Karl Marx Quotes and Sayings

Karl Marx Quotes

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Karl Marx

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

Karl Marx

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Karl Marx

Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!

Karl Marx

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Karl Marx

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

Karl Marx

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

Karl Marx

Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.

Karl Marx

Democracy is the road to socialism.

Karl Marx

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

Karl Marx

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

Karl Marx

Religion is the opium of the masses.

Karl Marx

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

Karl Marx

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.

Karl Marx

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Karl Marx

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

Karl Marx

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

Karl Marx

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

Karl Marx

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

Karl Marx

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

Karl Marx

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.

Karl Marx

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

Karl Marx

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

Karl Marx

The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.

Karl Marx

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

Karl Marx

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Karl Marx

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

Karl Marx

Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.

Karl Marx

Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.

Karl Marx

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.

Karl Marx

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

Karl Marx

In a higher phase of communist society... only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Karl Marx

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Karl Marx

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

Karl Marx

We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass.

Karl Marx

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

Karl Marx

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

Karl Marx

Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

Karl Marx

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

Karl Marx

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

Karl Marx

A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

Karl Marx

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Karl Marx

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

Karl Marx

On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.

Karl Marx

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

Karl Marx

The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.

Karl Marx

Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

Karl Marx

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

Karl Marx

Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.

Karl Marx

The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.

Karl Marx

It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.

Karl Marx

It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

Karl Marx

The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.

Karl Marx

The product of mental labor - science - always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

Karl Marx

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

Karl Marx

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

Karl Marx

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

Karl Marx

A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism.

Karl Marx

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

Karl Marx

John Lennon Quotes and Sayings

John Lennon Quotes

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

John Lennon

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.

John Lennon

I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people.

John Lennon

Love is the flower you've got to let grow.

John Lennon

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.

John Lennon

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.

John Lennon

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

John Lennon

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

John Lennon

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

John Lennon

Everything is clearer when you're in love.

John Lennon

We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.

John Lennon

You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

John Lennon

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

John Lennon

Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.

John Lennon

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?

John Lennon

Love is the answer, and you know that for sure; Love is a flower, you've got to let it grow.

John Lennon

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

John Lennon

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.

John Lennon

When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,' you just scream.

John Lennon

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity.

John Lennon

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

John Lennon

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

John Lennon

He didn't come out of my belly, but my God, I've made his bones, because I've attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I'm so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.

John Lennon

We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow's nest of that ship.

John Lennon

I'm not claiming divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can... But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

John Lennon

Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground.

John Lennon

All you need is love.

John Lennon

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry.

John Lennon

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'.

John Lennon

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

John Lennon

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

John Lennon

It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?

John Lennon

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

John Lennon

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

John Lennon

The more I see the less I know for sure.

John Lennon

Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.

John Lennon

You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate.

John Lennon

I don't believe in killing whatever the reason!

John Lennon

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

John Lennon

Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.

John Lennon

We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity.

John Lennon

It doesn't matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I'm a woman or a man.

John Lennon

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

John Lennon

The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.

John Lennon

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

John Lennon

And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he's no longer God... They'll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.

John Lennon

I don't know which will go first - rock 'n' roll or Christianity.

John Lennon

I believe time wounds all heels.

John Lennon

These critics with the illusions they've created about artists - it's like idol worship. They only like people when they're on their way up... I cannot be on the way up again.

John Lennon

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

John Lennon

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

John Lennon

Rituals are important. Nowadays it's hip not to be married. I'm not interested in being hip.

John Lennon

The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.

John Lennon

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.

John Lennon

John C. Maxwell Quotes and Sayings

John C. Maxwell Quotes

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

John C. Maxwell

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

John C. Maxwell

People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.

John C. Maxwell

Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.

John C. Maxwell

There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. 'Good pride' represents our dignity and self-respect. 'Bad pride' is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance.

John C. Maxwell

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up.

