Quotes

Here’s a list, in no particular order, of some of my favourite quotes. These are the quotes that appear in the random quotes section on each page of this site. I’ll be adding to this list constantly. If you have a good quote go to my contact page and send it to me. You can find my favourite quotes about Canada at my other website Canada4Life.Ca.

“Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens.”
- Alastair Farrugia

“You do not destroy an idea by killing people; you replace it with a better one.”
- Edward Keating

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
- Mark Twain

“Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.”
- Alex Hamilton

“In free countries, every man is entitled to express his opinions and every other man is entitled not to listen.”
- G. Norman Collie

“Knowledge is power.”
- Sir Francis Bacon

“Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.”
- Alan Coren

“Better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not.”
- Phlogiston Verdigris

“I am so excited about Canadians ruling the world.”
- John Diefenbaker

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”
- Plato

“First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.”
- Martin Niemoller

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
- Johann Wolfgang van Goethe

“When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, you have freedom.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea.”
- Tommy Douglas

“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.”
- E. B. White

“I’ll be wrong as often as I’ll be right but I won’t be silent.”
- Tom Barlow

“Complete equality isn’t compatible with democracy, but it is agreeable to totalitarianism. After all the only way to ensure the equality of the slothful, the inept, and the immoral is to suppress everyone else.”
- Iain Benson

“You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am any straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies – which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world – what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.”
- Charlie Marlow – Heart of Darkness

“Only the educated are free.”
- Epictetus

“Christmas is a time when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ.”
- Bart Simpson – The Simpsons

“Trust is great. Control is better.”
- Vladimir Lenin

“In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.

“Courage my friends, ’tis not too late to make a better world.”
- Tommy Douglas

“Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.”
- Henry David Thoreau

“A recession is when your neighbour has to tighten his belt. A depression is when you have to tighten your own belt. And a panic is when you have no belt to tighten and your pants fall down.”
- Tommy Douglas

“The religion of tomorrow will be less concerned with the dogmas of theology and more concerned with the social welfare of humanity.”
- Tommy Douglas

“There never was a good war or a bad peace.”
- Benjamin Franklin

“I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces so full of stupid importance.”
- Charlie Marlow – Heart of Darkness

“Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”
- John F. Kennedy

“Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.”
- John F. Kennedy

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.

“Silence is the virtue of fools.”
- Sir Francis Bacon

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
- Francois Voltaire

“When the world is made to be idiot-proof, the world will become overpopulated with idiots.”
- Mark Twain

“The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.”
- Robert Lynd

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
- Samuel P. Huntington

“We’re all born into this mess. We’re not responsible for it. We’re only responsible for every day we let it go on without changing things.”
- Gloria Steinem

“Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced.”
- Charlie Marlow – Heart of Darkness

“I’m not going to play politics on the floor of the House of Commons.”
- John Turner

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
- John F. Kennedy

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”
- Vladimir Lenin

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
- Albert Einstein

“Some people are like slinkys. They don’t really have a purpose, but they bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.”
- Unknown

“He who allows oppression, shares the crime.”
- Erasmus Darwin

“In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.”
- Sir Francis Bacon

“A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It’s a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it’s because it’s proven.”
- Jean Chretien

“Hey, since when is Christmas just about the presents? Aren’t we forgetting the true meaning of this day? You know, the birth of Santa.”
- Bart Simpson – The Simpsons

“It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.”
- Herbert Hoover

“The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.”
- Herbert Hoover

“Four thousand hungry children leave us per hour from starvation, while billions are spent on bombs, creating death showers.”
- System of a Down – Boom

“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
- Isaac Asimov

“God grant me the authority to change the things I cannot accept.”
- Unknown

“God Bless America, but God help Canada to put up with them.”
- Unknown

“I am. You know I am. I am Canadian.”
- Molson Canadian

“Never argue with a fool. He may be doing the same thing.”
- Unknown

“The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.”
- William Safire

“I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”
- Barack Obama

“I just wish people would realize that any thing’s possible if you try. Dreams are made if people try.”
- Terry Fox

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
- Albert Einstein

“It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.”
- H.L. Mencken

“You laugh at me because I’m different. I laugh at you because you’re all the same.”
- Kurt Cobain

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
- Dr. Seuss

“Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
- Nick Diamos

“One can’t live with one’s finger everlastingly on one’s pulse.”
- Charlie Marlow – Heart of Darkness

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.

“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.”
- Charlie Marlow – Heart of Darkness

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
- Aristotle

“The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.”
- Baruch Spinoza

“Losers quit when they are tired. Winners quit when they have won.”
- Unknown

“The best way to get people to accept the need for change is to not give them a choice.”
- William Weiss

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
- Stephen F. Roberts

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
- Aldous Huxley

“He that can’t endure the bad will not live to see the good.”
- Yiddish Proverb

“A roomful of geniuses who have closed their minds to truth is no better off than a room full of fools who are incapable of recognizing truth.”
- Unknown

“Power is the most addictive thing, the most intoxicating thing.”
- Vladimir Putin

“It has been said that a country’s greatness can be measured by what it does for its unfortunates. By that criterion Canada certainly does not stand in the forefront of the nations of the world although there are signs that we are becoming conscious of our deficiencies and are determined to atone for lost time.”
- Tommy Douglas

“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”
- Nelson Mandella

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That is my religion.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“Reality’s kicking faith’s ass man.”
- Lincoln Burrows – Prison Break

“We are all in this world together, and the only test of our character that matters is how we look after the least fortunate among us. How we look after each other, not how we look after ourselves. That’s all that really matters, I think.”
- Tommy Douglas

“Ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they’re given a chance.”
- Barack Obama

“There has never been anything false about hope.”
- Barack Obama

“We live in a free country where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones.”
- Justice Ian Binnie

“Well, I say it’s time to take Stephen Harper to the woodshed!”
- Jack Layton

“I know what they think, and I don’t give a damn.”
- Bill Maher

“It is my dream that this beautiful country will never die.”
- Pierre Elliot Trudeau

“When I feed the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist.”
- Dom Halder Camara

“Respect is for the dead. The living need dough.”
- Archie Bunker – All in the Family

“Man has become our greatest hazard, and our only hope.”
- John Steinbeck

“Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.”
- Jack Layton

“Faith is something that you believe, that nobody in his right mind would believe.”
- Archie Bunker – All in the Family

“Science adjusts its views based on what’s observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.”
- Tim Minchin

“Do you know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.”
- Tim Minchin

“Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”
- Jack Layton