa-King nuts)?

All I can say is that the Germans were lucky that McAuliffe wasn't an Italian from NYC. They'd have received a more colorful reply.

That said..."Nuts!" will live on as a classic of nuanced cool under the most trying of conditions.

[Drang]

have always wondered about General A. McAuliffe famous reply for the request to surrender was "cleaned up", for circulation by the media? I believe we all know the other words that usually accompany the statement "nuts"? (R U Fa-King nuts)?

All the witnesses present confirmed independently that his reply, in full, was "Nuts."

[JohnO]

All the witnesses present confirmed independently that his reply, in full, was "Nuts."

Sometimes less is more.

[SamAdams]

Not exactly 'inspiring', but it is true (and brought a chuckle first time I heard it) -

" You can get much further with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone. " - attributed to Al Capone


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[41magfan]

First, they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

Rev. Martin Niemöller

[txdpd]

Just because some jackass asserts a thing does not mean that it is worthy of refutation. If the same guy tells you that every space shuttle launch perturbs the Earth's orbit, and that the cumulative effects are just about to start the process of the loss of the atmosphere into space, thus creating a vacuum that will destroy all life on the planet in approximately 36 hours, would you deem this necessary to refute? How much time would you spend explaining to him why this cannot happen? Would not your time be spent better doing other things? And if you devise a concise explanation, why would you assume he would understand?
-Mark Rippetoe