Abraham Lincoln, defining democracy in his Gettysburg Address -“government of the people, by the people, for the people.” In turn, Lincoln may have borrowed this from John Wycliffe, who wrote in the prologue to his 1384 translation of the Bible, “The Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People."
William Ralph Inge, a clergyman and scholar in the early 1900’s - “Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.”
Sir Robert Menzies, Australia's longest serving Prime Minister and founder of the Liberal Party in 1945. On 22nd May 1942 he asked - "What are schools for? To train people for examinations? To enable people to comply with the law? Or to produce developed men and women? Are the universities mere technical schools, or have they, as one of their functions, the preservation of pure learning, bringing in its train not merely riches for the imagination but a comparative sense for the mind, and leading to what we need so badly – the recognition of values which are other than pecuniary? One of the great blots on our modern living is the cult of false values, a repeated application of the test of money, of notoriety, of applause. A world in which a comedian or beautiful half-wit on the screen can be paid fabulous sums, whilst scientific researchers and discoverers can suffer neglect and starvation, is a world which needs to have its sense of values violently set right.”
Patrick Jake (P.J.) O’Rourke is a current day American political satirist - "Giving money and power to government is like giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys.”
“One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.”
“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
To paraphrase Scott Adams from “Dilbert” fame -“Politicians are like cats in a litter box. They instinctively shuffle things around to conceal what they’ve done.”
Adam Smith, Scottish philosopher and father of economics, who wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776 - "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
C H Spurgeon, a 19th century British Baptist preacher - "It is no good planting boiled potatoes.”
Edmund Bourke, an 18th century Irish political philosopher - "Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
Some ancient Chinese proverbs about education - “Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back".
- “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
H.L.Mencken, an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar in the first half of the 20th century - “‘Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”
Henry George, an American economist and reformer in the mid-19th century - “We cannot safely leave politics to politicians, or political economy to college professors. The people themselves must think, because the people alone can act”.
Saidi Mdala, from Botswana, is a personal development coach, author and inspirational speaker - "The worst thing that can happen to you as a young person, is to refuse to grow up. You refuse to grow up when you believe that someone else must take responsibility for your life and life circumstances."
Dale Carnegie the writer, motivational expert and uber salesman so clearly articulated in "How to win friends and influence people" - “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices, and motivated by pride and vanity”.
Dr. Samuel Johnson, the prolific 18th century English writer who literally wrote the Dictionary of the English language – “It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.”
In 1985, and at the peak of his songwriting days with Police, Sting had just embarked on a solo career. This, from one of his first solo singles, “Consider Me Gone” - “I've spent too many years at war with myself, The doctor has told me it's no good for my health, To search for perfection is all very well, But to look for Heaven is to live here in Hell”
Alvin Toffler was an American writer and author of “Future Shock” - “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”.
Plutarch, a Greek philosopher made the following assertion nearly two thousand years ago - “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”
Spike Milligan, one of Britain’s more insightful comedians – ”One day the “don’t knows” will get in, and then where will we be?”