We just had to put up a quotes page as there is so much choice material we wanted to share. Some of these are inspirational some very true and others somewhat philosophical. If you find any out there you are fond of (and they are in the same theme as those below) please pass them along to us and we may post them. Some of the "sayings" below are not really quotes. If there is no persons name following the saying then its not really a quote but just an unattributed saying.
These are not organized right now in any particular fashion. This is a work in progress and we may add subject categories at some point. To check for quotes this is a good source: www.brainyquote.com
"If you interviewed 1,000 politicians and asked about whether the media's too soft or too hard, about 999 would say too hard."
- Bob Woodward
"It was accountability that Nixon feared."
- Bob Woodward
"Trust, but verify"
- Ronald Reagan
"A common field one day. A field of honor forever. May all who visit this place remember the collective acts of courage and sacrifice of the passengers and consider this hallowed ground as the final resting place of those heroes, and reflect on the power of individuals who choose to make a difference."
- mission statement of the Flight 93 National Memorial
"There is not a man in the country that can't make a living for himself and family. But he can't make a living for them AND his government, the way his government is living. What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people."
- Will Rogers
"Just throw money at the problem"
- Quote from 2006 Tour De France attendee
"A remark generally hurts in proportion to its truth."
- Will Rogers
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
- George Orwell, 1984
The harder something is to understand, the more likely something isn't right. (That's often the reason it's so complicated.)
- This could be a Murphy's Law corollary
Doppler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
- sort of a pseudo science quote
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
- Plato
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results"
- Benjamin Franklin
Why do you do what you do? If you have to ask that question then you probably would not understand the answer.
- from a South Pole explorer on a TV show
"The most terrifying words in the English language: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
--Ronald Reagan
“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth."
--Ronald Reagan
"Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do."
- Will Rogers
"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."
- Will Rogers
"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
- Lord Acton
"Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good."
- George Will
"The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."
- Bill Gates
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know."
- United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (2002) and others prior to that
"The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments."
- Mad Magazine
"Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth."
- Lillian Hellman
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them, well I have others"
- Groucho Marx
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.
- Louis D. Brandeis
The most important political office is that of the private citizen.
- Louis D. Brandeis
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Only God who appointed me will remove me.
—Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, refusing to cede power regardless of the results of a runoff election
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
- George Bernard Shaw
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.
- Ronald Reagan
If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it must be a dinosaur.
- Unknown theology quote
The more people doubt their own beliefs the more, paradoxically, they are inclined to proselytize in favor of them.
- David Brooks, NY Times
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
- Nicholas Klein
"It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"
- Upton Sinclair
"...his remark was not intended to be a factual statement.."
- Office of AZ Senator Jon Kyl after he wrongly proclaimed on the Senate floor in April 2011 that abortions constitute "well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does," (The "internets" went nuts with this one as did Twitter)
You can't take something off the Internet - it's like taking pee out of a pool.
- Author Unknown, 1995 (more here)
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
- John F. Kennedy, 35th president of US 1961-1963
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
- John F. Kennedy
"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." - H.L. Mencken, American journalist.
The federal government is basically an insurance company with an army.
- Paul Krugman, NY Times
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
--There is no evidence that Benjamin Franklin ever actually said or wrote this, but it's remarkably similar a quote often attributed, without proper sourcing, to Alexis de Tocqueville and Alexander Fraser Tytler
Governments and politicians by their nature will try to find a way
to spend every dollar possible and push the liability for that spending
into the future, either through borrowing or creative accounting.
Far from acting prudently with taxpayer funds, Street said,
government officials instead work overtime to enable their spending
schemes by crafting narratives that depend on false impressions of
spendable cash flow.
- Chriss Street, Orange County treasurer from 2006-2010
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
- Albert Einstein
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
- Albert Einstein
"...A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
- Steve Jobs, Apple
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to
bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters
to me.”
- Steve Jobs, Apple
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
-Albert Einstein
"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations."
-George Orwell
"You can't handle the truth!"
-Col. Jessep [as played by Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men"] for the follow up to this line this quote list from the movie is a must read
"Experience hath [has] shewn [shown], that even under the
best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow
operations, perverted it into tyranny."
