Social Critics

"The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind."

"Before a man can do things there must be things he will not do."

"大人者，不失其赤子之心者也"

"He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature."

"How lamentable is it to neglect the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it again! When men’s fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it."

"A man with definite aims to be accomplished may be compared to one digging a well. To dig the well to the depth of seventy-two cubits and stop without reachin the spring is, after all, throwing away the well."

"He who outrages benevolence is called a ruffian: he who outrages righteousness is called a villain. I have heard of the cutting off of the villain Chow, but I have not heard of the putting of a ruler to death."

"Mencius went to see King Huei of Liang. The king said, "Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, a distance of a thousand li, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?" Mencius replied, "Why must your Majesty use that word "profit"? What I am provided with, are counsels to benevolence and righteousness, and these are my only topics.""

"Those who are humane achieve glory. Those who are inhumane suffer disgrace."

"The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom. Men have these Four Beginnings just as they have their four limbs. Having these Four Beginnings, but saying that they cannot develop them is to destroy themselves."

"If the king loves music, there is little wrong in the land."

"They who accord with Heaven are preserved, and they who rebel against Heaven perish."

"Benevolence brings under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to extinguish with a cupful a whole burning wagon-load of fagots."

"There are many services, but the service of parents is the root of all others. There are many charges, but charge of one’s self is the root of all others."

"The most important development of the Confucian School was in the teachings of Mencius (372–289 B.C.). After the death of Confucius, the teachings were divided into two schools, one of Hsuntse and one of Mencius, the former believing in the wickedness of human nature and the necessity of restraint, and the latter believing in the sheer expansiveness of the good heart of man. Mencius said, "The great man is one who has not lost the heart of a child." He started out from the assumption that man has the innate capacity for good and loves what is good, that it is through corruption that man deteriorates, and that therefore the essence of self-cultivation, of preserving one's moral character, consists merely in "finding the lost heart of the child." This has become the orthodox school. Mencius has been given a place next only to Confucius, and it is common to speak of Confucian doctrines as "the teachings of Kung-Meng," meaning Confucius (Kung) and Mencius (Meng)."

"The feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in distress."

"The principles of great men illuminate the universe."

"A real man is he whose goodness is a part of himself."

"If one does not preserve the learned in a state he will be injuring the state; if one is not zealous (to recommend) the virtuous upon seeing one, he will be neglecting the ruler. Enthusiasm is to be shown only to the virtuous, and plans for the country are only to be shared with the learned. Few are those, who, neglecting the virtuous and slighting the learned, could still maintain the existence of their countries."

"The virtues are not poured into us, they are natural. Seek, and you will find them: neglect, and you will lose them."

"To accomplish anything whatsoever one must have standards. None have yet accomplished anything without them."

"The great end of learning is nothing else but to seek for the lost mind."

"At forty, I had attained the unperturbed mind."

"It does not seem to me that the evidence concerning the being of a God, and concerning immortality, is such as to enable us to assert anything in regard to either of these topics."

"The United States has lost her unique position as a leader in the progress of civilization and has taken up her place simply as one of the grasping and selfish nations of the present day."

"The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent."

""There never was a good war," said Franklin. There have indeed been many wars in which a good man must take part, and take part with grave gladness to die if need be, a willing sacrifice, thankful to give life for what is dearer than life, and happy that even by death in war he is serving the cause of peace. But if a war be undertaken for the most righteous end, before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime."

"As for “Grass Mud Horse”, I applaud the one who invented such a pun. Its underlining tone is: I know you do not allow me to say certain things. See, I am completely cooperative, right? Of course I think it inappropriate to utter these obscene words. I need not to demean myself below some level because of you. Even if you force me to say those words, I won’t comply. I want to keep my decency and dignity. Even if you retreat to a barbarian level, I am going to keep my identity as a civilized person. You gonna tell me I can’t do that? So, I say “Grass Mud Horse”, not fxxx your mom. What is “Grass Mud Horse”? It always works hard in harsh conditions. See, it is from the vast grassland. I like it. I love it. This whole thing is too far away from you, out of your jurisdiction. Oh well, why are you always staring at me? Am I not perfectly fine? I am innocent. I have not been snatched away by some crooked folks. I have not been put under their control. And I am not vulgar. Why do you have to worry so much about me? I am singing a cute children’s song – I AM A GRASS MUD HORSE! Even though it is heard by the entire world, you can’t say I’ve broken the law."

"这样的人才是我们民族的脊梁，是我们民族的盐和钙质，是我们民族道德重建的基石、社会重建的出发点。将这样的人加以囚禁，等于直接囚禁我们民族的良心！"

"I could not help noticing the great role women played in Pueblo society. Women owned the houses and actually built them. Children often got their mother's last name, not their father's. Sons joined their mother's clans. It made me a little jealous."

"To me, women's lib was mainly a white, upper-middle class affair of little use to a reservation Indian woman."

"The blacks want what the whites have, which is understandable. They want in. We Indians want out! That is the main difference."

"We did freak out the honkies. We were feared throughout the Dakotas. I could never figure out why this should have been so. We were always the victims. We never maimed or killed. It was we who died or got crippled."

"Maybe life involves the pairing of unsuitable people, those who wait and those who keep others waiting, and the key to happiness is finding the one person with whom you share the same internal chronometer."

"It was all about borders. And Arnold was on the wrong side of them. He’d end up spending the rest of his life in a 8’ x 10’ cell, another darling of the Left like Mumia Abu-Jamal or Lisl Auman, because he happened to be standing on one side of an arbitrary political boundary, a line as imaginary as the equator."

"The only thing more difficult than persuading someone else to start having sex with you is persuading yourself to stop."

"Patriotism is being convinced your country is better because you were born in it."

"Nixon’s offences had been so long in the past, so much part of a different era that he now seemed like some lovable but bigoted uncle you tolerated at Christmas and Thanksgiving."

"You delude yourself that you live in a free country because you never test the boundaries of that freedom."

"“For recent presidents, especially those still living, there is always the possibility, a rather strong one, that we will discover additional information that is presently known to physicians and presidents but not to the general public...Almost all of the modern presidents would have been rated higher and looked healthier on paper while in office than they do in retrospect with the benefit of information not released during their terms.”"

"If you give a man a hammer, he thinks he can solve all problems by pounding. Well, God gave men penises...."

"Be optimistic. Always put on clean underwear if you're going on a date."

"If God wanted teenagers to be abstinent, puberty would begin at twenty."

"Always warm up the audience with a joke....If you are not a particularly funny person, make sure that you inform them that it's a joke...."

"I suspect that the vast majority of people, not knowing in advance whether they will either end up in a permanently vegetative state or be diagnosed with cancer, would prefer that any resources that would be spent on PVS care be reallocated to cancer research--or some similar enterprise that has the potential to help human beings who might actually recover."

"The boss is never your friend, even if you're sleeping with him."

"One thing led to another. That was the only way to explain how Arnold Brinkman, who considered both professional sports and young children unjustifiable, had ended up at Yankee Stadium with a nine-year-old boy. (Page 5)"

"Much as constitutional guarantees of press freedom do little good for prospective publishers if they do not have access to paper or ink, the right to aid in dying is strikingly useless if nobody is willing to help."

"The cold, cruel reality is that with one current justice now approaching ninety, and four others over seventy, the day will inevitably arrive when a sitting justice lies in an intensive care unit, both unable to resign and unable to resume his or her duties."

"There is a fundamental difference, however, between asking to be permitted to keep a vegetative relative on costly machinery, and asking the taxpayers or society as a whole to pay for such machinery."