Some Quotes from Famous People, for Inauguration Day

(also available as a Word .doc file and as an Adobe .pdf file)

It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government. - Thomas Paine

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. - Voltaire

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. - Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. - Ronald Reagan

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. - Will Rogers

The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? - Pablo Casals

If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed for. - Chinese Proverb

The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people. - Frank Kent

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. - Winston Churchill

If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. - Moshe Dayan

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. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace. - Andre Gide

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

If you want peace, work for justice. - Pope Paul VI

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

The modern (neo)conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. - John Kenneth Galbraith

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. - George Bernard Shaw

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right. - H. L. Mencken

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: Indeed it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead

We must be the change we wish to see. - Mahatma Gandhi

The real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. - Thich Nhat Hanh

In separateness lies the world's great misery; in compassion lies the world's true strength. - Buddha