--Thomas Jefferson
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are
the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
--Thomas Jefferson
"Economics is like driving a car by looking through the rear-view mirror."
--general running joke among economists
"Everything is fine today, that is our illusion"
--Voltaire
"The most dangerous
place in [your city] is between [politician name here] and a microphone."
--A
long-standing joke among political observers
"The American political system is not good at trading sacrifice now to prevent crises later."
--Ezra Klein, Vox,com
Los Angeles County government is a "Soviet-style system," with too many people only sort of in charge and no person sufficiently at the helm to take responsibility.
--Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, commenting on how the pieces of county government were assembled with a markedly lower level of genius and foresight than under the US Constitution
"The solution when you don’t like someone’s speech is not to silence that
person, or that corporation. It’s more and louder speech of your own."
--Michael Kinsley, columnist for Vanity Fair.
"Nothing that’s good works by itself, you’ve got to make the damn thing work."
--Thomas Edison (inventor)
"Remember, never take no shortcuts and hurry along as fast as you can."
--Virgina Reed survivor of the Donner Party disaster wrote in a letter to her cousin
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts"
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan four-term U.S. Senator,
"The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth."
-- Pierre Abelard
"We now live in a post-factual democracy. When the facts met the myths they were as useless as bullets bouncing off the bodies of aliens in a HG Wells novel."
--Nicholas Barrett, a political journalist
“The general theme in California law is the government should not be
keeping secrets,”
--Former Los Angeles County Counsel Mark J. Saladino
“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
--Socrates
“Everybody wants a revolution, but nobody wants to change their bad behavior”
--Leo Tolstoy
“There
are the parallels between Sisi supporters, Trump supporters, right-wing
supporters in Europe and Islamic supporters. They all share the same
thing. Facts do not matter. Ideology comes first and then I can tailor
the facts based on what I think and see. These people don’t care if what
they’re rooting for is a failure or evil or bad. It doesn’t matter as
long as we can get back at the other side.”
--Bassem Youssef (Egyptian comedian host of "The Show")
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society,
over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that
authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
--Frédéric Bastiat, early free-market economist
"As democracy is perfected, the office of the president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some
great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their
heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a
downright moron!"
--H.L. Mencken writing for the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920.
“Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who
do the things that no one can imagine”
-- Alan Mathison Turing, an English computer
scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical
biologist. (The Imitation Game, 2014)
History is a progress of argument without end.
-- Pieter Geyl, Dutch Historian
More people are held up with a pencil than with a gun.
-- My Grandfather
"Without reason, without truth,
there is no real democracy because democracy is about true choices and
rational decisions."
-- French President Emmanuel Macron in a speech to a joint meeting of Congress 4/25/18
"Confidence is silent. Insecurities are loud,"
-- Don Corleone, The Godfather
"The Golden Rule ....of politics...whoever has the gold makes the rules"
-- comic strip “Wizard of Id” by Johnny Hart
paralysis by analysis.
--not a quote per say but a concise statement of a true principle. Applies to govt in spades
“The truth is that these companies won’t fundamentally change because
their entire business model relies on generating more engagement, and
nothing generates more engagement than lies, fear and outrage.”
-- Sacha Baron Cohen, the British actor, said in 2019 regarding the social media behemoths
“The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image.”
--French philosopher Guy Debord
"the
stone age did not end because we ran out of stones; it ended because we
invented new tools"
-- former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani
"There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers."
--Ronald Reagan
“The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
-- Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News and chief strategist for Donald Trump.
“... a model we use called the 4d’s — dismiss the message, distort the facts, distract the audience, and express dismay at the whole thing.”
--Graham Brookie, Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) operationalized the study of disinformation by exposing falsehoods and fake news.
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
"I'm a CPA I move numbers around"..Attorney responds: "I'm an attorney and I move words around"
--Ozark series on Netflix
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
--Martin Luther King <
"Capitalize the gains, socialize the losses"
--some guy who works on Wall St. (or in DC)
"There is a Providence
that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America."
--Otto von Bismarck, German statesman
“and then what?"
-- Robert Gates, former secretary of defense on the three
words most infrequently uttered in Washington
"If you live long enough, you’ll see your heroes become
villains.”