John C. Maxwell

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

John C. Maxwell

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

John C. Maxwell

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn't come alive until the leader models it.

John C. Maxwell

Learn to say 'no' to the good so you can say 'yes' to the best.

John C. Maxwell

Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.

John C. Maxwell

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

John C. Maxwell

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it - young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous - is changed by it.

John C. Maxwell

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

John C. Maxwell

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

John C. Maxwell

The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.

John C. Maxwell

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, and relationships that have lost their meaning.

John C. Maxwell

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

John C. Maxwell

Leadership is influence.

John C. Maxwell

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.

John C. Maxwell

Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.

John C. Maxwell

The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.

John C. Maxwell

If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.

John C. Maxwell

Enjoyment is an incredible energizer to the human spirit.

John C. Maxwell

Self-centered leaders manipulate when they move people for personal benefit. Mature leaders motivate by moving people for mutual benefit.

John C. Maxwell

Every person has a longing to be significant; to make a contribution; to be a part of something noble and purposeful.

John C. Maxwell

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

John C. Maxwell

When you are full of pride on the inside, it makes you stiff, stubborn, and creates strife with others.

John C. Maxwell

All good leaders are connectors. They relate well and make people feel confident about themselves and their leader.

John C. Maxwell

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don't change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.

John C. Maxwell

Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.

John C. Maxwell

The unsuccessful person is burdened by learning, and prefers to walk down familiar paths. Their distaste for learning stunts their growth and limits their influence.

John C. Maxwell

The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.

John C. Maxwell

The dreams and passions stored within hearts are powerful keys which can unlock a wealth of potential.

John C. Maxwell

Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.

John C. Maxwell

Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it's almost always due to personal growth.

John C. Maxwell

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn't. In fact, I didn't even know you were supposed to have one.

John C. Maxwell

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

John C. Maxwell

Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.

John C. Maxwell

A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.

John C. Maxwell

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

John C. Maxwell

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

John C. Maxwell

Have the humility to learn from those around you.

John C. Maxwell

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

John C. Maxwell

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

John C. Maxwell

To add value to others, one must first value others.

John C. Maxwell

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

John C. Maxwell

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

John C. Maxwell

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

John C. Maxwell

Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don't have to be rich. You don't have to be a genius. You don't have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.

John C. Maxwell

One of the roles of the Presidency is to lead a political party. Having a President in office is usually a huge advantage to a party because it gives the party a mouthpiece and an advocate at the highest level.

John C. Maxwell

Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask 'Why?' ceaselessly.

John C. Maxwell

The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.

John C. Maxwell

The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.

John C. Maxwell

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

John C. Maxwell

Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.

John C. Maxwell

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

John C. Maxwell

How do leaders serve their people? They may pay good wages and treat employees with respect.

John C. Maxwell

Ranking among the greatest Christmas movie classics, 'It's a Wonderful Life' tells a beautiful story about the priceless value of relationships.

John C. Maxwell

Time is more valuable than money, because time is irreplaceable.

John C. Maxwell

Without failure there is no achievement.

John C. Maxwell

Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.

John C. Maxwell

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it's as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

John C. Maxwell

Exceptionally hard decisions can deplete your energy to the point at which you finally cave in. If you mentally crumble and degenerate into negative thinking, you'll magnify the problem to the point where it can haunt you.

John C. Maxwell

Most people don't like change. They revolt against it unless they can clearly see the advantage it brings. For that reason, when good leaders prepare to take action or make changes, they take people through a process to get them ready for it.

John C. Maxwell

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

John C. Maxwell

The first time you say something, it's heard. The second time, it's recognized, and the third time it's learned.

John C. Maxwell

Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.

John C. Maxwell

Policies are many, Principles are few, Policies will change, Principles never do.

John C. Maxwell

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

John C. Maxwell

Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.

John C. Maxwell

We don't mature momentarily, but over the long-term.

