—C. P. SNOW
The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.
—ROSS PEROT
I think God’s going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding.
—STEVEN WRIGHT
Civilization no longer needs to open up wilderness; it needs wilderness to open up the still largely unexplored human mind.
—DAVID RAINS WALLACE
The Dark Range
If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food either.
—JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
—ALDO LEOPOLD
A Sand County Almanac
A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children.
—Audubon
The other planets may not be able to support life, but it isn’t easy on this one either.
—Banking
THERE’S NO DEALING WITH A CAT . . .
There’s no dealing with a cat who knows you’re awake.
—BRAD SOLOMON
The Open Shadow
The only mystery about the cat is why it ever decided to become a domestic animal.
—COMPTON MACKENZIE
Cats’ Company
The cat could very well be man’s best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.
—DOUG LARSON
Cats have it all—admiration and an endless sleep and company only when they want it.
—ROD MCKUEN
Book of Days
Cats don’t caress us—they caress themselves on us.
—RIVAROL
When dogs leap onto your bed, it’s because they adore being with you. When cats leap onto your bed, it’s because they adore your bed.
—ALISHA EVERETT
You can keep a dog; but it is the cat who keeps people because cats find humans useful domestic animals. A dog will flatter you but you have to flatter a cat. A dog is an employee; the cat is a freelance.
—GEORGE MIKES
How to Be Decadent
When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not more of a pastime to her than she is to me?
—MONTAIGNE
Ignorant people think it’s the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use.
—MARK TWAIN
No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
It is impossible to keep a straight face in the presence of one or more kittens.
—CYNTHIA E. VARNADO
You can’t look at a sleeping cat and be tense.
—JANE PAULEY
The idea of calm exists in a sitting cat.
—JULES RENARD
Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
—JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH
The Twelve Seasons
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
—ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
IF DOGS COULD TALK . . .
If dogs could talk, it would take a lot of fun out of owning one.
—ANDREW A. ROONEY
Not That You Asked . . .
One reason a dog can be such a comfort when you’re feeling blue is that he doesn’t try to find out why.
—National Enquirer
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the popularity of dogs.
—ALDOUS HUXLEY
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
—SAMUEL BUTLER
The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals.
—JAMES THURBER
Thurber’s Dogs
Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.
—MAX EASTMAN
Enjoyment of Laughter
A dog wags its tail with its heart.
—MARTIN BUXBAUM
IN Table Talk
A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
—ROBERT BENCHLEY
Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.
—DOUG LARSON
If you think dogs can’t count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them.
—PHIL PASTORET
Any time you think you have influence, try ordering around someone else’s dog.
—The Cockle Bur
Door: What a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
—OGDEN NASH
We give them the love we can spare, the time we can spare. In return dogs have given us their absolute all. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made.
—ROGER CARAS
A Celebration of Dogs
THE AMERICAN DREAM IS NOT OVER . . .
The American dream is not over. America is an adventure.
—THEODORE WHITE
There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.
—ARCHIBALD MACLEISH
A Continuing Journey
It is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate.
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom “to” and freedom “from.”
—MARILYN VOS SAVANT
in Parade
The saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities—a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.
—FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
America is a religious nation, but only because it is religiously tolerant and lets every citizen pray, or not pray, in his own way.
—From an editorial in The New York Times
America is a place where Jewish merchants sell Zen love beads to agnostics for Christmas.
—JOHN BURTON BRIMER
America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
—ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
The things that have made America great are being subverted for the things that make Americans rich.
—LOU ERICKSON
How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy.
—PAUL SWEENEY
America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way around. Human rights invented America.
—JIMMY CARTER
What the people want is very simple—they want an America as good as its promise.
—BARBARA JORDAN
Being American is not a matter of birth. We must practice it every day, lest we become something else.
—MALCOLM WALLOP
in Imprimis
What’s right with America is a willingness to discuss what’s wrong with America.
—HARRY C. BAUER
America is not like a blanket—one piece of unbroken cloth. America is more like a quilt—many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven together by a common thread.
—REV. JESSE L. JACKSON
America is a tune. It must be sung together.
—GERALD STANLEY LEE
Crowds
In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.
—AMY TAN
The Joy Luck Club
One of the fondest expressions around is that we can’t be the world’s policeman. But guess who gets called when suddenly someone needs a cop.
—GEN. COLIN POWELL
I thank God that I live in a country where dreams can come true, where failure sometimes is the first step to success and where success is only another form of failure if we forget what our priorities should be.
