Potent Quotables | Firefly Funds

Be Just

“Man’s greatness lies in his decision to be greater than his condition. And if his condition is unjust, he has only one way of overcoming it, which is to be just himself.” --Albert Camus

Persuade the Stupid

“Never again should we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.” --Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Danger Force

“Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources: our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong.” -- Fredrick Nietzsche

Immature Anytime

“You can only be young once, but you can always be immature.” --John Kennedy

"If you will not fight for right when you can win easily without bloodshed you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is...

Spiritual Beings

“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.”--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin(click picture to enlarge)

More Safe, Less Free

“To be more safe they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.” --Alexander Hamilton

Society and Government

“Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a...

Not Boring

“I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.” --David Bowie

Rigidity’s Result

“Rigidity in thought or action, almost guarantees failure in life.” --Claire Fox

Hard Times

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” --G. Michael Hopf

Life’s Success

“No man is a failure who is enjoying life.”--William Feather

Love Is Freedom

“Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.” --Rabindranath Tagore(click picture to enlarge)

Tyranny Conquered

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” --Thomas Paine

Accept Challenges

“Accept challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.” --George S. Patton

World War IV

“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with stones and spears.” --Unknown (misattributed to Albert Einstein and Omar Bradley)

Industrious

“I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.” --Johann Sebastian Bach

No Tax For Prosperity

“I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”--Winston Churchill

Heaven on Earth

“The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell.” --Karl Popper

Miracles Happen

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”--Albert Einstein(click picture to enlarge)

Home Runs

“Yesterday's home runs don't win today's games.” --Babe Ruth

Mass Psychosis

“The totalitarian systems represent a kind of collective psychosis. Whether gradually or suddenly, reason and common human decency are no longer possible in such a system: there is only a pervasive atmosphere of terror, and a projection of “the enemy,” imagined to be...

Monsters Exist

“Monsters exist, but they are far too few in number to be truly dangerous; the most dangerous monsters are ordinary people ready to believe and obey without asking questions.” --Primo Levi

Beginnings

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.” --Lucius Annaeus Seneca

External Happiness

“The ordinary man places his life’s happiness in things external to him, so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed. In other words, his center of gravity is not himself.” --Arthur Schopenhauer

Fortify Democracy

“Authoritarianism cannot be harnessed to fortify democracy any more than wolves can be taught to guard sheep.” ---John Hayward

Our Point of View

“We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are.”--Anais Nin(click picture to enlarge)

Just Cause

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.” --Mahatma Gandhi

Equal Rights and Laws

“The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer form the great body of the people of the United States; they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.” --Andrew Jackson

Run by Idiots

“Our country was founded by geniuses, but it's being run by idiots.” --John Kennedy

Hand Over Freedom

“Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.” --Fyodor Dostoevsky

Love, Hate and Fear

“I used to think love and hate were the two most powerful human emotions, but I was wrong. They are not even within the same galaxy of fear.” --Unknown

Define Slavery

“There is no difference between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man’s ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at...

Code of Ethics

“A strong code of ethics is as reliable as a compass.” --H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (click picture to enlarge)

Foundation of Liberty

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” --Henry David Thoreau

Time to Understand

“Now is the time to understand more so that we may fear less.” --Marie Curie

System of Lies

“If the main pillar of the totalitarian system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why the truth must be suppressed more severely than anything else.” --Václav Havel

Destined to Become

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bring Sunshine

“Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.” --Anthony J. D’Angelo

A Lie’s Velocity

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” --Winston Churchill

Mind Power

“The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.”--Colin Wilson(click picture to enlarge)

Biggest Fear

“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive – the risk to be alive and express what we really are.” --Don Miguel Ruiz

Intelligence v. Wisdom

“Intelligence is when you spot a flaw in your boss's reasoning. Wisdom is when you refrain from pointing it out.”--James Dent

Rule of Law

“A society can only remain great when its rulers obey the laws so its people can obey the rulers.” --Solon

Euthusiasm Rises

"Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas." --Henry Ford

Action Alone

“Your authority is in action alone, and never in its fruits; motive should never be in the fruits of action, nor should you cling to inaction.” --Krishna

Moral Responsibility

"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Winners Sacrifice

“Winners make sacrifices, losers make excuses.”--Dan Cotter(click picture to enlarge)

Make You Stupid

“Fear and hatred make you stupid. And stupid people are easy to manipulate.” --Jeffrey Fry

Discovered Self

“Resiliency comes from a discovered self, not a constructed self. It comes from the gradual emergence of your unique, inborn abilities in a process called individuation. The better you become, the more unique you become as an individual, and it never ends.” --Al...

You Get Better

“I wish I could tell you it gets better. But, it doesn't get better. You get better.” --Joan Rivers

Great Opportunities

“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” --Charles Swindoll

Biased Man

“Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.”--Francis Bacon

Memes Matter

“We must learn to treat the demagogue and aspirant dictators in our midst with the weapon of ridicule. Both are almost incapable of humor of any sort, and if we treat them with humor, they will begin to collapse.” --Joost Meerloo

Life Happens

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”--John Lennon(click picture to enlarge)

Forget to be Afraid

“Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.” --Lady Bird Johnson

Freedom is Air

“Freedom is the air we cannot do without, that we breathe without even noticing it until the time comes when, deprived of it, we feel we are dying.” --Albert Camus

Height of Heroism

“The greatest height of heroism to which an individual can attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how to make oneself ridiculous and not shrink for the ridicule.” --Miguel de Unamuno

Postpoining

“While we are postponing, life speeds by.” --Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Absolute Power

“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies....

News and Truth

“The news and the truth are not the same thing.” --Walter Lippmann

Cynical Truth

“Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.”--Lillian Hellman(click picture to enlarge)

Felt Grief

“Grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known, as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed.” --Pericles

Stupidity is More Dangerous

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least...

State Best Ordered

“That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.” --Pittacus

Prefer a Loss

“Prefer a loss to a dishonest gain; for the one is painful but once, but the other for one’s whole life.” --Chilon

Burden of Freedom

“Relieving people of the burden of freedom in order to make them feel safe is a recurring theme in the history of authoritarianism.” --Frank Furedi

Dwarf Men

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.” --John Stuart Mill

Reunited

“It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited.”--Lewis B. Smedes(click picture to enlarge)

Thristed Truth

“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduces them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is...

Weep for Liberty

“I weep for the liberty of my country when I see at this early day of its successful experiment that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office.” --Andrew...

Desire for Safety

“The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.” --Tacitus

Persistant Fear Mongering

“Persistent fear mongering in conjunction with promises that compliance to the regime will bring the citizens salvation creates true believers who will do whatever the regime commands, even if these commands require them to go to an early grave.” --Claire Fox

Psychic Epidemics

“It is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural...

Govern Myself

“Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and if they will not adapt to me, I adapt to them.” --Michel de Montaigne

Don’t Ask, Do

“It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”--Jewish Proverb (click picture to enlarge)

Great Citiznes

“The great citizens of a country are not those who bend the knee before authority but rather those who, against authority if need be, are adamant as to the honor and freedom of that country.”  --Albert Camus

Not in the Stars

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” --William Shakespeare

Do Not Live Same Year

“Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.” --Robin Sharma

New Year Brings

“What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.” --Vern McLellan

Any Period

“If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of revolution, when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be...