Favorite quotes of Krzysztof M. Ostaszewski

Aristotle
  • But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human beings, and being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything.
  • But the greatest thing of all is to be a master of the metaphor. It is the only thing which cannot be taught by others; and it is also a sign of original genius, because a good metaphor implies the intuitive perception of similarity in dissimilar things.
  • Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power, that is not easy.

    • Dick Armey

    • In politics, greed is about power, and the politics of power is always wrapped in the language of love.

    Banacek (quoting Polish proverbs)

  • Just because a dress is red satin, doesn't mean it comes off easy.
  • If you are not sure the soup is borshch, there could be orphans working in salt mines.
  • Twelve good horses and silver candlesticks will not stop snow falling in Białystok.
  • It is harder for the spider to catch the fly, than for the fly to catch the horse.
    • Nikolai Berdyaev
  • A reign of terror is not only physical action with arrests, torture, punishments and executions, but it is, above all, mental action.
    • Yogi Berra
  • If people do not want to come to the ball park, ain't nobody gonna stop them. (a.k.a., "Yogi Berra's Fundamental Law of Economics").
    • Bertold Brecht
  • Unless coerced, people generally do not consent to use of coercion against themselves.
    • Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
  • The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.
    • Napoléon Bonaparte
  • There are only two forms of government: East and West.
  • There is no such thing as theft. One always pays the price.
    • Edmund Burke
  • There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men.

    • George Burns

    • Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

    George W. Bush

  • Free people will set the course of history.
  • I am not pretending to be an actuary.
    • Al Capone
  • You can always get more with a gun and a smile than with a gun alone.

    • Albert Camus

    • The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

    Victor Chernomyrdin
  • We wanted to do good, but it all turned out the same as before.
    • Gilbert Keith Chesterton
  • Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
    • Agatha Christie
  • God says: Take what you want and pay for it. (spoken by Hercules Poirot, quoting a Spanish proverb)
  • Despair is a sin. (also spoken by Hercules Poirot)
    • Winston Churchill
  • I refuse to remain impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.
  • However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
  • If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

    • Marcus Tulius Cicero

    • If you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains; if you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains.

    Confucius (孔子)

    • Learning without thought is labor lost.

    Calvin Coolidge
  • Civilization and profits go hand in hand.
  • There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence so important, as living within your means.

    • Howard Cunningham (character in Happy Days television show)

    • There, it's fixed. By a Republican.

    Georges Jacques Danton

  • Audacity, always audacity, still more audacity.
    • Albert Einstein
  • Any man who can drive safely while kissing a woman he loves is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
    • Euripides
  • If a good man is hurt, all good men suffer with him.
    St. Francis of Assisi
  • Preach the Gospel always. If necessary, use words.
    • Benjamin Franklin
  • Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
    • Benton Fraser (hero of due South television show)
  • There is nothing to be afraid of. Well ... maybe not in the greater metaphysical sphere of things. But at least this frightful ordeal is over. (speaking to a rat)
  • If it is the only logical solution, it does not have to make sense.
    • Milton Friedman
  • In my life, I had been poor and had been rich. Rich is better.
  • Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
    • Erich Fromm
  • L'amour est l'enfant de la liberté. ("Love is a child of freedom," from a traditional French song)
    • Lesław Gajek
  • The fall of communism is an undeniable proof of the existence of God.
  • If God meant for people to be rich, He would have given them brains and two hands. (" If God meant for people to fly, He would have given them brains." is a quote from Robert Heinlein, see below)

    • Lawrence Garfield (hero of Other People's Money motion picture, when offered a million dollar bribe by a widow)

    • I do not take widows' and orphans' money. I make them money.

    Youssef Boutros Ghali

    • The most important election in a new democracy is not the first one, it is the second one.

    Jim Greaton (when looking at Italian marble being brought for the fireplaces in the offices of managers in a newly built headquaters of a mutual life insurance company in the United States, in the context of a traditional perception of a mutual life insurance firm as "widows and orphans money")

    • My my! The kind of things that widows and orphans money can buy!

    Che Guevara

    • Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail.