--Unknown
“To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks. He
doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”
--Dan Coats, Trump’s former director of national
intelligence
"Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you
down to their level and then beat you with experience."
-- Mark Twain
"Delusion will last until it is about to become fatal,
at which point an onset of sanity is certain."
--American economist John Kenneth Galbraith
"History doesn’t repeat itself but it does often
rhyme"
-- Mark Twain
“When everything becomes political, that is the end of
politics.”
-- Hebrew
University religious
philosopher Moshe Halbertal
“If conservatives become convinced that they can not win
democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.”
--David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W.
Bush
“Problems have solutions, but dilemmas have horns.”
--old saying among foreign affairs specialists
"You may have the watches, but we have the time."
--Afghan proverb
"It is a luxury to be irresponsible in a society where
others would be responsible for you..."
--Charles Blow NY Times regarding the anti vax movement
"Me and my brother against my cousin. Me and my brother
and my cousin against the outsider."
--an old Arab
Bedouin saying (loosely translated)
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
--possibly Mark
Twain but not clear
Scientific method “Here are the facts. What conclusions can
we draw from them?” Political method: “Here’s the conclusion. What facts can we
find to support it?”
--not attributed
"If liberty means anything at all it means the right to
tell people what they do not want to hear,"
--George Orwell
"The best way to get the right answer on the Internet
is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer."
--Cunningham's law.
“I’ve never seen a tax I didn’t like.”
-- Long beach
Mayor Robert Garcia at the LB Convention Center following the passage of
Measure M (passed June 2018; ruled unconstitutional March 2022)
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and
fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of
doubts."
--Bertrand Russell
“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is
clear, simple, and wrong.”
--H. L. Mencken
“The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the
rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.”
--Dr Martin Luther King Jr
“If I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that humans are
really reluctant to give things up to prevent a catastrophe..They’re willing to
hang on to the very end and risk a calamity.”
--Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University
“Everyone can’t get everything what they want,”
--Thomas Tebb,
WA state Department of Ecology re
water
"If you see a snake, just kill it - don't appoint a
committee on snakes."
--Ross Perot 1994 Presidential Candidate
"The activist is not the man who says the river is
dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river."
--Ross Perot 1994 Presidential Candidate
"The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be
refilled, the public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of public
officials should be controlled."
--Ross Perot 1994 Presidential Candidate
"Expect disappointment and you’ll never get
disappointed"
--by the character Michelle Jones-Watson in the film
Spiderman: No Way Home (2021).
"The people in our democracy are not uncommonly wise,
but their experience tends to make them uncommonly sensible.”
--Irving Kristol
"To the victor victim go the spoils"
--LAAG; a commentary on how the victim mentality/state is
paying off for victims
“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a
Democrat.”
--Will Rogers
"Politics is the entertainment division of the military
industrial complex"
--Frank Zappa
“Thanks to our evolutionary history, we’re programmed to
deal with the lion coming from the woods, not to strategize how to save our
civilization over the next hundred years,”
--Jeff Goodell, author of "The Heat Will Kill You
First"
“Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be
utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this
order of importance.”
--Robert H. Jackson, the eloquent Supreme Court justice who
served as the U.S. chief
prosecutor at Nuremberg,
in his opening address there
"Life is like
riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."
— Albert Einstein
"You are never
too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream."
— CS Lewis
"It is often the
small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting
change."
— Queen Elizabeth II
"Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them."
--Francois de La Rochefoucauld
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
--Carl Jung
"Only the narcissists have the fortitude to persist in
politics."
--Unknown
"America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America."
--Pres. Carter's Farewell address January 14, 1981
A fact is “a piece of information presented as having objective reality”
--Merriam-Webster
“You can pardon most anything in a man who will tell the truth, if anyone lies, if he has the habit of untruthfulness, you cannot deal with him, because there is nothing to depend on.”.
--President Teddy Roosevelt 1903 speech in California
Not quotes but interesting facts nonetheless....
On June 14, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order (not legislation) adding the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. The Supreme Court decided in 2004 to keep “under God” in the pledge. Interestingly, “God” doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution.
Lakewood Accountability Action Group™ LAAG | www.LAAG.us | Lakewood, CA
A California Non Profit Association | Demanding action and accountability from local government™
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