quotes on books

The expendability factor has increased by being transferred from the specialised, scarce and expensively trained military personnel to the amorphous civilian population. American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century's major wars. In the First World War 5 per cent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 per cent, while in a Third World War 90-95 per cent would be civilians. ~Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action



History assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely. ~Will and Ariel Durant, Lessons of History



To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another. ~John Burroughs



People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first. ~David H. Comins



That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it.... We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself. ~Paracelsus, quoted in The Dream Game



Historian: A broad-gauge gossip. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary



Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. ~Mohandas K. Gandhi, quoted in E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful



Stretch pants - the garment that made skiing a spectator sport. ~Author Unknown



All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot. ~Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887



An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. ~Mahatma Gandhi An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper. ~Kahlil Gibran



The South creates the civilizations, the North conquers them, ruins them, borrows from them, spreads them: this is one summary of history. ~Will and Ariel Durant, Lessons of History



Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. ~Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973 Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. ~Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973



It's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. I wish I believed, as J. B. Priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while. Three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. Perhaps that's why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! A "bad night" is not always a bad thing. ~Brian W. Aldiss



It is the land of perpetual pubescence, where cultural lag is mistaken for renaissance. ~Ashley Montagu, about California



Every time a child says, "I don't believe in fairies," there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead. ~James Matthew Barrie, Peter Pan



Quote A: �All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.� ~R.W. Emerson



Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no theories. ~John Wilmot



All maxims have their antagonist maxims; proverbs should be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half truth. ~William Mathews



A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Flight to Arras, 1942



Your ignorance cramps my conversation. ~Anthony Hope