    Tom Glass

  • A well schooled electorate being necessary to the survival of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read books, newspapers and other press, shall not be infringed.
    • Victor Davis Hanson
  • It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom -- never.
    • Lee Harris
  • The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but the road to the Gulag, as the road to Auschwitz, was paved with syllogisms.
    • Robert Heinlein
  • Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.
  • If God meant for people to fly, He would have given them brains.
    • Eric Hoffer
  • The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power. How naive the cliche that money is the root of evil!
  • You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
    • Horace (Qintus Horatius Flaccus)
  • When life's path is steep, remember to keep your mind even.
    • Thomas Jefferson
  • Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
  • Trust any higher government authority with the schools and you might as well turn over to that higher authority the management of all our farms, our mills, and our merchant stores.

    • John Paul II

  • Family is the place where human beings learn to love and be loved. In other words, family is the place where they learn to be human beings.
  • Love requires the highest level of responsibility.
  • Stupidity is also a gift from God, but it is up to us to use it wisely.
  • There is no peace without justice. There is no justice without forgiveness.
  • The future starts today, not tomorrow.
  • The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.
  • When I speak for freedom, especially the freedom of religion, for people around the world, I never speak against anyone. If some governments consider themselves attacked by my pleas for freedom, it is not my words that cause their feelings, but probably their conscience.
    • Jerry Jordan
  • Man's reach should exceed his grasp, but never his grasp of the facts. ("Man's reach should exceed his grasp" is a quote from Robert Browning)
    • Tadeusz Kotarbiński
  • Society is cursed if the power is in the hands of people who desire power.
  • The key problem with radical centralism is that it is always an illusion.
  • It takes minimal effort to implant some irrational idea in a young mind. It takes a courageous maximal effort to root it out.

    • Lao-Tze (老子)

    • A government can be compared to our lungs. Our lungs are best when we don't realize they are helping us breathe. It is when we are constantly aware of our lungs that we know they have come down with an illness.

    Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

  • The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

    C. S. Lewis

    • We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

    • Abraham Lincoln
  • Man may suffer in adversity, but if you want to test man's character, give him power.

    • Rush Limbaugh

    • The only way to eliminate nuclear weapons is to use them.

    • Life without historical context is shallow and unsatisfactory.

    • Markets correct. Bureaucracies do not.

    • War is a necessity brought on by evil.

    Harry Markowitz

    • Granted that the invisible hand is clumsy, heartless and unfair, it is ever so much more deft and impartial than a central planning committee.

    Guy de Maupassant

    • There are only three things that are important in life: to be kind, to be kind, and to be kind.

    Alan Alexander Milne

    • The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

    Ludwig von Mises

  • Human civilization is not something achieved against nature; it is rather the outcome of the working of the innate qualities of man.
    • Zell Miller
  • It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.
    • George Orwell
  • The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
    • Krzysztof Ostaszewski
  • Americans always view both their friends and their enemies as human beings. On the other hand, Americans are universally not viewed as human beings by non-Americans, even by those non-Americans who proclaim themselves to be friends of the United States of America.
  • God is happiest when His children are at play. Go play now, because God is probably watching.
  • I am not my brother's keeper. I am my brother's brother.
  • If God meant for people to judge others, He would have given them brains. ("If God meant for people to fly, He would have given them brains" is a quote from Robert Heinlein, the author of the best science fiction novel ever written, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and of the worst science fiction novel ever written, Stranger in the Strange Land)
  • In a free market economy, a reasonably priced nutritious lunch is always available.
  • Socialists call themselves progressives in order to promote restoration of the peaceful, prosperous, and happy tribal society that existed 3000 years ago.
  • Socialist policies are often proclaimed to be well-intentioned by their opponents, but producing unintended consequences. Given more than a hundred years of vast experience with those policies, and their unqualified and undisturbed record of producing slaughter, misery and poverty, isn't it time to conclude that the "unintended" consequences are actually fully intended by socialism's proponents?
  • When asked: "Where does money come from?", people give one of these two answers: "From work," or "From other people." The answer reveals a lot about the person giving it, as both of the answers are correct, but only the first one is true.
  • The United States of America is unlike the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is unlike the United States of America. Unfortunately, nearly universally Americans are unaware of that striking difference, and non-Americans are even more, usually arrogantly so, unaware of it.
  • The core principle of Capitalism is to let institutions that fail to peform their function die. This is why Capitalism is often, quite perversely, called "heartless". As if those institutions' lives were more sacred than the lives of people they are expected to serve. The truly heartless system: socialism, prolongs the lives of failing institutions at the expense of human life.
  • The core principle of socialism is to reward the bad and punish the good.
  • The United States wins major confrontations by applying the Monroe Doctrine. Marilyn Monroe, that is. Its core principle is: Seduce the enemy.
  • There is nothing more impractical than a wrong theory.
  • To each according to his merit, from each according to his need.
  • Western Civilization is the Civilization of Individual Responsibility.
    • Patricia Ostaszewski
  • Purpose is the happiness of life.
    • Al Otto
  • Explain your quantities.

