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The Philosophy Board
Scribendo Discus Scribere
"War has no power to transform, it merely exaggerates the good and evil that are in us, till it is plain for all to read; it cannot change, it exposes. Man’s fate in battle is worked out before war begins. For his acts in war are dictated not by courage, nor by fear, but by conscience, of which war is the final test." Lord Moran, Anatomy of Courage, 1966, p.160
"Some people know everything, but that's all they know." Niccolò Machiavelli
“To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.” David McCullough
“The veil that hides the future from us is woven by an angel of mercy.” Old proverb
"Criticism is something we can avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, being nothing." Aristotle
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." Plato
"Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace! (audacity, more audacity, and ever more audacity" Frederick the Great, Napoleon, George S. Patton
"The measure of a man's success is not his fame or his wealth, it is how he feels about his own accomplishments." Leonardo daVinci
"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't." Margaret Thatcher
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." George Orwell
"Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value." Albert Einstein
"It's not our abilities that show who we are, it is our choices." Albus Dumbledore
"You are born alone, you live alone, and you die alone. If you accept this as reality, then any friendship, any relationship that contributes to your life you are grateful for. You accept it as a gift." Yul Brynner
"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart." Marcus Aurelius
“Where you are at any moment in time is not as important as what direction you are moving.”
"Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage without fear." Eddie Rickenbacker
"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." James Madison
Federalist No. 10
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Sir Winston Churchill
“When you get to the bang or whimper moment of life you don't spend much time contemplating the minor characters of your personal farce. And one of the difficult things for egocentric Man to face is that he is a minor character in every biography but his own. I am a bit player in your life and you in mine.” Travanian, Shibumi
“No foreign power should mistake disagreement for disunity. Those who are tempted to do so should reflect on our national character—on our record of littering history with the wreckage of regimes who made the mistake of underestimating the will of the American people, their love of freedom, and their national valor." President Ronald Reagan, April 22, 1986 Statement to the press after the Libyan Bombing.
"Negotiations without arms are like notes without instruments." Prussian ruler Frederick the Great
"The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards." Sir William Francis Butler
"Not failure but low aim is crime." James Russell Lowell
“Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes." Seneca
"Nothing is beautiful from every point of view." Horace
"Did you tell them the truth? No. They only asked for my opinion." Bruce Hunter, DIA analyst.
"The tyranny of the gifted mind, those who withhold their true judgments lest they jeopardize their hopes for success which their ambitions have carved out for them, the way that ambitious officers, when they came in sight of promotion to the general's list, would decide that they would bottle up their thoughts and ideas, as a safety precaution, until they reached the top and could put these ideas into practice. Unfortunately, the usual result, after years of self repression for the sake of their ambition, was that when the bottle was eventually uncorked the contents had evaporated. B.H. Liddell Hart
"It's a good wall, but it's not a Great Wall." Richard Armitage, upon arriving at the Great Wall of China with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, September 1983.
"Years ago I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility, I chose honest arrogance." Frank Lloyd Wright
"The problem with television is that it makes so much money doing its worst that it can't afford to do its best. Fred Friendly
"Tactics is what you do when there is something to do. Strategy is what you do when there is nothing to do." Savielly Tartakower
“A thousand lions led by a deer are less to be feared than a thousand deer led by a lion.”
"War challenges virtually every other institution of society--the justice and equity of its economy, the adequacy of its political systems, the energy of its productive plant, the bases, wisdom and purposes of its foreign policy." Walter Millis
"A few brilliant people, like Albert Einstein, can be alone in a room and do great things. The rest of us find people who are smarter than we are and stand on their shoulders."
"It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously." Peter Ustinov
