Voice of Artists

As a well spent day brings happy sleep,
so life well used brings happy death.

Leonardo da Vinci

Sea Quotes

Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war... (Loren Eiseley)

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),It's always our self we find in the sea... (e.e. Cummings)

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came... (John F. Kennedy)

God moves in a mysterious way,His wonders to perform;He plants his footsteps in the sea,And rides upon the storm... (William Cowper)

I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me... (Isaac Newton)

Life is life's greatest gift. Guard the life of another creature as you would your own because it is your own. On life's scale of values, the smallest is no less precious to the creature who owns it than the largest... (Lloyd Biggle Jr.)

It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist: the threat is rather to life itself... (Rachel Carson)

The sea calls - come live in my heart and pay no rent... (Unknown)

A good heart is better than all the brains in the world... (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction... (Rachel Carson)

To me, the sea is like a person--like a child that I've known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the sea I talk to it. I never feel alone when I'm out there... (Gertrude Ederle)

When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world... (John Muir)

My soul is full of longing for the secrets of the sea, and the heart of the great ocean sends a thrilling pulse through me... (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

The sea will grant each man new hope, and sleep will bring dreams of home... (Christopher Columbus)

Animal protection is education to the humanity... (Albert Schweitzer)

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble... (Blaise Pascal)

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth... (Evan Esar)

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge...(Isaac Bashevis Singer)

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it... (William James)

The ocean is a mighty harmonist... (William Wordsworth)

The tradition of freedom of the high seas has its roots in an era when there were too few people to seriously violate the oceans -- but in hindsight that era ended some 150 years ago… (James Carlton)

Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I'm halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God. I could be eating a slow learner... (Lynda Montgomery)

The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land... (Joseph Conrad)

Why do we love the sea?

It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think... (Robert Henri)

The sea hath no king but God alone... (Dante Gabriel Rossetti)

We never know the worth of water till the well is dry... (Thomas Fuller)

God's Service

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws."

John Quincy Adams

War or Civilization

Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
Abraham Flexner

War or Civilization

Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
Abraham Flexner

Baseball

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.

Jacques Barzun

History

History is an argument without end.

Winston Churchill

The farther backward you can look,
the farther forward you are likely to see.

Communication

Communication

I`m in favor of free expression, provided it`s kept rigidly under control.
Allen Bennett

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats 1865 – 1939

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
The Dalai Lama

Social organizations are flagrantly open systems in that the input of energies and the conversion of output into further energic input consists of transactions between the organization and its environment.
Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn in The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966)

For the wise man, one word is enough.
Plautus 251BC-184BC, Greek writer of comedies

The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation.
William Shakespeare 1564-1616, English dramatist

If you can`t convince them, confuse them.
Harry S. Truman 1884-1972, thirty-third President of the United States (1945-1953)

Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation.
Joseph Campbell

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you`re busy interrupting.
Mark Twain 1835-1910, American humorist and writer, famous for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it`s not going to get the business.
Warren Buffett 1930-, American Investment Entrepreneur

Argument is the worst sort of conversation.
Jonathan Swift

Those who know, do not speak, those who speak, do not know.
Lao Tse, 6th century BC, Chinese philosopher

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948, Indian deep thinker and constant experimenter

I believe in the discipline of silence, and could talk for hours about it.
G.B. Shaw 1856-1950, Irish critic and poet

In some mergers there truly are synergies - though often times the acquirer pays too much for them - but at other times the cost and revenue benefits that are projected prove illusory. Of one thing, however, be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked.
Warren Buffet 1930-, American investment entrepreneur

A verbal contract isn`t worth the paper it`s written on.
Samuel Goldwyn

I gotta use words when I talk to you.
T.S. Elliot 1888-1965, Anglo-American poet and critic

Words are just words and without heart they have no meaning.
Chinese proverb

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn`t said.
Peter F. Drucker 1909-, American management guru

In a philosophical dispute, he gains most who is defeated, since he learns most.
Epicurus, 4th century B.C.

To do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
Bible, Hebrews 13:16

The opposite of talking is not listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.
Fran Lebowitz 1951-, American journalist and writer

Mine honour is my life; both grow in one: Take honour from me, and my life is done.
William Shakespeare 1564-1616, English dramatist

Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
Nelson Mandela 1918-, first democratically elected President of South Africa and Nobel Prize winner

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can not get them across, your ideas will not get you anywhere.
Lee Iacocca

Quality

Quality

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper.
John Ruskin 1819–1900, English critic and social theorist

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent efforts.
John Ruskin 1819-1900, English author and social critic

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle 384BC-322BC, Greek philosopher and scientist

As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.
Charles Darwin 1809-1882, English naturalist and originator of the evolution theory

If you can not describe what you are doing as a process, you do not know what you are doing.
W. Edwards Deming 1900-1993, American continuous improvement management guru

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca 5BC-65AD, Roman tragedian, philosopher, and counselor to Nero, Epistles

Quality is free, but only to those who are willing to pay heavily for it.
Philip Crosby 1926-2001, American business philosopher and writer on quality

It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.
Mahatma Gandhi 1869 – 1948, Indian deep thinker and constant experimenter