John C. Maxwell

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

John C. Maxwell

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

John C. Maxwell

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That's not a guess, it's a guarantee. With pride, it's not a matter of 'if' we will fall, but 'when.' There are no exceptions.

John C. Maxwell

Whenever a high-profile leader dies, people immediately attempt to summarize that person's life in a sentence. Often, critics and commentators get caught up looking at the leader's style, or which political or philosophical camp they represented.

John C. Maxwell

Talent grips us. We are overtaken by the beauty of Michelangelo's sculpture, riveted by Mariah Carey's angelic voice, doubled over in laughter by the comedy of Robin Williams, and captivated by the on screen performances of Denzel Washington.

John C. Maxwell

Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.

John C. Maxwell

We choose what attitudes we have right now. And it's a continuing choice.

John C. Maxwell

Keeping score is for games, not friendships.

John C. Maxwell

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

John C. Maxwell

We all have done something unethical.

John C. Maxwell

You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise.

John C. Maxwell

If you want to reach the top, don't run over others. Likely, the only way you'll reach the top is to be carried there by others.

John C. Maxwell

Dividers seek to make themselves look or feel better by making others feel worse. They damage relationships, fracture teams and organizations, and create havoc in people's lives.

John C. Maxwell

For more than a decade, I led an organization that put on an elaborate Christmas program each December. It was a big production, with over 250 people participating in more than 20 performances. By the end of the season, everyone who participated was exhausted.

John C. Maxwell

People who add value to others do so intentionally. I say that because to add value, leaders must give of themselves, and that rarely occurs by accident.

John C. Maxwell

If you're lying, you're lying.

John C. Maxwell

Jim Morrison Quotes and Sayings

Jim Morrison Quotes

Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.

Jim Morrison

A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.

Jim Morrison

Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.

Jim Morrison

We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.

Jim Morrison

I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments.

Jim Morrison

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

Jim Morrison

People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.

Jim Morrison

There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.

Jim Morrison

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.

Jim Morrison

Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence.

Jim Morrison

Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.

Jim Morrison

Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts.

Jim Morrison

Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.

Jim Morrison

I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable.

Jim Morrison

Blake said that the body was the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the senses the 'windows of the soul.' When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experence.

Jim Morrison

Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws.

Jim Morrison

Where's your will to be weird?

Jim Morrison

I believe in a long, prolonged, derangement of the senses in order to obtain the unknown.

Jim Morrison

Love cannot save you from your own fate.

Jim Morrison

The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.

Jim Morrison

Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.

Jim Morrison

Hatred is a very underestimated emotion.

Jim Morrison

It's like gambling somehow. You go out for a night of drinking and you don't know where your going to end up the next day. It could work out good or it could be disastrous. It's like the throw of the dice.

Jim Morrison

I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom.

Jim Morrison

I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.

Jim Morrison

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

Actually I don't remember being born, it must have happened during one of my black outs.

Jim Morrison

I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos-especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom... Rather than starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical.

Jim Morrison

This is the strangest life I've ever known.

Jim Morrison

When you make your peace with authority, you become authority.

Jim Morrison

Film spectators are quiet vampires.

Jim Morrison

Music inflames temperament.

Jim Morrison

Drugs are a bet with your mind.

Jim Morrison

I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences.

Jim Morrison

The appeal of cinema lies in the fear of death.

Jim Morrison

H. L. Mencken Quotes and Sayings

H. L. Mencken Quotes

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

H. L. Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

H. L. Mencken

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H. L. Mencken

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

H. L. Mencken

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

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

H. L. Mencken

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

H. L. Mencken

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

H. L. Mencken

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

H. L. Mencken

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

H. L. Mencken

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

H. L. Mencken

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

H. L. Mencken

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

H. L. Mencken

It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

H. L. Mencken

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

H. L. Mencken

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

H. L. Mencken

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

H. L. Mencken

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

H. L. Mencken

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.

