Social studies impromptu writings
Principal or topicDon’t sacrifice your political convictions for the convenience of the hour / Edward Kennedy / 1
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam…I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me / Woody Allen / 2
Do not weep, do not wax indignant…understand / Spinoza / 3
Garner up pleasant thoughts in your mind, for pleasant thoughts make pleasant live / John Wilkins / 4
The more we do, the more we can do / William Hazlitt / 5
Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded / Virginia / 6
When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, “to know one’s slef.” And what was easy, “to advise another” / Diogenes / 7
Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is. / P.J. O’Rourke / 8
If you are a terror to many, then beware of many / Ausonius / 9
Art does not reproduce the visible, rather, it makes visible / Paul Klee / 10
You may share the labours of the great, but you may not share the spoil / Aesop / 11
Minds are like parachutes…they work best when open / Lord Thomas Dewar / 13
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions / Samuel Johnson / 14
There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is not greater guild than discontentment. And there is not greater disaster than greed. / Lao Tzu / 15
Hope is the pillar that holds up the world. Hope is the dream of a waking man / Pliny / 16
To sway and audience, you must watch them as you speak. / C. Kent Wright / 17
You should go to a pear tree for pears, not to an elm / Publilius Syrus / 18
In this country, England, it is well to kill, from time to time, and admiral…to encourage the others / Voltaire / 19
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement. / Charles Schwab / 20
It has ever been since time began, And ever will be, till time lose breath, that love is a mood-no more-to a man, and love to a woman is life or death / Ella Wheeler Wilcox / 21
“Doublethink” means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of the them / George Orwell / 22
For truth is precious and divine…too rich a pearl for carnal swine / Samuel Butler / 23
Whatever one man is capable of conceiving, other men will be able to achieve / Jules Verne / 24
No man is justified in doing evil on the grounds of expediency. / TR / 25
Where reason fails, time oft has worked a cure / Seneca / 26
There are two kinds of failures; those who thought and never did…and those who did and never thought. / Lawrence J. Peter / 27
Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up / Wilson Mizner / 28
If dogs could talk, perhaps we’d find it just as hard to get along with them as we do with people / Diana Black / 29
The misery of child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody / Eric Hoffer / 30
My fate cannot be mastered, it can only be collaborated with, and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul…I am only it noisiest passenger / Aldous Huxley / 31
A little philosophy (science) inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy (science) bringeth man’s minds about to religion / Francis Bacon / 32
The first step towards amendment (change) is the recognition of error / Seneca / 33
The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you / B.B. King / 34
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them / Ray Bradbury / 35
We fear death, yet we long for slumber and beautiful dreams. / Kahlil Gibran / 36
More important than talent, strength, or knowledge, is the ability to laugh at yourself and enjoy the pursuit of your dreams / Amy Grant / 37
Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man / Nietzsche / 38
Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live…death is nigh at hand while thou livest…while thou hast time, be good / Marcus Aurelius / 39
If you can’t beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing / anon / 40
I thought ten thousand swords must have leapt from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her (freedom) with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone / Edmund Burke / 41
In science, as in love, too much concentration on technique can often lead to impotence / P.L. Berger / 42
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. / Japanese Proverb / 43
Beware of the man who won’t be bothered with details. / William Feather / 44
A man who enjoys responsibility usually gets it. A man who merely likes exercising authority usually loses it. / Malcolm Stevenson Forbes / 45
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American Public / H.L. Mencken / 46
His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or storytelling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking, best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. / JRR Tolkein / 47
Cogito ergo sum / Rene Descartes / 48
We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic / Susan Jeffers / 49
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel / Samuel Johnson / 50
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure / Thorstein Veblen / 51
A home without books is a body without soul / Cicero / 52
I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility / John Ruskin / 53
It is only Christianity, the great bond of love and duty to God, that makes any existence valuable or even tolerable / Horace Bushnell / 54
When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing / Enrique Jardiel Poncela / 55
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore / Andre Gide / 56
All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with…all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible / George Santayana / 57
The wisest men follow their own direction / Euripides / 58
There is only one good, knowledge…and one evil, ignorance / Socrates / 59
The only difference between a rut and a grave…is in their dimensions / Ellen Glasgow / 60
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives / Mark Twain / 61
Self-discipline is that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises on man above another. / Joseph Addison / 62
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success / Oscar Wilde / 63
Idleness and lack of occupation tend-nay, are dragged-towards evil (Idle hands are the devil’s workshop) / Hippocrates / 64
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think / Socrates / 65
It is better to wear out than to rust out / Bishop Richard Cumberland / 66
