User:GusF

Favourite quotes

 * The Great Dictator (1940)
 * The hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
 * Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift
 * [The King of Brobdingnag] was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century, protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice or ambition could produce.
 * V for Vendetta (2005)
 * Beneath this mask, there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask, there is an idea...and ideas are bulletproof.
 * Superman (1978)
 * They can be a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way.
 * Network (1976)
 * I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!
 * Tony Benn (1925-2014)
 * Democracy is always a struggle for justice against the powerful.
 * All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
 * If one meets a powerful person - Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates - ask them five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?" If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.
 * Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)
 * I have no country to fight for. My country is the Earth. I am a citizen of the world.
 * When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
 * George Orwell (1903-1950)
 * In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
 * Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
 * All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.
 * David C. Coates (1868-1933)
 * An injury to one is an injury to all.
 * The United Nations Charter (1945)
 * We the people of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war which twice in our lifetimes has brought untold sorrow to mankind.
 * Crowfoot (1830-1890)
 * What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
 * Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
 * The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.
 * Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
 * Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who﻿ are cold and are not clothed.
 * May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
 * Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
 * The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to the freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-communism.
 * Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)
 * Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
 * Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
 * War does not determine who is right, only who is left.
 * Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960)
 * No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied﻿ medical aid because of lack of means.
 * Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
 * Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
 * E. M. Forster (1879-1970)
 * If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
 * Plato (c. 427 BC - 347 BC)
 * There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.
 * John Harington (1560-1612)
 * Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
 * George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
 * What is the matter with the poor is poverty. What is the matter with the rich is uselessness.
 * Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
 * François Fénelon (1651-1715)
 * All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers.
 * Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
 * I am pleading for the future. I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.
 * Helen Keller (1880-1968)
 * I am a socialist because I believe that socialism will solve the misery of the world, give work to the man who is hungry and idle and at least give to little children the right to be born free.
 * Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
 * The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
 * Harry Turtledove (1949-)
 * Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.
 * You count snouts. Whichever side can persuade most snouts to join it prevails. It does not have to be clever. It does not have to be wise. It only needs to be popular.
 * Stephen King (1947-)
 * Books are a uniquely portable magic.
 * The Third Man (1949)
 * In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
 * The Prisoner (1967-1968)
 * I resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
 * Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself.
 * Babylon 5 (1994-1998)
 * The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
 * Understanding is a three edged sword.
 * The past tempts us, the present confuses us and the future frightens us.
 * Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)
 * With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.
 * Villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well-camouflaged.
 * Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009)
 * There's a reason we separate military and the police: one fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
 * Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007)
 * Things will not calm down, Daniel Jackson. They will in fact calm up.
 * The universe is vast and we are so small. There is really only one thing we can ever truly control...whether we are good or evil.
 * Planet of the Apes (1968)
 * Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!
 * Peter Pan (1904) by J. M. Barrie
 * Second to the right and then straight on till morning.
 * To die will be an awfully big adventure.
 * The Princess Bride (1987)
 * Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.
 * Gargoyles (1994-1997)
 * The written word is all that stands between memory and oblivion. Without books as our anchors, we are cast adrift, neither teaching nor learning. They are windows on the past, mirrors on the present and prisms reflecting all possible futures. Books are lighthouses erected in the dark sea of time.
 * Samuel Clemens (1835-1910)
 * Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.
 * Those who do not read the newspaper are uninformed. Those who do read the newspaper are misinformed.
 * Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or imbeciles who really mean it.
 * Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
 * Politicians and diapers must be changed often and for the same reason.
 * Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
 * If you want to know if a man is honest, ask him. If he says yes, you know he's crooked.
 * Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? Answer the second question first.
 * Flash Gordon (1980)
 * Flash, I love you! But we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!
 * The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) by Douglas Adams
 * It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level.
 * The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ (1982) by Sue Townsend
 * I'm a committed radical. I am against nearly everything.
 * Spitting Image (1984-1996)
 * Earthquake in Guatemala. Thatcher responsible.