Commonwealths Quotes & Sayings

Were every one employed in points concordant to their natures, professions, and arts, commonwealths would rise up of themselves. — Thomas Browne

There is no Hell when you die so don't look so worried — Conor Oberst

I get very upset with all of the crowd seekers today, and people out there trying to get on TV. It ain't about you. It's about trying to make the world more just for everybody. — Marian Wright Edelman

Consider that in 1800 Western powers claimed 55 percent but actually held approximately 35 percent of the earth's surface, and that by 1874 the proportion was 67 percent, a rate of increase of 83,000 square miles per year. By 1914, the annual rate had risen to an astonishing 240,000 square miles [per year], and Europe held a grand total of roughly 85 percent of the earth as colonies, protectorates, dependencies, dominions, and commonwealths. No other associated set of colonies in history was as large, none so totally dominated, none so unequal in power to the Western metropolis." Culture and Imperialism, pg. 8 — Edward Said

Bowie talks in great, voluble torrents, darting from one topic to the next, parenthesizing and then parenthesizing the parentheses, as if he has too many ideas for one conversation. — Sean Egan

The courage of the Syrian protesters is remarkable, for they face prison, torture, or death every time they lift a banner. — Elliott Abrams

Your friend Plato holds that commonwealths will only be happy when either philosophers rule or rulers philosophize: how remote happiness must appear when philosophers won't even deign to share their thoughts with kings. — Thomas More

The whisper of the blood and the pleading of the bone marrow. — Knut Hamsun

A disunited people till the end of time, suspicious and distrustful of each other, [the Americans] will be divided and subdivided into little commonwealths ... with no center of union and no common interest. — Josiah Tucker

Is it splendid, or stupid, to take life seriously? — Gustave Flaubert

And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state. — Galileo Galilei

All who contribute to the overthrow of religion, or to the ruin of kingdoms and commonwealths, all who are foes to letters and to the arts which confer honour and benefit on the human race (among whom I reckon the impious, the cruel, the ignorant, the indolent, the base and the worthless), are held in infamy and detestation. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Locke made the case that religious beliefs are, in the words of the scholar Adam Wolfson, "matters of opinion, opinions to which we are all equally entitled, rather than quanta of truth or knowledge."1 In Locke's formulation, protection against persecution is one of the highest responsibilities of any government or ruler. Locke also argued that where there is coercion and persecution to change hearts and minds, it will "work" only at a very high human cost, producing in its wake both cruelty and hypocrisy. For Locke, no one person should "desire to impose" his or her view of salvation on others. Instead, in his vision of a tolerant society, each individual should be free to follow his or her own path in religion, and respect the right of others to follow their own paths: "Nobody, not even commonwealths," Locke wrote, "have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other upon pretense of religion."2 — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself, they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths, as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money may easily be enhanced or abased. — Thomas Hobbes

Freedom is not a gift nor does it simply exist for us to have, but rather it is a sacred duty, and its blessed yield of hope is born from none other than the blood of the innocent. — Bryant H. McGill

I'm a great swimmer, probably due to the size of my feet. — Cat Deeley

Myth The United States of America is made up of fifty states. Truth Technically, no. There are only forty-six states in the United States - Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are commonwealths. — Leland Gregory

It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests - and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith - the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires. — Joseph Conrad

Philosophers make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high. — Francis Bacon

Most of life is unbearable. It's unbearable but we bear it — Frank Beddor

Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings. — John Dryden

The immemorial ingratitude of rulers and commonwealths is proverbial. Especially common is ingratitude to Israel - the People that has achieved so much of eternal worth, but has rarely succeeded in winning gratitude. — Joseph Hertz

Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man. — Thomas Hobbes