Professionalism means consistency of quality.
Frank Tyger

Strategy

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein 1879-1955; German-born American theoretical physicist

Running a company on market research is like driving while looking in the rear mirror.
Anita Roddick 1942-, American businesswoman

Know the other and know thyself: Triumph without peril. Know nature and know the situation: Triumph completely.
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist

For every complex problem there is a simple solution that is wrong.
George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950; Irish playwright and critic

Smart people also learn from their enemies.
Aristophanes 445BC-385BC, Greek poet

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832, German poet, dramatist and scientist

Drive thy business; let it not drive thee.
Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790; American writer and statesman

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.
Benjamin Disraeli 1804-1881, British prime minister and novelist

A gladiator makes his plan in the arena (too late).
Seneca 4BC-65AC, Roman writer and moralist

How many things are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected.
Pliny the Elder 23-79, Roman writer

A wise man also fears a weak enemy.
Publilius Syrus ~100 BC

The processes used to arrive at the total strategy are typically fragmented, evolutionary, and largely intuitive.
James Quinn in Strategic Change: Logical Incrementalism, 1978

Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.
Miyamoto Musashi 1584-1645, legendary Japanese swordsman

Consider the little mouse, how sagacious an animal it is which never entrusts its life to one hole only.
Plautus 254BC-184 BC, Roman playwright

There is always a better strategy than the one you have; you just haven`t thought of it yet.
Sir Brian Pitman, former CEO of Lloyds TSB, Harvard Business Review, April 2003

To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable. The highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by strategy.
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist

The pilot cannot mitigate the billows or calm the winds.
Plutarch 46-120, Greek biographer and philosopher

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
Sir Winston Churchill 1874-1965, English statesman

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
`Sherlock Holmes`, Arthur Conan Doyle 1859-1930, English novelist

To plan, v. To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental results.
Ambrose Bierce 1842-1914, American columnis

Alliance, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other`s pocket that they cannot seperately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce 1842-1914, American columnist

Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.
Sir John Harvey-Jones, Former CEO of ICI

The first percept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it was such without a single doubt.
René Descartes 1596-1650, French rationalist philosopher and mathematician

Advantage is a better soldier than rashness.
William Shakespeare 1564-1616, English dramatist

Uncertainty is not a result of ignorance or the partiality of human knowledge, but is a characteristic of the world itself.
M. Taylor in The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture, 2001

We are not all capable of everything.
Virgil 70-19BC, Roman philosopher

Your most dangerous competitors are those that are most like you. The differences between you and your competitors are the basis of your advantage.
Bruce Henderson, Founder Boston Consulting Group, HBR 1989

Performance

Performance

One`s only rival is one`s own potentialities. One`s only failure is failing to live up to one`s own possibilities. In this sense every man can be a king and must therefore be treated like a king.
Abraham Maslow 1908-1970, American anthropologist

His promises were, as he then was, mighty; But his performance, as he is now, nothing.
William Shakespeare 1564-1616, English dramatist in Henry VIII (1613), act 4, sc. 2

The pretension is nothing; the performance every thing. A good apple is better than an insipid peach.
Leigh Hunt 1784-1859, English poet and essayist

My lifes work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.
Mikhail Gorbachev 1931-, President and transformer of the USSR and Russian political leader

Failure is the foundation of success... success the lurking place of failure.
Lao Tzu c.604BC-531BC, Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
The Dalai Lama

It is no use saying "we are doing our best." You have to succeed in doing what is necessary.
Winston Churchill 1874-1965, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II

After you reach a certain point, money becomes unimportant. What matters is success.
Aristotle Onassis 1906-1970, Greek shipping empire giant who married Jacky Kennedy

We are all failures - at least, all the best of us are.
J.M. Berrie, Engish playwright

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Peter F. Drucker 1909-, American management guru

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Arthur Schopenhauer 1788-1860, German philosopher

The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important - and then get out of their way while they do it.
Jack Welch, former CEO of GE

Do not expect too much of the future, but also do not bother too much about the past.
Chinese proverb

Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence brings about wealth and all other public and private blessings for men.
Aristotle 384BC-322BC, Greek philosopher and scientist

The superior man is distressed by his lack of ability.
Confucius, Chinese philosopher

The man who starts out going nowhere, generally gets there.
Dale Carnegie 1888-1955, author and pioneer in self-improvement and interpersonal skills

Organization

Organization

Reengineering must be fundamental, radical and drastic.
Michael Hammer & James Champy 1993, American management consultants

A mechanistic management system is appropriate to stable conditions. (...) The organic form is appropriate to changing conditions, which give rise constantly to fresh problems and unforseen requirements for action which cannot be broken down or distributed automatically arising from the functional roles defined within a hierarchic structure.
Tom Burns and G.M. Stalker, sociologists, in The Management of Innovation (1961)

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
Peter F. Drucker 1909-, American management guru

From the earliest times it has been recognized that nothing but confusion arises under multiple command.
Luther Gulick in Notes on the Theory of Organization

