Awareness Quotes

"It is extremely difficult in democratic times to draw nations into hostilities; but … it is almost impossible that any two of them should go to war without embroiling the rest. The interests of all are so interlaced, their opinions and their wants so much alike, that none can remain quiet when the others stir. Wars therefore become more rare, but when they break out, they spread over a larger field."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals."

- Abba Eban

"Self-sufficiency and a contempt of the science and experience of others are too prevailing traits of character in this country."

- Alexander Hamilton

"I believe that America, the world's strongest democracy, ought not to be afraid of democracy, but we are."

- Lee Hamilton

"The more the state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual."

- Friedrich Hayek

"In contrast to totalitarianism, a democracy can face and live with the truth about itself."

- Sidney Hook

"Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money."

- Robert H. Jackson

"The military constitutes a specialized community governed by a separate discipline from that of the civilian."

- Robert H. Jackson

"I am a compromiser and maneuverer. I try to get something. That’s the way our system works."

- Lyndon B. Johnson

"The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he is."

- Karl Kraus

"We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its state, its national conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on."

- Joseph Pulitzer

"It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting."

- Tom Stoppard

"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

- George Washington

"It’s not healthy for a society if the people hate their own government."

- Garry Wills

"They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn."

- Seneca

"The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable."

- Seneca

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil."

- Marcus Aurelius

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."

- Marcus Aurelius

"Ignorance is the cause of fear."

- Seneca

"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them."

- Epictetus

"Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not."

- Epictetus

"It's not things that upset us but our judgments about things."

- Epictetus

"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things."

- Epictetus

"Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our actions."

- Epictetus

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

- Thomas Jefferson

"I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be."

- Thomas Jefferson

"No nation is drunken where wine is cheap."

- Thomas Jefferson

"You’re not missing the party, there is no party."