Not the happiest quote of all time...

I am surrounded by strangers that I thought were my friends.

I can't remember where I saw it, but I really though it was apt (I was a pledge at the time):

A pledge is a promise, not a person.

"A mistake at least means someone got off their ass long enough to do something!"
- Anonymous

Another favorite of mine.

General Douglas R. McArthur

"I will return"

"Would you give up everything you've ever known, for the chance at everything you've ever dreamed of? I would."-Jennifer Love Hewitt(In a preview for 'Time of your life')

"Don't frown because you never know who's falling in love with your smile."-Anonymous

"I discovered it's not what the world holds for you, it's what you bring to it."-Anne of Avonlea

my signature has some of my favorite quotes...

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I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations, I may not reach them but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead"--Lousia May Alcott

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Smile Pep Charm Style that's what we have...but most of all you'll love our laugh (whooaa)

I saw this one on a T-shirt: "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. Hate me because your BOYFRIEND thinks I'm beautiful" Obnoxious, but funny :-)

#1: "The thing is, people always expect you to be the same way, like you're a rock or something, except even rocks like--- erode." Claire Danes, my so called life
#2: "Life seems to me far too short to be spent nursing animosity and registering wrong"
Charlotte Bronte
#3: "Nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm"
Thoreau or Emerson, i think

"It loved to Happen" Kafka

"He had the personality of a broken speedometer" The Laughing man (JD Salinger)

"Dance like nobodies watching, and love like it's never going to hurt"

"Never tell anybody anything. If you do, you'll start missing everyone." (Holden Caulfield in CITR - Salinger)

"Half of learning how to play, is learning what not to play" Ani Difranco (Up,[7x])

"All life is progression to, and recession from one phrase - I love you" F. Scott Fitzgerald in the offshore pirate

"Mere existence is dilapidated daydreams - eat pizza and drink a beer before you go to bed" Cory Greenwell (just made that up)

"Accident ruled every corner of the universe, except the chambers of the human heart" David Gutterson in Snow falling on Cedars

"There is no limit to what you can acquire, and what you can release" Marlo Morgan in Mutant Message from down under

'Perhaps coward should have been co-ward, as in two directions, inward and outward. Because he saw both sides of the picture, and acted with his inward beliefs as well well as his outward abilities' Marlo Morgan from Mutant message from forever - not exact quote

"Everytime you find a place that seems nice, someone sneaks up behind you and writes 'Fuck You' on it" Holden Caulfield in CITR

"And we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly back in to the past" Nick Carrowaway as F. Scott Fitgerald in great gatsby

more faves

"the mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one" mr antolini in CITR by salinger

"all great men join fraternities, the leaders of those men join sigma chi" - the duke

"Let's Get Dangerous"
-Darkwing Duck

"Dude, that thingy was trying to do it with something of another and the stuff is like that when stuff is going there"
-Anonymous (Freshman Year Neighbor)

"You don't need to be smart to be president"
--Republican Congressman J.C. Watts - said at a February campaign appearance on Bush's behalf. Washington Post, 6/11/00

"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating."
-George W Bush (huh?)

"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometime until we get an objective analysis."
-George W. Bush (I feel sorry for the children)

BEST QUOTE EVER

Carpe Diem

SECOND BEST QUOTE EVER
Cieste La Vi

"Why is it that the only person that can make you stop crying is the person who made you start?"

"Jane was different. We’d get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we’d start holding hands, and we wouldn’t quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a big deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.”

Some fun, many from the founding fathers. Sorry, it is what I know.


"Share what you know, learn what you don't." - Alan Fud (I don't think he made it up, but I don't know where he got it.)

I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove anything. - Bart Simpson

Never go faster than your guardian angel can fly. - no idea

"The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes." - Benjamin Disraeli

"Better to be thought a fool than to open ones mouth and prove it to be true." - no idea

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

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One of my favorite patriotic quotes:

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our country men." - Samuel Adams

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On liberty and freedom:

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent ... the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." - Justice Louis Brandeis, United States Supreme Court

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." - Patrick Henry, 1788

"The history of liberty is a history of limitation of government power, not the increase of it." - Woodrow Wilson

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" - Patrick Henry (1736-1799) in his "The War Inevitable" speech

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." - Thomas Paine

"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure." - Albert Einstein

"We are fast approaching the stage in the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest period of human history; the stage of rule by brute force." - Ayn Rand

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On people who believe the govt should provide for them (entitlements):

"How can we live in freedom and maintain that we are entitled to *anything* that we can't get without the labor of others? Remember, if we are entitled to the labor of others, that makes slaves of those others." - Marilyn vos Savant, Parade Magazine, 12/31/95

"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the State. They forget that the State lives at the expense of everyone." - Frederic Bastiat

"It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." - Justice Robert H. Jackson

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Observations:

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." - Robert Heinlein, "Beyond This Horizon" 1942

"Politically popular speech has always been protected, even the Jews were free to say 'Heil Hitler'." - Isaac Asimov

The Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights is not about duck hunting, any more then the First Amendment is about playing Scrabble. The entire Bill of Rights is about individual freedom." - Unintended Consequences, John Ross

"A constitutional right that cannot be practiced is not right at all; it's an illusion." - Senate Majority leader George Mitchell (D Me), 1/22/93

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A scary sequence of events:

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 (Franklin B. Historical Review of Pennsylvania. 1759)

"Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave." - William Pitt, 1763

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..." - Bill Clinton (USA TODAY, 3/11/1993, pg 2A)

"The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security." - Louis Freeh Director of the FBI, 1993

"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ...... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it." - U.S. President Bill Clinton, on MTV 3-22-94

Some here may have thought Clinton a good President, after all, even I didn't vote for Bush Sr. in 1992, but Clinton scared people like me with his attempted subversion of the founding intent of our country. Abraham Lincoln said it best:
"Our safety, our liberty depends on preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the US are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts - Not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."

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As true today as it was then:

"...the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious." - Joseph Goebbels - Nazi Propaganda Minister

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What people in school are missing:
"Above all I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to so they won't forget the basic principles of freedom." - Thomas Jefferson

What I am sure many now think of me:
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." - Charles A. Beard, American Historian, 1874-1948

The University of Virginia Thomas Jefferson quotation site, an excellent source: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/