Always change processes and structures while they still function.
Unknown

Organization may be viewed from two standpoints which are analytically distinct but which are empirically united in a context of reciprocal consequences. On the one hand, any concrete organizational system is an economy; at the same time, it is an adaptive social structure.
Philip Selznick, sociologist, in Foundations of the Theory of Organization (1948)

Innovation has never come through bureaucracy and hierarchy. It’s always come from individuals.
John Scully, Chairman, Apple Computers

An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.
Stephen R. Covey, American management guru

Nothing is illegal if one hundred well-placed businessmen decide to do it.
Andrew Young 1932-, American diplomat

35 years of research have convinced me that managerial hierarchy is the most efficient, the hardiest, and in fact the most natural structure ever devised for large organizations.
Elliott Jacques, in In Praise of Hierarchy, in Harvard Business Review (Jan-Feb 1990)

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things.
Machiavelli 1446-1507, Italian statesman and philosopher

The ingenuity and the perseverance of industrial management in the pursuit of economic ends have changed many scientific and technological dreams into commonplace realities. It is now becoming clear that the application of these same talents to the human side of enterprise will not only enhance substantially these materialistic achievements, but will bring us one step closer to `the good society`.
Douglas Murray McGregor, psychologist, in The Human Side of the Enterprise (1957)

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American essayist and poet

Guidelines for bureaucrats: 1. When in charge, ponder. 2. When in trouble, delegate. 3. When in doubt, mumble.
James H. Boren 1925-, American bureaucrat

It is impossible to understand the nature of a formal organization without investigating the networks of informal relations and the unofficial norms as well as the formal hierarchy of authority and the official body of rules, since the formally instituted and the informally emerging patterns are inextricably intertwined.
Peter M. Blau and W. Richard Scott in Formal Organizations: A Comparative Approach (1962)

It is a commonplace executive observation that businesses exist to make money, and the observation is usually allowed to go unchallenged. It is, however, a very limited statement about the purposes of business.
Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn in The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966)

Too little liberty brings stagnation and too much brings chaos.
Bertrand Russell 1872 - 1970, Brittish philosopher and writer

Leadership

Leadership

The way to achieve success is first to have a definite, clear, practical ideal - a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends - wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
Aristotle 384BC-322BC, Greek philosopher and scientist, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George S. Patton, World War II General

Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.
Harold S. Geneen 1910-1997, Communications executive described by R.J. Schoenberg as an executive who pursued growth and increased earnings "with no larger vision whatever"

Great minds have purposes; others have wishes.
Washington Irving 1783-1859, American author

Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.
Jesse Jackson 1941-, Civil rights leader with an exceptional drive and empathy for the oppressed

Leadership is not magnetic personality--that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not making friends and influencing people --that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
Peter Drucker 1909-2005, Management Guru

A leader is most effective when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, his troops will feel they did it themselves.
Lao Tzu c.604BC-531BC, Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
Walter Lippmann 1889-1974, American journalist in the New York Herald Tribune, 14 April 1945

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such.
André Maurois 1885-1967, French biographer, novelist, and essayist

Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
Warren G. Bennis 1925-, American scholar, particularly in the field of leadership

I say that over whatever a man may preside, he will, if he knows what he needs, and is able to provide it, be a good president, whether he have the direction of a chorus, a family, a city, or an army.
Socrates 469-399 BC, Ancient Greek ethicist-philosopher

Treating people with respect will gain one wide acceptance and improve the business.
Tao Zhu Gong 500BC, Assistant to the Emperor of Yue, 2nd Business Principle

The greatest power available to man is not to use it.
Meister Eckhart

There are two tragedies in a man`s life. One is not having reached one`s goal and the other is having reached it.
Friedrich Nietzsche 1894-1900, German philosopher, known as the father of nihilism

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865, sixteenth American president

Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them.
Stephen Covey, American leadership consultant and writer

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arrive and make them miserable.
Aldous Huxley 1894-1963, English novelist

Leadership is the ability to decide what is to be done and then get others to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890-1969, general and thirty-fourth President of the United States

I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up.
Napoleon Bonaparte 1769-1821, Emperor of France, One of the greatest military commanders and a risk taking gambler

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Stephen Covey, American leadership consultant and writer

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus ~100 BC

What you think is the top, is only a step.
Seneca 4BC-65AC, Roman writer and moralist

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
Epictetus c. 60-120, Roman philosopher

Therefore the skilful leader subdues the enemy`s troups without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field. With his forces intact he will dispute the mastery of the Empire, and thus, without losing a man, his triumph will be complete. This is the method of attacking by stratagem.
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist

Vision without action is hallucination.
Manfred Kets de Vries, Dutch Professor and writer on leadership

To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca 5BC-65AD, Roman tragedian, philosopher, and counsellor to Nero

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.
James Russell Lowell 1819-1891, Romantic poet, critic, satirist, writer, diplomat and abolitionist

Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting someone else to do the work.
J.G. Pollard

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Mark Twain 1835-1910, American Humorist and Writer

All of the great leaders have had one thing in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
J.K. Galbraith 1908-, American economist

Know thyself.
Plato 428 BC-347 BC, ancient Greek philosopher

The most important obligation of every leader is to do whatever is in his power to protect and prolong the life of the community, following the order of the universe established by the ancestors and transmitted by tradition. Neglect of this duty has consequences to the authority the leader wields.
Laurenti Magesa, African Writer

The Greeks believed that when a man had too much power for his own good, the Gods ruined him by helping him increase his power at the expense of wisdom... and humanity, until it led automatically to his own destruction.
Thomas Merton

Charisma knows only inner determination and inner restraint... The charismatic leader gains and maintains authority solely by proving his strength in life.
Max Weber 1864-1920, German political economist and sociologist

To lead the people, walk behind them.
Lao Tzu c.604BC-531BC, Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism

I learned that a great leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don`t want to do and like it.
Harry S. Truman 1884-1972, 33rd president of the U.S.

