Quotes
One of the fondest memories of my Granddad Nelson was trading quotes regularly over email. Sadly I lost the email archive when I went on my mission, but it has continued to be an interest of mine. I hope you enjoy my collection of quotes. A bit of everything from religion to politics to leadership.
The three legs of the agreement-tripod are desire, data and doubt. Accuracy and honesty have little to do with it… Desire brings the participants together. Data set the limits of their dialogue. Doubt frames the questions.
The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it
An accurate, though ambiguous, answer [is] taken as confirmation of one’s deepest fears.
Truth suffers from too much analysis.
Argument closes off the doors of the senses, it always masks violence. Continued too long, argument always leads to violence.
Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class—whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
Show me a completely smooth operation and I’ll show you someone who’s covering mistakes. Real boats rock.
Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.
a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel
Your mind is not a computer; it is a response-tool keyed to whatever your senses display.
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: “I feed on your energy.”
What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
That is the beginning of knowledge—the discovery of something we do not understand.
the drowning man who climbs on your shoulders to save himself is understandable—except when you see it happen in the drawing room.
short-term expediency always fails in the long term
There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man—with human flesh.
Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma.
Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept.
When you stumble you may regain your balance by jumping beyond the thing that tripped you.
Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
Give as few orders as possible. Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.
Among the responsibilities of command is the necessity to punish . . . but only when the victim demands it.
Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.
How easy it was to produce scapegoats and how readily they were accepted! This was especially true when the alternative was to find yourself either guilty or stupid or both.
Too much knowledge never makes for simple decisions.
Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.
Do not depend only on theory if your life is at stake.
Wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.