H. L. Mencken

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

H. L. Mencken

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

H. L. Mencken

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

H. L. Mencken

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

H. L. Mencken

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

H. L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

H. L. Mencken

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

H. L. Mencken

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

H. L. Mencken

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

H. L. Mencken

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

H. L. Mencken

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

H. L. Mencken

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

H. L. Mencken

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

H. L. Mencken

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

H. L. Mencken

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

H. L. Mencken

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

H. L. Mencken

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

H. L. Mencken

Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.

H. L. Mencken

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

H. L. Mencken

I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.

H. L. Mencken

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

H. L. Mencken

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

H. L. Mencken

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

H. L. Mencken

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

H. L. Mencken

There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

H. L. Mencken

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.

H. L. Mencken

A professor must have a theory as a dog must have fleas.

H. L. Mencken

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

H. L. Mencken

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

H. L. Mencken

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

H. L. Mencken

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

H. L. Mencken

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

H. L. Mencken

Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.

H. L. Mencken

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

H. L. Mencken

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

H. L. Mencken

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

H. L. Mencken

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

H. L. Mencken

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

H. L. Mencken

Let's not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

H. L. Mencken

Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.

H. L. Mencken

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

H. L. Mencken

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

H. L. Mencken

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

H. L. Mencken

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with, even if he drank.

H. L. Mencken

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

H. L. Mencken

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

H. L. Mencken

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

H. L. Mencken

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

H. L. Mencken

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

H. L. Mencken

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.

H. L. Mencken

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

H. L. Mencken

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

H. L. Mencken

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

H. L. Mencken

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

H. L. Mencken

A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.

H. L. Mencken

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

H. L. Mencken

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

H. L. Mencken

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

H. L. Mencken

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

H. L. Mencken

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

H. L. Mencken

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

H. L. Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

H. L. Mencken

No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.

H. L. Mencken

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H. L. Mencken

A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.

H. L. Mencken

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

H. L. Mencken

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.

H. L. Mencken

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

H. L. Mencken

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

H. L. Mencken

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

H. L. Mencken

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

H. L. Mencken

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

H. L. Mencken

All government, of course, is against liberty.

H. L. Mencken

Every man is his own hell.

H. L. Mencken

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

H. L. Mencken

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

H. L. Mencken

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.

H. L. Mencken

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

H. L. Mencken

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

H. L. Mencken

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

H. L. Mencken

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

H. L. Mencken

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

H. L. Mencken

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.

H. L. Mencken

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

H. L. Mencken

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

H. L. Mencken

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

H. L. Mencken

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

H. L. Mencken

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

H. L. Mencken

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

H. L. Mencken

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

H. L. Mencken

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

H. L. Mencken

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

H. L. Mencken

Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince.

H. L. Mencken

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

H. L. Mencken

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

H. L. Mencken

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

H. L. Mencken

Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.

H. L. Mencken

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

H. L. Mencken

Judge: a law student who marks his own examination-papers.

H. L. Mencken

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

H. L. Mencken

There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.

H. L. Mencken

In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

H. L. Mencken

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

H. L. Mencken

A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

H. L. Mencken

Alimony - the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

H. L. Mencken

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

H. L. Mencken

Life is a dead-end street.

H. L. Mencken

Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.

H. L. Mencken

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

H. L. Mencken

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what sting is justice.

H. L. Mencken

It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

H. L. Mencken

Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

H. L. Mencken

Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.

H. L. Mencken

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

H. L. Mencken

Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

H. L. Mencken

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

H. L. Mencken

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

H. L. Mencken

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

H. L. Mencken

Time stays, we go.

H. L. Mencken

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

H. L. Mencken

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.

H. L. Mencken

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

H. L. Mencken

One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.

H. L. Mencken

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

H. L. Mencken

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

H. L. Mencken

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

H. L. Mencken

For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.

H. L. Mencken