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
Winston Churchill 1874-1965, British politician and Prime Minister

What you cannot enforce, do not command.
Sophocles 496-406 BC, ancient Greek playwright

We shape our environments, then our environments shape us.
Winston Churchill 1874-1965, British statesman and writer

I don`t want any "yes-men" around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.
Samuel Goldwyn 1882-1974, American (Polish-born) movie producer

The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.
Tony Blair 1953-, British Prime Minister in The Mail on October 2nd, 1994

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.
Donald Rumsfeld 1932-, American Republican politician and businessman.

Leadership is not about being nice. Its about being right and being strong.
Paul Keating 1944-, Australian statesman and Prime Minsiter in Time, January 9th, 1995

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
Napoleon Bonaparte 1769-1821, Emperor of France, One of the greatest military commanders and a risk taking gambler

Treating people with respect will gain one wide acceptance and improve the business.
Tao Zhu Gong 500BC, Assistant to the Emperor of Yue, 2nd Business Principle

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Peter F. Drucker 1909-, American management guru

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.
Henry Peter Brougham 1778-1868, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain

There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present.
Liu Shao-Chi 1898-1969, Chinese leader and Chairman of the Peoples Republic of China

Finance

Finance

Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don`t make.
Donald Trump 1946-, American Businessman

Last month I blew $5000 on a reincarnation seminar. I figured, hey, you only live once.
Randy Shakes

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don`t need it.
Bob Hope

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.
Mahatma Gandhi 1869–1948, Indian deep thinker and constant experimenter

Money doesn`t talk, it swears.
Bob Dylan 1941-, influential Rock musician

If you want quick and effective results you must put the money in.
Edward Bullard 1907-1980, British geophysicist

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.
Woody Allen 1935-, brilliant comedian, actor, director, screenwriter and playwright

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
Andy Warhol 1928-1987, artist and filmmaker

Never ask of money spent, where the spender thinks it went. Nobody was ever meant, to remember or invent, what he did with every cent.
Robert Frost 1874-1963, American poet

Don`t stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.
George Burns 1896-1996, legendary vaudeville comedian and film maker

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
William Shakespeare 1564-1616, Hamlet, Act 1 scene 3

Ethics

Ethics

No moral system can rest solely on authority.
A.J. Ayer 1910-1989, British philosopher

The responsibility of the executive is (1) to create and maintain a sense of purpose and moral code for the organization; (2) to establish systems of formal and informal communication; and (3) to ensure the willingness of people to cooperate.
Chester Barnard in The Functions of the Executive (1938)

Never take anybody`s advice.
G.B. Shaw 1856-1950, Irish critic and poet

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.
Bertrand Russell 1872-1970, British philosopher and mathematician

Food comes first, then morals.
Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956, German dramatist

Corporation, n., An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce 1842-1914, American columnist, The Devils Dictionary 1906

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.
Henry Ford 1863 – 1947, American industrialist

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.
Confucius 551BC - 479BC, Chinese philosopher, The Analects, Book II, Chapter XXIV

If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization.
Robert Noyce, inventor of the silicon chip

About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Ernest Hemingway 1899-1961,American writer of novels and short stories

No moral system can rest solely on authority.
A.J. Ayer 1910-1989, British philosopher

Decision Making

Decision-Making

It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.
Abraham Maslow 1908-1970, American humanistic psychologist and originator of the Hierarchy of Needs

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads: One path leads to despair and hopelessness, and the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
Woody Allen 1935-, American author, director, producer and writer

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
Plinius the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) circa 23-79, Roman natural historian

To think is to differ.
Clarence Darrow 1857-1938, American lawyer famous for his wit

Among the safest courses, the safest of all is to doubt.
Spanish proverb

He that is overcautious will accomplish little.
Johann Friedrich von Schiller 1759-1805, German dramatist and poet

To trust everybody is as disasterous as to distrust everybody.
Hesiodus ca 700BC, Greek epic poet

Life is the sum of all your choices.
Albert Camus 1913-1960, French author and philosopher. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957

To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic.
Cicero 106BC-43BC, Roman orator, politician and philosopher

It is not because it is so difficult that we do not try something, it is because we do not try that makes something so difficult.
Seneca 4BC-65AC, Roman writer and moralist

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
Laurence J. Peter, American business humorist

Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile.
Stephen R. Covey, American management guru

The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn`t happen.
Winston Churchill 1874-1965, British prime minister and writer

Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832, German poet, novelist and dramatist

