John Quotes

A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.

The principles which men profess on any controverted subject are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold.

All errors which a man is likely to commit against advice are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him for his good.

Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.

The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning.

if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.

They who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them; and what we can achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess than on the use we make of our time.

If opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skillful devil's advocate can conjure up.

Miracles have no claim whatever to the character of historical facts and are wholly invalid as evidence of any revelation.

All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.

So natural to mankind is intolerance ... that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized.

Beauties that from worth arise are like the grace of deities.

A health to the nut-brown lass, With the hazel eyes: let it pass. . . . . As much to the lively grey 'Tis as good i' th' night as day: . . . . She's a savour to the glass, And excuse to make it pass.

Rest is the fitting of self to its sphere.

Fascism is the consequence of economic jam and dictatorship is the product of Fascism, for Fascism cannot be managed save by a dictator.

It is unethical for any man to tax another man's home to fund his social agenda. Friends don't do that, your enemies will.

I can't count how many goalposts I've hit!

Share prices fluctuate more than share values.

A successful life depends less on how long you live than on how much you can pack into the time you have.

The idea that an individual can find God is terribly self-centered. It is like a wave thinking it can find the sea.

It is a curious fact that with 'Through the Looking-Glass' the faculty of making book illustrations departed from me... I have done nothing in that direction since.

I spent another six years in Europe covering sporting events such as the Tour de France.

The heroes of our youth grow old - 'the boys of summer in their ruin,' in Dylan Thomas's verse - yet we seem the same.

I say to my colleague from New York that if someone who has a concealed carry permit... in the State of South Dakota that goes to New York and is in Central Park - Central Park is a much safer place.

We have no cause to be ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; but the Gospel of Christ may justly be ashamed of us.

The true ground of most men's prejudice against the Christian doctrine is because they have no mind to obey it.

They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.

Every man hath greater assurance that God is good and just than he can have of any subtle speculations about predestination and the decrees of God.

Its hard to measure yourself if nobody is challenging you.

We don't man-mark anybody. I have never, ever done it in 27 years as a manager and I would never do it.

For the investor who knows what he is doing, volatility creates opportunity.

For best results, the competitive player should never depart from his area of expertise

Let's share our abundance and make our country stronger.

When I was 8, I got a little toy propeller plane: You could turn it on and the people disappeared from the little windows and stewardesses appeared, and it ran along the ground.

A computer and a cat are somewhat alike - they both purr, and like to be stroked, and spend a lot of the day motionless. They also have secrets they don't necessarily share.

Nothing feels worse than other people's good times.

There's always something new by looking at the same thing over and over.

Money is like water in a leaky bucket: no sooner there, it begins to drip.

You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue.

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.

There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.

Looking foolish does the spirit good.

I would especially like to re-court the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time.

Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a TV remote, the average book fits into the human hand with a seductive nestling, a kiss of texture, whether of cover cloth, glazed jacket, or flexible paperback.

You can never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in life.

Life, too much of it, and not enough. The fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.

Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.

The illusion is an agreement between the reader and writer that this [story] will be like life. The emotional temperature drops when you have footnotes.

I'm not against TV; I don't go on the morning talk shows because I'm not invited. If I was, I might go.