History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads. People get the history they deserve. —Charles De Gaulle More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future. —Jessamyn West More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
When I read about some important moment or era in history, I always take it for granted that the people it happened to were aware of what was going on. In my mind's eye, I see the agricultural workers of England during the Industrial Revolution feeling the pinch and saying to each other, "Eh, lad," or whatever agricultural workers would say in those days, "what dost tha expect? It's this Industrial Revolution at the bottom of it. —Emily Hahn More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
What we call "human nature" in actuality is human habit. —Jewel Kilcher More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
There is something wrong in a government where those who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets. —Robert Ingersoll More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Virtue consisted in winning: it consisted in being bigger, stronger, handsomer, richer, more popular, more elegant, more unscrupulous than other people — in dominating them, bullying them, making them suffer pain, making them look foolish, getting the better of them in every way. Life was hierarchical and whatever happened was right. There were the strong, who deserved to win and always did win, and there were the weak, who deserved to lose and always did lose, everlastingly. —George Orwell More about this quote Tags: virtue pain winning bullying domination Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. —Voltaire More about this quote Tags: history change class Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be. —Rita Rudner More about this quote Tags: humanity respect wealth Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things. —Willa Cather More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Let us plant dates even though those who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. This is the secret discipline. It is a refusal to let the creative act be dissolved away in immediate sense experience, and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined love is what has given prophets, revolutionaries, and saints the courage to die for the future they envisaged. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope. —Ruben Alves More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun. —Ralph Nader More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy. It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more energy than we could ever use in just about eight minutes. And it's wireless. —William McDonough More about this quote Tags: science physics sun nuclear energy Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
This, finally, is the punch line of our two hundred years on the Great Plains: we trap out the beaver, . . . infect the Blackfeet and the Hidatsa and the Assiniboin, . . . suck up the buffalo, bones and all; kill off nations of elk and wolves and cranes and prairie chickens and prairie dogs; dig up the gold and rebury it in vaults someplace else; ruin the Sioux and Cheyenne and Arapaho and Crow and Kiowa and Comanche; kill Crazy Horse, kill Sitting Bull; . . . plow the topsoil until it blows to the ocean; ship out the wheat, ship out the cattle; dig up the earth itself and burn it in power plants . . . ; dismiss the small farmers, empty the little towns; drill the oil and the natural gas and pipe it away; dry up the rivers and the springs, deep-drill for irrigation water as the aquifer retreats. And in return we condense unimaginable amounts of treasure into weapons buried beneath the land that so much treasure came from — weapons for which our best hope might be that we will someday take them apart and throw them away, and for which our next-best hope certainly is that they remain humming away under the prairie, absorbing fear and maintenance, unused, forever. —Ian Frazier More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
Whenever there's one of these bogus shortages, the oil companies give you those stupid brochures, "Fifty Ways to Save Energy." They spill 80 million gallons in Alaska and they want you to go to the bathroom in the dark. —Jay Leno More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email
According to some commercials, driving an SUV means you support terrorists. The answer is the hybrid gas-electric car, which only supports terrorists when going uphill. —Jon Stewart More about this quote Permalink for this quote facebook twitter tumblr email