Take the first step in faith. You do not have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Martin Luther King Jr 1929-1968, American pastor and fighter for civil rights

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
Winston Churchill 1874-1965, British prime minister and writer

Change

Change

No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
Epictetus c. 60-120, Roman philosopher

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950, Irish playwright and critic

Our ideas are only intellectual instruments which we use to break into phenomena; we must change them when they have served their purpose, as we change a blunt lancet that we have used long enough.
Claude Bernard 1813-1878, French physiologist

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Reinhold Niebuhr 1892-1971, Protestant theologian

Management must guide the forces of change.
John W. Teets, former chairman, Greyhound

Softness triumphs over hardness, feebleness over strenght. What is malleable is always superior to that what is immovable. This is the principle of controlling things by going along with them, of mastery through adaptation.
Lao Tzu c.604BC-531BC, Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism

Slow and steady wins the race.
Aesop c. 620-560 BC, Greek writer

Be not afreaid of going slowly; be only afraid of standing still.
Chinese Proverb

"Bury me on my face," said Diogenes; and when he was asked why, he replied, "Because in a little while everything will be turned upside down."
Diogenes 412BC-323BC, Greek philosopher

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
Arthur Schopenhauer 1788-1860, German philosopher and notorious pessimist

Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
Bertrand Rusell 1872-1970, British philosopher and mathematician

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.
Plato 428 BC-347 BC, ancient Greek philosopher, Laws, 888

All things are in a state of flux.
Heraclites 540BC–480BC, Greek Philosopher

Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two.
Octavio Paz 1914-1998, Mexican poet and essayist

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
Henry Brooks Adams 1838-1919, American writer and historian

The real problem is what to do with problem solvers after the problem is solved.
Gay Talese 1932-, American (Italian-born) journalist

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our business men, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.
Isaac Asimov 1920-1992, Russian pioneer in science fiction writing

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.
Heraclitus 540 BC – 480 BC, Greek Philosopher

A fanatic is one who can`t change his mind and won`t change the subject.
Winston Churchill 1874-1965, British prime minister and writer

Management that wants to change an institution must first show it loves that institution.
John Tusa 1936-, British radio journalist

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
Albert Einstein 1879-1955; German-born American theoretical physicist

Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln

Frederick Douglass
April 14, 1876
Delivered at the Unveiling of The Freedmen’s Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.

Friends and Fellow-Citizens:

I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has caused you to assemble in such numbers and spirit as you have today. This occasion is in some respects remarkable. Wise and thoughtful men of our race, who shall come after us, and study the lesson of our history in the United States; who shall survey the long and dreary spaces over which we have traveled; who shall count the links in the great chain of events by which we have reached our present position, will make a note of this occasion; they will think of it and speak of it with a sense of manly pride and complacency.

I congratulate you, also, upon the very favorable circumstances in which we meet today. They are high, inspiring, and uncommon. They lend grace, glory, and significance to the object for which we have met. Nowhere else in this great country, with its uncounted towns and cities, unlimited wealth, and immeasurable territory extending from sea to sea, could conditions be found more favorable to the success of this occasion than here.

We stand today at the national center to perform something like a national act--an act which is to go into history; and we are here where every pulsation of the national heart can be heard, felt, and reciprocated. A thousand wires, fed with thought and winged with lightning, put us in instantaneous communication with the loyal and true men all over the country.

Few facts could better illustrate the vast and wonderful change which has taken place in our condition as a people than the fact of our assembling here for the purpose we have today. Harmless, beautiful, proper, and praiseworthy as this demonstration is, I cannot forget that no such demonstration would have been tolerated here twenty years ago. The spirit of slavery and barbarism, which still lingers to blight and destroy in some dark and distant parts of our country, would have made our assembling here the signal and excuse for opening upon us all the flood-gates of wrath and violence. That we are here in peace today is a compliment and a credit to American civilization, and a prophecy of still greater national enlightenment and progress in the future. I refer to the past not in malice, for this is no day for malice; but simply to place more distinctly in front the gratifying and glorious change which has come both to our white fellow-citizens and ourselves, and to congratulate all upon the contrast between now and then; the new dispensation of freedom with its thousand blessings to both races, and the old dispensation of slavery with its ten thousand evils to both races--white and black. In view, then, of the past, the present, and the future, with the long and dark history of our bondage behind us, and with liberty, progress, and enlightenment before us, I again congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour.

Friends and fellow-citizens, the story of our presence here is soon and easily told. We are here in the District of Columbia, here in the city of Washington, the most luminous point of American territory; a city recently transformed and made beautiful in its body and in its spirit; we are here in the place where the ablest and best men of the country are sent to devise the policy, enact the laws, and shape the destiny of the Republic; we are here, with the stately pillars and majestic dome of the Capitol of the nation looking down upon us; we are here, with the broad earth freshly adorned with the foliage and flowers of spring for our church, and all races, colors, and conditions of men for our congregation--in a word, we are here to express, as best we may, by appropriate forms and ceremonies, our grateful sense of the vast, high, and preeminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our country, and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln.

The sentiment that brings us here today is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the Republic lives.