I love making friends…its people I can’t stand / Linus / 67
We must laugh at man, to avoid crying for him / Napoleon / 68
Be courteous, be obliging, but don’t give yourself over to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow trade / George Eliot / 69
Boys are beyond the range of anybody’s sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years / James Thurber / 70
You are…the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. / Dag Hammarskjld / 71
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years / Robert Bolt / 72
One’s destination is never a place, but rather, a new way of looking at things / Henry Miller / 73
The poor wish to be rich,
The rich wish to be happy,
The single wish to be married, and the married wish to be dead / Ann Lander / 74
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of the their thoughts / John Locke / 75
The man who does not learn is dark, like one walking in the night / Chinese proverb / 76
If a man takes no though about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand / Confucius / 77
After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood / Fred Thompson / 78
Don’t let life discourage you…everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was / Richard L. Evans / 79
Experience is what allows us to repeat our mistakes, only with more finesse / Derwood Fincher / 80
Every exaggeration of the truth, once detected by others, destroys our credibility and makes that we do and say suspect. / Stephen Covey / 81
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young. / Willa Cather / 82
Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure / George E. Woodberry / 83
Woe to the house where the hen crows and the rooster is still / Danish proverb / 84
For God hates utterly the bray of bragging tongues / Sophocles / 85
Some people weave burlap into the fabric of our lives, and some weave gold thread. Both contribute to make the whole picture beautiful and unique / Anon. / 86
The scramble to get into college is going to be so terrible in the next few years that students are going to put up with almost anything…even an education / Barnaby C. Keeney / 87
Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it. Plan more than you can do, then do it / Anon / 88
The evil of the world is made possible by othing but the sanction you give it. / Ayn Rand / 89
Do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few / Pythagorus / 90
Men willingly believe what they wish / Julius Caesar / 91
All men are evil and will declare themselves to be so when occasion is offered / Sir Walter Raleigh / 92
I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion / Miquel de Cervantes / 93
Oh, what tangled webs we seave when we practice to deceive / Sir Walter Scott / 94
The biggest revolutions are the ones that happen in-between our ears / Rob Brown / 95
You know why there’s a Second Amendment….in case the government fails to follow the first one / Rush Limbaugh / 96
There are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to incur loss than to make gain / Titus Maccius Plautus / 97
It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us / Peter de Vries / 98
There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings…but none when they are under the influence of imagination / Edmund Burke / 99
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing / Edmund Burke / 100
Without words, without writing and without books, there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity / Hermann Hesse / 101
Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of their own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance / John Keats / 102
Truth is not only violated by falsehood….it may be outraged by silence / Henri Fredric
Amiel / 103
Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life / Johann von Goethe / 104
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried / Sir Winston Churchill / 105
Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living / Abraham Joshua Heschel / 106
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there / Charles Franklin Kettering / 107
Today, if you are not confused, you are just not thinking clearly / U. Peter / 108
We can now prove that large numbers of Americans are dying from sitting on their behinds / Bruce B. Dan / 109
My father always told me, “find a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life”. / Jim Fox / 110
Some people just don’t seem to realize, when they’re moaning about not getting prayers answered, that “no” is the answer. / Nelia Gardner White / 111
A classic is a book which people praise and don’t read. / Mark Twain / 112
One reason I don’t drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time. / Nancy Astor / 113
We think in generalities, but we live in detail / Alfred North Whithead / 114
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do / John Wooden / 115
Be not surprised if thou findest thyself in possession of unexpected wealth. Allah will provide and unexpected use for it. / James J. Roche / 116
If you wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators / William Hazlitt / 117
The only real valuable thing is intuition (creative imagination) / Albert Einstein / 118
It’s not that I’s afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens / Mark Twain / 119
Any acceptance of authority is the very denial of truth / Jiddu Krishnamurti / 120
Few sinners are saved after the first 20 minutes of a sermon / Mark Twain / 121
Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law…all law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it. / G. C. Lichtenberg / 122
What I look forward to is continued immaturity, followed by death / Dave Berry / 123
Many things have fallen only to rise higher / Seneca / 124
No government ought to be without censors….and where the press is free, no one ever will / Thomas Jefferson / 125
No one has the right to destroy another person’s belief by demanding empirical evidence / Ann Landers / 126
Vision looks inward and becomes duty. Vision looks outward and becomes aspiration. Vision looks upward and become faith. / Stephen Wise / 127
Stop thinking about your difficulties, whatever they are…and start thinking about God instead / Emmet Fox / 128
I have never made but one prayer to God…a very short one, “O, Lord, make my enemies ridiculous” And God granted it. / Voltaire / 129