President
- The White House is the finest prison in the world.
-- Harry S. Truman
- I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House--with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
- The American presidency will demand more than ringing manifestos issued from the rear of the battle. It will demand that the President place himself in the very thick of the fight; that he care passionately about the fate of the people he leads ...
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
- President means chief servant.
-- Mahatma Gandhi
- My most fervent prayer is to be a President who can make it possible for every boy in this land to grow to manhood by loving his country--instead of dying for it.
-- Lyndon Baines Johnson
- When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe.
-- Clarence Darrow
- No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Pretension
- To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified.
-- William James
- Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.
-- William Hazlitt
- True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can any feigned thing be lasting.
-- Cicero
- We had better appear what we are, than affect to appear what we are not.
-- François de La Rochefoucauld
- The only good in pretending is the fun we get out of fooling ourselves that we fool somebody.
-- Booth Tarkington
- The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
-- Ambrose Bierce
- Pretension almost always overdoes the original, and hence exposes itself.
-- Hosea Ballou
- Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends.
-- Johann Kaspar Lavater
Pride
- There was one who thought himself above me, and he was above me until he had that thought.
-- Elbert Hubbard
- Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.
-- Samuel Johnson
- Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals.
-- Fulton J. Sheen
- The passions grafted on wounded pride are the most inveterate; they are green and vigorous in old age.
-- George Santayana
- The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.
-- Voltaire
- One of the best temporary cures for pride and affection is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.
-- Josh Billings
- To be proud and inaccessible is to be timid and weak.
-- Jean Baptiste Masillon
- Pride breakfasted with Plenty, dined with Poverty, supped with Infamy.
-- Benjamin Franklin
- There is this paradox in pride--it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.
-- Charles Caleb Colton
- Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.
-- Henry L. Stimson
- Privacy is the right to be alone--the most comprehensive of rights, and the
right most valued by civilized man.
-- Louis D. Brandeis
- Modern Americans are so exposed, peered at, inquired about, and spied upon
as to be increasingly without privacy--members of a ;naked society and denizens
of a goldfish bowl.
-- Edward V. Long
- Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.
-- Thomas Gray
- Let there be spaces in your togetherness.
-- Kahlil Gibran
- Don't draw another's bow, don't ride another's horse, don't mind another's
business.
-- Proverb
Procrastination
- Waiting is a trap. There will always be reasons to wait...The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons and results, and reasons simply don't count.
-- Robert Anthony
- Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.
-- Benjamin Franklin
- Even if you're on the right track--you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Arthur Godfrey
- Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard one makes it impossible.
-- George H. Lonmer
- Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers
- In delay there lies no plenty.
-- William Shakespeare
- Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
-- Don Marquis
Production
- The goose lays the golden egg. Payrolls make consumers.
-- George Humphrey
- It is one of the greatest economic errors to put any limitation upon production.... We have not the power to produce more than there is a potential to consume.
-- Louis D. Brandeis
- Production is the only answer to inflation.
-- Chester Bowles
- Mass production is for the masses.
-- E. A. Filene
- We seem to want mass production, but we must remember that men are individuals not to be satisfactorily dealt with in masses, and the making of men is more important than the production of things.
-- Ralph W. Sockman
- Unless each man produces more than he receives, increases his output, there will be less for him than all the others.
-- Bernard M. Baruch
Profanity
- It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.
-- William Cowper
- Profaneness is a brutal vice. He who indulges in it is no gentleman.
-- Edwin Hubbel Chapin
- The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.
-- George Washington
- Nothing is greater, or more fearful sacrilege than to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue.
-- Jeremy Taylor
Profession
- I hold every man a debtor to his profession.
-- Francis Bacon
- Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
-- Anton Chekhov
- Professional men, they have no cares; whatever happens, they get theirs.
-- Ogden Nash
- We forget that the most successful statesmen have been professionals. Lincoln was a professional politician.
-- Felix Frankfurter
- In all professions each affects a look and an exterior to appear what he wishes the world to believe that he is. Thus we may say that the whole world is made up of appearances.
-- François de La Rochefoucauld
Progress
- Social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself.
-- Jane Addams
- Progress is the process whereby the human race is getting rid of whiskers, the veriform appendix and God.
-- H. L. Mencken
- There is no advancement to him who stands trembling because he cannot see the end from the beginning.
-- E. J. Klemme
- I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.
-- Frank Moore Colby
- I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
-- Petronius Arbiter
- He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.
-- Charles Caleb Colton
- All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
-- Edward Gibbon
- Those who work most for the world's advancement are the ones who demand least.
-- Henry Doherty
- I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
-- Chinese Proverb
- The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, but the unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to him--therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.
-- Samuel Butler
- Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.
-- Alexander Pope
- Speak softly, and carry a big stick; you will go far.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
- Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?
-- Stanislaw Lem
Propaganda
- Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.
-- James Bryant Conant
- Today the world is the victim of propaganda because people are not intellectually competent. More than anything the United States needs effective citizens competent to do their own thinking.
-- William Mather Lewis
- Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent.
-- Adolf Hitler
- Propaganda replaces moral philosophy.
-- Hans J. Morgenthau
- A propagandist is a specialist in selling attitudes and opinions.
-- Hans Speier
- We have made the Reich by propaganda.
-- Joseph Paul Goebbels
Property
- What we call real estate--the solid ground to build a house on--is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good in the world.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
-- Bertrand Russell
- If a man owns land, the land owns him.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own.
-- e. e. cummings
- The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.
-- Henry David Thoreau
- As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
-- James Madison
- Mine is better than ours.
-- Benjamin Franklin
- Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.
-- Calvin Coolidge
- Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache.
-- Philip Wylie
Prosperity
- The prosperous man is never sure that he is loved for himself.
-- Lucan
- Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
-- Francis Bacon
- Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.
-- Calvin Coolidge
- When prosperity comes, do not use all of it.
-- Confucius
- Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Prosperity is something the businessmen created for politicians to take credit for.
-- Brunswick (Ga.) Pilot
- Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.
-- Mark Twain
- Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.
-- Publilius Syrus
Providence
- There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence.
-- Mark Twain
- The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
- Friends, I agree with you in Providence; but I believe in the Providence of the most men, the largest purse, and the longest cannon.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- God's providence is on the side of clear heads.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
- The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of man; and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?
-- Benjamin Franklin
- God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.
-- Francis Bacon
Prudence
- Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
-- Samuel Johnson
- There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
-- Charles Caleb Colton
- It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
-- Mark Twain
- He that fights and runs away will live to fight another day.
-- Old English Rhyme
- Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
-- Charles Caleb Colton
- The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by the tenderness of the best of hearts.
-- Henry Fielding
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