For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history of the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is the first time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do honor to an American great man, however deserving and ilustrious. I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the Republic; let men of all parties and opinions hear it; let those who despise us, not less than those who respect us, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, let it be known everywhere, and by everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, that, in the presence and with the approval of the members of the American House of Representatives, reflecting the general sentiment of the country; that in the presence of that august body, the American Senate, representing the highest intelligence and the calmest judgment of the country; in the presence of the Supreme Court and Chief-Justice of the United States, to whose decisions we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this Republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of after-coming generations may read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.

Fellow-citizens, in what we have said and done today, and in what we may say and do hereafter, we disclaim everything like arrogance and assumption. We claim for ourselves no superior devotion to the character, history, and memory of the illustrious name whose monument we have here dedicated today. We fully comprehend the relation of Abraham Lincoln both to ourselves and to the white people of the United States. Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all places, and it is never more proper and beautiful in any case than when speaking of a great public man whose example is likely to be commended for honor and imitation long after his departure to the solemn shades, the silent continents of eternity. It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.

He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow-citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity. To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting you at his altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect, let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.

Fellow-citizens, ours is no new-born zeal and devotion--merely a thing of this moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the Republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt, and defeat than when we saw him crowned with victory, honor, and glory. Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed. When he tarried long in the mountain; when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us that we were to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting our services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular commander of the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition. Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; despite the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States.

When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slave-holders three months’ grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.

Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January, 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night, when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the word of deliverance which we have heard read today. Nor shall I ever forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation. In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness, forgot that the President had bribed the rebels to lay down their arms by a promise to withhold the bolt which would smite the slave-system with destruction; and we were thenceforward willing to allow the President all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable device that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a great and beneficent measure of liberty and progress.

Fellow-citizens, there is little necessity on this occasion to speak at length and critically of this great and good man, and of his high mission in the world. That ground has been fully occupied and completely covered both here and elsewhere. The whole field of fact and fancy has been gleaned and garnered. Any man can say things that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln. His personal traits and public acts are better known to the American people than are those of any other man of his age. He was a mystery to no man who saw him and heard him. Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle; though decided and pronounce in his convictions, he was tolerant towards those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches. Even those who only knew him through his public utterance obtained a tolerably clear idea of his character and personality. The image of the man went out with his words, and those who read them knew him.

I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery. The man who could say, "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether," gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery. He was willing, while the South was loyal, that it should have its pound of flesh, because he thought that it was so nominated in the bond; but farther than this no earthly power could make him go.

Fellow-citizens, whatever else in this world may be partial, unjust, and uncertain, time, time! is impartial, just, and certain in its action. In the realm of mind, as well as in the realm of matter, it is a great worker, and often works wonders. The honest and comprehensive statesman, clearly discerning the needs of his country, and earnestly endeavoring to do his whole duty, though covered and blistered with reproaches, may safely leave his course to the silent judgment of time. Few great public men have ever been the victims of fiercer denunciation than Abraham Lincoln was during his administration. He was often wounded in the house of his friends. Reproaches came thick and fast upon him from within and from without, and from opposite quarters. He was assailed by Abolitionists; he was assailed by slave-holders; he was assailed by the men who were for peace at any price; he was assailed by those who were for a more vigorous prosecution of the war; he was assailed for not making the war an abolition war; and he was bitterly assailed for making the war an abolition war.

But now behold the change: the judgment of the present hour is, that taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln. His birth, his training, and his natural endowments, both mental and physical, were strongly in his favor. Born and reared among the lowly, a stranger to wealth and luxury, compelled to grapple single-handed with the flintiest hardships of life, from tender youth to sturdy manhood, he grew strong in the manly and heroic qualities demanded by the great mission to which he was called by the votes of his countrymen. The hard condition of his early life, which would have depressed and broken down weaker men, only gave greater life, vigor, and buoyancy to the heroic spirit of Abraham Lincoln. He was ready for any kind and any quality of work. What other young men dreaded in the shape of toil, he took hold of with the utmost cheerfulness.

"A spade, a rake, a hoe,
A pick-axe, or a bill;
A hook to reap, a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what you will."

All day long he could split heavy rails in the woods, and half the night long he could study his English Grammar by the uncertain flare and glare of the light made by a pine-knot. He was at home in the land with his axe, with his maul, with gluts, and his wedges; and he was equally at home on water, with his oars, with his poles, with his planks, and with his boat-hooks. And whether in his flat-boat on the Mississippi River, or at the fireside of his frontier cabin, he was a man of work. A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the Republic. This very fact gave him tremendous power with the American people, and materially contributed not only to selecting him to the Presidency, but in sustaining his administration of the Government.

Upon his inauguration as President of the United States, an office, even when assumed under the most favorable condition, fitted to tax and strain the largest abilities, Abraham Lincoln was met by a tremendous crisis. He was called upon not merely to administer the Government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.

A formidable rebellion rose in his path before him; the Union was already practically dissolved; his country was torn and rent asunder at the center. Hostile armies were already organized against the Republic, armed with the munitions of war which the Republic had provided for its own defense. The tremendous question for him to decide was whether his country should survive the crisis and flourish, or be dismembered and perish. His predecessor in office had already decided the question in favor of national dismemberment, by denying to it the right of self-defense and self-preservation--a right which belongs to the meanest insect.

