Civil Commons Quotes & Sayings

This country is so urbanized we think low-fat milk comes from cows on Nutri/System weight-loss plans. — P. J. O'Rourke

For when people do not keep watch over the commons, it is destroyed. It results, then, that they fall into civil faction, compelling one another by force and not wishing to do what is just themselves. — Aristotle.

Willey Ley (Spaceflight advocate, German-American — Seth Balfour

Stand up.
Stand out.
Stand firm.
Stand strong. — Matshona Dhliwayo

War was about yawning chasms of inactivity, punctuated by brief, screaming interludes of action. And in those brief, screaming interludes, events happened both quickly and with dreamlike slowness, every instant burned into memory. — Alastair Reynolds

If an artist does not have an erotic involvement with everything that he sees, he may as well give up. To be a human being may a very messy thing, but to be an artist is something else entirely, because art is religion, art is sex, art is society. Art is everything. — Lucas Samaras

Crime is a product of social excess. — Vladimir Lenin

I'm a recovering optimist. — Larry Gelbart

Minimum standards to promote workers' wages, health and safety, to safeguard the community against pollution and degradation, and to ensure basic life goods for all as a basic contract for civil society was between 1945 and the mid-1970s, in fact, a rapidly evolving framework which inhibited the causes and effects of a corporate market system committed to an opposed goal. — John McMurtry

Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. — Barack Obama

I rather doubt that life has a meaning. If I thought perhaps it did, and I wanted to find out what its meaning is, I don't imagine I'd ask someone whose credentials consist of a PhD in philosophy. — Jerry Fodor

She liked the way he chose a good coat and wore it for five years and then chose another one similar to it. — Kathleen Winter

When seeing the simple truth means recognizing that we're in sin, we would rather see things as being complicated. — Anna Sofia Botkin

The spread of democracy, the new foundation of the rule of law, and the creation of fledgling representative governments that honor and respect human rights-together these actions spell out the increasing marginalization of the terrorists, as they have fewer and fewer places to run and hide. — John Cornyn

Health, social life, job, house, partners, finances; leisure use, leisure amount; working time, education, income, children; food, water, shelter, clothing, sex, health care; mobility; physical safety, social safety, job security, savings account, insurance, disability protection, family leave, vacation; place tenure, a commons; access to wilderness, mountains, ocean; peace, political stability, political input, political satisfaction; air, water, esteem; status, recognition; home, community, neighbors, civil society, sports, the arts; longevity treatments, gender choice; the opportunity to become more what you are
that's all you need — Kim Stanley Robinson

Ach,' she heard someone saying, 'I left mein ceinture dans le shower ce morgen. Quelle dope ich bin! — Madeleine L'Engle

If you look at my body of work, there's always a dark side to my characters. They've always got a skeleton in the closet; they've always got a subtext. — Tony Scott