    Tom Palmer

    • In ancient Greece, Sparta had a system of compulsory state education, and Athens did not. Athens gave us arts, mathematics, and philosophy. Sparta gave us names for high school football teams.

    • George Patton

    • If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn't thinking.

    • If you order a soldier to take a hill, leave it at that.

    Charles Peirce

    • Do not block the way of inquiry.

    Plato

  • Those who choose to not participate in politics will be ruled by their inferiors.
    • Karl Popper
  • A theory that appears to explain everything actually explains nothing.
    • Colin Powell
  • You can't make someone else's choices. You shouldn't let someone else make yours.

    • David Pryce-Jones

    • The human comedy will come out all right because, when all is said and done, intellect is more powerful than vicissitude and wickedness.

    Ayn Rand

  • Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it.
  • Judge and be prepared to be judged.
  • There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
  • There is no substitute for competence.
  • Yes, I was educated at a communist university. But I was not influenced by the indoctrination and propaganda. For zat, I am very grateful to myself.
    • Ronald Reagan
  • How can you tell a communist? Reads Marx and Lenin. How can you tell an anti-communist? Read and understood Marx and Lenin.
    • Will Rogers
  • America is the land of opportunity, and don't you forget it.
    • Theodore Roosevelt
  • Diplomacy is utterly useless where there is no force behind it.
  • It is only the warlike power of a civilized people that can give peace to the world.
  • Weasel words from mollycoddles will never do when the day demands prophetic clarity from great hearts. Manly men must emerge for this hour of trial.
    • Donald Rumsfeld
  • I believe what I said yesterday. I do not know what I said, but I know what I think, and I assume that is what I said.
    • Lucius Annaeus Seneca
  • Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

    • Isaac Bashevis Singer

    • We must believe that we have free will. We have no choice about that.

    Adam Smith
  • The difference in natural talents in different man is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not on many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labor.
    • Thomas Sowell
  • When proponents of free enterprise argue that the only job of the government is to provide framework of the rule of law, their opponents accuse them of promoting a vision of government that "does nothing." Those making such accusation conveniently forget that it took mankind thousands of years of hard work to create that "nothing".
  • Fighting fire with fire may sound good, but most fire departments use water.
  • There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.
  • Any single business has done more to reduce poverty than all intellectuals put together.
  • What is politically defined as economic "planning" is the forcible superseding of other people's plans by government officials.

    • Kazik Staszewski

    • Dopóki taka Twoja, dopóty taka moja dola. ("Lord, as You will, so is my fate.")

    Rabindranath Tagore

  • When we slam the door on our mistakes, Truth becomes confused: How can She enter now?

    • St. Thomas Aquinas

    • Bonum est diffusivum sui. ("The good pours itself out.")

    J.R.R. Tolkien
  • A hasty stroke oft goes astray.
    • Harry S. Truman
  • Nothing is new but the history that we do not know.
    • Booker T. Washington
  • There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.

    • Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski

    • A true diplomat may do dishonorable things occassionally, but cannot afford to do stupid things. A true soldier can do stupid things occassionally, but cannot afford to do dishonorable things.

    Oscar Wilde

  • I am not young enough to know everything.
  • It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
  • I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
    • Arthur L. Williams
  • All you can do is all you can do. All you can do is enough.
  • Discouragement is the tool the devil uses when all else fails.
    • Victoria, Her Royal Majesty the Queen of England
  • Honest work. (In response to His Royal Highness, Prince Consort of the United Kingdom, Albert's question: "What shall we do today?")
  • I maintain that revolutions are always bad for the country, and a cause of untold misery to the people.
    • Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)
  • Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito. ("Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.")

    • Lotfi Zadeh

    • Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

    Frank Zappa

    • All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

    Andrzej Zybertowicz

  • It is never inappropriate to use truth as a tool of politics.
    • All information contained here is, to our best knowledge, correct, but it is merely a representation, and should not be considered to be any form of professional advice. This electronic publication should not be misconstrued as the official position of Illinois State University, or its Department of Mathematics. Comments on this page are welcome and should be sent to Dr. Krzysztof Ostaszewski  at his e-mail address: krzysio@ilstu.edu.