I collect quotes. It's a horrible addiction. I'll have to stop and write something down in the middle of a conversation at times! Lot's of fun though 
Anyway, I figured it would be interesting to see what everyones favorite quotes are. I know most everyone has a favorite stashed away somewhere (quite often in sigs) - and hey, it helps me enlarge my database!
Some quotes I found stimulating:
Politics
“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortenemy of the state.”
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
"If tyranny and oppression are to come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy"- James Madison
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic.
"It's impossible to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it." —Upton Sinclair
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. - Plato
If you already believe it, it's good information; if you don't, it's evil propaganda.
Philosophy
"If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention."
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. -Thomas Paine
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored.
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
Language
Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.
The language of truth is unadorned and always simple.
Marcellinus Ammianus
Never miss a good chance to shut up.
It's not what you tell them…it's what they hear.
Red Auerbach
Drawing on my find command of language, I said nothing.
Robert Charles Benchley
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
Winston Churchill
The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion.
Douglas Hofstadter
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard Kipling
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
Abraham Lincoln
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
George Orwell
The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.
Edgar Allan Poe
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw
Don't speak unless you can improve on the silence.
Spanish Proverb
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests
Gore Vidal
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Sorry for the length... I have lots more but I'll spare you the pain.
EDIT: I know some of these may cause some controversy... I'll happily edit this post if necessary. The last thing I want is to start trouble!
Anyway, I figured it would be interesting to see what everyones favorite quotes are. I know most everyone has a favorite stashed away somewhere (quite often in sigs) - and hey, it helps me enlarge my database!
Some quotes I found stimulating:
Politics
“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortenemy of the state.”
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
"If tyranny and oppression are to come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy"- James Madison
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic.
"It's impossible to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it." —Upton Sinclair
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. - Plato
If you already believe it, it's good information; if you don't, it's evil propaganda.
Philosophy
"If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention."
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.--Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. -Thomas Paine
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored.
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
Language
Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.
The language of truth is unadorned and always simple.
Marcellinus Ammianus
Never miss a good chance to shut up.
It's not what you tell them…it's what they hear.
Red Auerbach
Drawing on my find command of language, I said nothing.
Robert Charles Benchley
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
Winston Churchill
The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion.
Douglas Hofstadter
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard Kipling
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
Abraham Lincoln
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
George Orwell
The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be.
Edgar Allan Poe
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw
Don't speak unless you can improve on the silence.
Spanish Proverb
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests
Gore Vidal
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Sorry for the length... I have lots more but I'll spare you the pain.
EDIT: I know some of these may cause some controversy... I'll happily edit this post if necessary. The last thing I want is to start trouble!