Happily for the country, happily for you and for me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved that at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid men said before Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration, that we have seen the last President of the United States. A voice in influential quarters said, "Let the Union slide.’’ Some said that a Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said a rebellion of 8,000,000 cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught that treason and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty. His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded. He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.

Fellow-citizens, the fourteenth day of April, 1865, of which this is the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever remain a memorable day in the annals of this Republic. It was on the evening of this day, while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed by the crowning crime of slavery--the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper love for the great liberator.

Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually--we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate--for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him--but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.

Fellow-citizens, I end, as I began, with congratulations. We have done a good work for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us; we have been fastening ourselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.

Opening Letter of the Liberator

Assenting to the “self-evident truth” maintained in the American Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights — among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. In Park-street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popluar but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation at Baltimore, in September, 1829. My consicence in now satisfied. I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.

— William Lloyd Garrison, "To the Public", The Liberator, January 1, 1831

Wm. Lloyd Garrison

Valedictory by William Lloyd Garrison

The last! the last! the last!
O, by that little word
How mny thoughts are stirred—
That sister of the past! (¶ 1)

The present number of The Liberator is the completion of its thirty-fifth volume, and the termination of its existence. (¶ 2)

Commencing my editorial career when only twenty years of age, I have followed it continuously till I have attained my sixtieth year—first, in connection with The Free Press, in Newburyport, in the spring of 1826; next, with The National Philanthropist, in Boston, in 1827; next, with The Journal of the Times, in Bennington, Vt., in 1828—9; next, with The Genius of Universal Emancipation, in Baltimore, in 1829—30; and, finally, with the Liberator, in Boston, from the 1st of January, 1831, to the 1st of January, 1866;—at the start, probably the youngest member of the editorial fraternity in the land, now, perhaps, the oldest, not in years, but in continuous service,—unless Mr. Bryant, of the New York Evening Post, be an exception. (¶ 3)

Whether I shall again be connected with the press, in a similar capacity, is quite problematical; but, at my period of life, I feel no prompting to start a new journal at my own risk, and with the certainty of struggling against wind and tide, as I have done in the past. (¶ 4)

I began the publication of the Liberator without a subscriber, and I end it—it gives me unalloyed satisfaction to say—without a farthing as the pecuniary result of the patronage extended to it during thirty-five years of unremitted labors. (¶ 5)

From the immense change wrought in the national feeling and sentiment on the subject of slavery, the Liberator derived no advantage at any time in regard to its circulation. The original disturber of the peace, nothing was left undone at the beginning, and up to the hour of the late rebellion, by Southern slaveholding villany on the one hand, and Northern pro-slavery malice on the other, to represent it as too vile a sheet to be countenanced by any claiming to be Christian or patriotic; and it always required rare moral courage or singular personal independence to be among its patrons. Never had a journal to look such opposition in the face—never was one so constantly belied and caricatured. If it had advocated all the crimes forbidden by the moral law of God and the statutes of the State, instead of vindicating the sacred claims of oppressed and bleeding humanity, it could not have been more vehemently denounced or more indignantly repudiated. To this day—such is the force of prejudice—there are multitudes who cannot be induced to read a single number of it, even on the score of curiosity, though their views on the slavery question are now precisely those which it has uniformly advocated. Yet no journal has been conducted with such fairness and impartiality; none has granted such freedom in its columns to its opponents; none has so scrupulously and uniformly presented all sides of every question discussed in its pages; none has so readily and exhaustively published, without note or comment, what its enemies have said to its disparagement, and the vilification of its editor; none has vindicated primitive Christianity, in its spirit and purpose—the higher law, in its supremacy over nations and governments as well as individual conscience—the Golden Rule, in its binding obligation upon all classes—the Declaration of Independence, with its self-evident truths—the rights of human nature, without distinction of race, complexion or sex—more earnestly or more uncompromisingly; none has exerted a higher moral or more broadly reformatory influence upon those who have given it a careful perusal; and none has gone beyond it in asserting the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. All this may be claimed for it without egotism or presumption. It has ever been a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to them that do well. It has excited the fierce hostility of all that is vile and demoniacal in the land, and won the affection and regard of the purest and noblest of the age. To me it has been unspeakably cheering, and the richest compensation for whatever of peril, suffering and defamation I have been called to encounter, that one uniform testimony has been borne, by those who have had, its weekly perusal, as to the elevating and quickening influence of the Liberator upon their character and lives; and the deep grief they are expressing in view of its discontinuance is overwhelmingly affecting to my feelings. Many of these date their subscription from the commencement of the paper, and they have allowed nothing in its columns to pass without a rigid scrutiny. They speak, therefore, experimentally, and testify of that which they have seen and do know. Let them be assured that my regret in the separation which is to take place between us, in consequence of the discontinuance of the Liberator, is at least as poignant as their own; and let them feel, as I do, comforted by the thought that it relates only to the weekly method of communicating with each other, and not to the principles we have espoused in the past, or the hopes and aims we cherish as to the future. (¶ 6)

