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  • A nation that draws too broad a difference between it's scholars and it's warriors will have it's thinking done by cowards, and it's fighting done by fools.
        Thucydides   Best?
  • In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity.
        Richard Baxter   Best?
  • Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.
        Plato   Best?
  • The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.
        Rensis Likert   Best?
  • Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • Interpreter: One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
        P. J. O'Rourke   Best?
  • No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
        George W. Bush   Best?
  • A cap of good acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums.
        Hunter S. Thompson   Best?
  • TRIAL, n. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors. In order to effect this purpose it is necessary to supply a contrast in the person of one who is called the defendant, the prisoner, or the accused. If the contrast is made sufficiently clear this person is made to undergo such an affliction as will give the virtuous gentlemen a comfortable sense of their immunity, added to that of their worth. In our day the accused is usually a human being, or a socialist, but in mediaeval times, animals, fishes, reptiles and insects were brought to trial. A beast that had taken human life, or practiced sorcery, was duly arrested, tried and, if condemned, put to death by the public executioner. Insects ravaging grain fields, orchards or vineyards were cited to appeal by counsel before a civil tribunal, and after testimony, argument and condemnation, if they continued _in contumaciam_ the matter was taken to a high ecclesiastical court, where they were solemnly excommunicated and anathematized. In a street of Toledo, some pigs that had wickedly run between the viceroy's legs, upsetting him, were arrested on a warrant, tried and punished. In Naples and ass was condemned to be burned at the stake, but the sentence appears not to have been executed. D'Addosio relates from the court records many trials of pigs, bulls, horses, cocks, dogs, goats, etc., greatly, it is believed, to the betterment of their conduct and morals. In 1451 a suit was brought against the leeches infesting some ponds about Berne, and the Bishop of Lausanne, instructed by the faculty of Heidelberg University, directed that some of "the aquatic worms" be brought before the local magistracy. This was done and the leeches, both present and absent, were ordered to leave the places that they had infested within three days on pain of incurring "the malediction of God." In the voluminous records of this _cause celebre_ nothing is found to show whether the offenders braved the punishment, or departed forthwith out of that inhospitable jurisdiction.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • PIG, n. An animal (_Porcus omnivorus_) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
        Confucious   Best?
  • The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
        Aristotle   Best?
  • It's funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than other folks do, isn't it?
        Eleanor H. Porter   Best?
  • It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
        Abraham Lincoln   Best?
  • Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
        Ronald Reagan   Best?
  • I once said, "We will bury you," and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.
        Nikita Khrushchev   Best?
  • I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.
        Marilyn Monroe   Best?
  • If you're in the public eye, you're either a womanizer or you're gay. I'm neither one.
        Clay Aiken   Best?
  • The revolution is not a tea party.
        Mao Tse-tung   Best?
  • He who cherishes the values of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.
        Albert Einstein   Best?
  • The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
        Plato   Best?
  • The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
        Rene Descartes   Best?
  • Strain every nerve to gain your point.
        Cicero   Best?
  • The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself.
        Rita Mae Brown   Best?
  • The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather that hostile.
        Bertrand Russell   Best?
  • All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
        G. K. Chesterton   Best?
  • I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare - I have no use for him either.
        Sophocles   Best?
  • I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion.
        Themistocles   Best?
  • A companion's words of persuasion are effective.
        Homer   Best?
  • Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.
        John Masefield   Best?
  • Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.
        H. L. Mencken   Best?
  • What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
        Jane Austen   Best?
  • She's afraid that if she leaves, she'll become the live of the party.
        Groucho Marx   Best?
  • To read your own poetry in public is a kind of mental incest.
        Brendan Behan   Best?
  • Politics: "The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.
        George Will   Best?
  • Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
        Billy Sunday   Best?
  • WEDDING, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.
        Ambrose Bierce   Best?
  • I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
        Randall Jarrell   Best?

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