User:MJBurrage

on Wikipedia

Favourites

• “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
  — Benjamin Franklin (1738, 1759, 1775)

• “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.”
  — Louis Brandeis – Supreme Court Justice (1916–1939)

• “None are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
  — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1808)

• “To suppose that God Almighty has confined his goodness to this world, to the exclusion of all others, is much similar to the idle fancies of some individuals in this world, that they, and those of their communion or faith, are the favorites of heaven exclusively; but these are narrow and bigoted conceptions, which are degrading to a rational nature, and utterly unworthy of God, of whom we should form the most exalted ideas.”
  — Ethan Allen, Of The Eternity and Infinitude of Divine Providence (Ch.II, §III)

• “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
  — James D. Nicoll (1990 May 15)

Things to look for

• “All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.”
  — Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99 BC – 55 BC)
• “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
  — Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – 65 AD)
  • Both according to Ira D. Cardiff in his book What Great Men Think About Religion (1945)

• The proverbial types of falsehoods: “lies, damned lies, and statistics”
  — popularized by Mark Twain (1906)
  • “The three classes of witnesses—liars, damned liars, and experts.”
    — Thomas Henry Huxley (1885)

• From the Reader’s Digest Treasury of Wit & Humor (1958)

“The Chicago Tribune made a study and came up with these facts: Foreigners call all Americans Yankees. Southerners say that Yankees are northerners. Northerners say that Yankees are from the New England states. People in New England say it is the Vermonters who are Yankees. Vermonters reply that a Yankee is just someone who eats pie for breakfast. –Woolery Digest”

• “You Go Now.”
  — John Pinette (circa 1997)

Contributions

• Letters to Juliet (dialogue vs. props)
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (violence and impotence)