Although the Liberator was designed to be, and has ever been, mainly devoted to the abolition of slavery, yet it has been instrumental in aiding the cause of reform in many of its most important aspects. (¶ 7)

I have never consulted either the subscription list of the paper or public sentiment in printing, or omitting to print, any article touching any matter whatever. Personally, I have never asked any one to become a subscriber, nor any one to contribute to its support, nor presented its claims for a better circulation in any lecture or speech, or at any one of the multitudinous anti-slavery gatherings in the land. Had I done so, no doubt its subscription list might have been much enlarged. (¶ 8)

In this connection, I must be permitted to express my surprise that I am gravely informed, in various quarters, that this is no time to retire from public labor; that though the chains of the captive have been broken, he is yet to be vindicated in regard to the full possession of equal civil and political rights; that the freedmen in every part of the South are subjected to many insults and outrages; that the old slaveholding spirit is showing itself in every available form; that there is imminent danger that, in the hurry of reconstruction and readmission to the Union, the late rebel States will be left free to work any amount of mischief; that there is manifestly a severe struggle yet to come with the Southern powers of darkness, which will require the utmost vigilance and the most determined efforts on the part of the friends of impartial liberty—&c., &c., &c. Surely, it is not meant by all this that I am therefore bound to continue the publication of the Liberator; for that is a matter for me to determine, and no one else. As I commenced its publication without asking leave of any one, so I claim to be competant to decide when it may fitly close its career. (¶ 9)

Again—it cannot be meant, by this presentation of the existing state of things at the South, either to impeach my intelligence, or to impute to me a lack of interest in behalf of that race, for the liberation and elevation of which I have labored so many years. If, when they had no friends, and no hope of earthly redemption, I did not hesitate to make their cause my own, is it to be supposed that, with their yokes broken, and their friends and advocates multiplied indefinitely, I can be any the less disposed to stand by them to the last—to insist on the full measure of justice and equity being meted out of them—to retain in my breast a lively and permanent interest in all that relates to their present condition and future welfare? (¶ 10)

I shall sound no trumpet and make no parade as to what I shall do for the future. After having gone through with such a struggle as has never been paralleled in duration in the life of any reformer, and for nearly forty years been the target at which all poisonous and deadly missiles have been hurled, and having seen our great national iniquity blotted out, and freedom proclaimed throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof, and a thousand presses and pulpits supporting the claims of the colored population to fair treatment where not one could be found to do this in the early days of the anti-slavery conflict, I might—it seems to me—be so. But, as yet, I have neither asked nor wished to be relieved of any burdens or labors connected with the good old cause. I see a mighty work of enlightenment and regeneration yet to be accomplished at the South, and many cruel wrongs done to the freedmen which are yet to be redressed; and I neither counsel others to turn away from the field of conflict, under the delusion that no more remains to be done, nor contemplate such a course in my own case. (¶ 11)

The object for which the Liberator was commenced—the extermination of chattel slavery—having been gloriously consummated, it seems to me specially appropriate to let its existence cover the historic period of the great struggle; leaving what remains to be done to complete the work of emancipation to other instrumentalities, (of which I hope to avail myself,) under new auspices, with more abundant means, and with millions instead of hundreds for allies. (¶ 12)

Most happy am I to be no longer in conflict with the mass of my fellow-countrymen on the subject of slavery. For no man of any refinement or sensibility can be indifferent to the approbation of his fellow men, if it be rightly earned. But to obtain it by going with the multitude to do evil—by pandering to despotic power or a corrupt public sentiment—is self-degradation and personal dishonor: (¶ 13)

For more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Caesar with a senate at his heels. (¶ 14)

Better to be always in a minority of one with God—branded as madman, incendiary, fanatic, heretic, infidel—frowned upon by the powers that be, and mobbed by the populace—or consigned ignominiously to the gallows, like him whose soul is marching on, though his body lies mouldering in the grave, or burnt to ashes at the stake like Wickliffe, or nailed to the cross like him who gave himself for the world,—in defence of the right, than like Herod, having the shouts of a multitude, crying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man! (¶ 15)

Farewell, tried and faithful patrons! Farewell, generous benefactors, without whose voluntary but essential pecuniary contributions the Liberator must have long since been discontinued! Farewell, noble men and women who have wrought so long and so successfully, under God, to break every yoke! Hail, ye ransomed millions! Hail, year of jubilee! With a grateful heart and a fresh baptism of the soul, my last invocation shall be— (¶ 16)

Spirit of Freedom! on—
Oh! pause not in thy flight
Till every clime is won
To worship in thy light:
Speed on thy glorious way,
And wake the sleeping lands!
Millions are watching for the ray,
And lift to thee their hands.
Still Onward! be thy cry—
Thy banner on the blast;
And, like a tempest, as thou rushest by,
Despots shall shrink aghast.
On! till thy name is known
Throughout the peopled earth;
On! till thou reign’st alone,
Man’s heritage by birth;
On! till from every vale, and where the mountains rise,
The beacon lights of Liberty shall kindle to the skies! (¶ 17)

Wm. Lloyd Garrison