—HARRY LLOYD
Americans are optimists. They hope they’ll be wealthy someday—and they’re positive they can get one more brushful of paint out of an empty can.
—BERN WILLIAMS
Give the American people a good cause, and there’s nothing they can’t lick.
—JOHN WAYNE
The business of America is not business. Neither is it war. The business of America is justice and securing the blessings of liberty.
—GEORGE F. WILL
in Newsweek
If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.
—SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON
The Oxford History of the American People
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.
—JACQUES BARZUN
God’s Country and Mine
Highways have made tangible the conviction that the truth about America, its heart and soul, is always to be found somewhere just over the horizon, somewhere around the next bend.
—PHIL PATTON
Open Road
A frontier is never a place; it is a time and a way of life. Frontiers pass, but they endure in their people.
—HAL BORLAND
High, Wide and Lonesome
THE REAL ESSENCE OF CANADA . . .
To agree to disagree, to harness diversity, to respect dissent; perhaps this is the real essence of Canada.
—ROBERT L. PERRY
Peter’s Quotations
The soul of Canada is a dual personality, and must remain only half-revealed to those who know only one language.
—FRANK OLIVER CALL
Canadian Quotations and Phrases
A Canadian is someone who drinks Brazilian coffee from an English teacup, and munches a French pastry while sitting on his Danish furniture, having just come home from an Italian movie in his German car. He picks up his Japanese pen and writes to his MP to complain about the American takeover of the Canadian publishing business.
—CAMPBELL HUGHES
in Time
“Liberty” sounds awkward on the Canadian tongue; we use “freedom,” a more passive-sounding word. When I was a soldier applying for a three-day pass, I asked for “leave,” a word that suggests permission. United States G.I.’s were granted “liberty,” a word that implies escape.
—PIERRE BERTON
Why We Act Like Canadians
Freedom is to you, what the sun was for us. You take it for granted.
—MOHAMED MAGHJI
Vancouver Sun
Such a land [British Columbia] is good for an energetic man. It is also not so bad for the loafer.
—RUDYARD KIPLING
LIBERTY IS ALWAYS DANGEROUS . . .
Liberty is always dangerous—but it is the safest thing we have.
—HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
—GEORGE WASHINGTON
Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.
—NELSON MANDELA
Free is not the same as free and easy.
—LARRY EISENBERG
Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.
—POPE JOHN PAUL II
The cause of freedom, of the defense of man’s conscience, is indivisible. By defending it in one country, we defend it everywhere in the world.
—VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY
Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong.
—JOHN G. DIEFENBAKER
There are two freedoms: the false where a man is free to do what he likes; the true where a man is free to do what he ought.
—CHARLES KINGSLEY
Your liberty to swing your arms ends where my nose begins.
—Quoted by STUART CHASE
The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
—WILLIAM SAFIRE
in The New York Times
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
—ADLAI E. STEVENSON
Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying down as self-evident the proposition that no people ought to be free until they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who had resolved not to go in the water until he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty until they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.
—THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, 1825
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
—WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
Freedom is a powerful animal that fights the barriers, and sometimes makes people wish for higher fences.
—LANCE MORROW
in Time
The function of freedom is to free somebody else.
—TONI MORRISON
It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.
—DICK CHENEY
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
—THOMAS PAINE
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.
—FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Freedom never yet was given to nations as a gift, but only as a reward, bravely earned by one’s own exertions.
—LAJOS KOSSUTH
The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of government power.
—WOODROW WILSON
They have rights who dare defend them.
—ROGER BALDWIN
The love of liberty is the love of others. The love of power is the love of ourselves.
—WILLIAM HAZLITT
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
—ALBERT CAMUS
Resistance, Rebellion and Death
Freedom is the right to choose the habits that bind you.
—RENATE RUBENSTEIN
Liefst Verliefd
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
—W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM,
Strictly Personal
A country free enough to examine its own conscience is a land worth living in, a nation to be envied.
—PRINCE CHARLES
The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.
—Graffiti
Where opinions, morals and politics are concerned, t
here is no such thing as objectivity. The best we can hope for is that freedom will enable subjective points of view to meet and complement each other.
—JEAN D’ORMESSON
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
It is a seldom proferred argument as to the advantages of a free press that it has a major function in keeping the government itself informed as to what the government is doing.
—WALTER CRONKITE
A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.
—ALBERT CAMUS
Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.
—POTTER STEWART
Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.