W. Edwards Deming, 20th century American statistician and engineer who is famous for his contributions to lean manufacturing and total quality management. (Deming’s philosophy is well worth studying.)

“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Alexis de Tocqueville, 19th century French political thinker and historian:

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

Alexander Fraser Tytler, 18th century British lawyer and writer:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”

Pericles, statesman, orator, and general during the Golden Age of Athens:

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States of America:

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

Ron Paul, 10-term American Congressman from Texas and 2008 US Presidential Candidate:

“No matter how well intentioned, an authoritarian government always abuses its powers.”

Anais Nin, French author:

“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.”

Confucius, early Chinese moral and political philosopher:

“To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”

John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States:

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

John Adams, 2nd President of the United States of America:

“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”

Jean de la Bruyere, 17th century French essayist:

“When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman.”

Louis Nizer, trial lawyer, artist, lecturer, and advisor:

“A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.”

Émile Zola, 19th century French writer and naturalist:

“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.”

Epictetus, Greek Stoic philosopher:

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those that he has.”

John Steinbeck, Nobel Prize-winning novelist, in East of Eden:

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is the one thing which by inspection destroys such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it, and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If that glory can be killed, we are lost.”

Mahatma Gandhi, political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement and advocate of non-violent civil protest (ahimsa):

“The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.”

Mahatma Gandhi, political and spiritual leader of the Indian Independence Movement:

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”

Sun Tzu, early Chinese general and author of The Art of War:

In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them
a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.

When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

Hermann Göring, second in command of the German Third Reich during the reign of Adolph Hitler:

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

Ron Paul, US Congressman and 2008 Presidential Candidate:

“Terror is a tactic. We can not wage ‘war’ against a tactic.”

Isaac Asimov, celebrated science-fiction author:

“Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent.”

Ronald Regan, 40th President of the United States:

“History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”

Ernest Hemingway, American novelist:

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

Benjamin Franklin, early American polymath and Founding Father of the United States:

“Never has there been a good war or a bad peace.”

Source unknown:

“The last official act of any government is to loot the treasury.”

George Washington, first elected president of the United States of America:

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States of America and author of the Declaration of Independence:

“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.”

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”

(Related reading: An Open Letter to High School Students)

Charles Darwin, creator of the theory of biological evolution via natural selection, stating an early version of what is now known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect:

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

Herbert Simon, American social and political scientist:

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

Andre Comte-Sponville, contemporary French philosopher:

“The simple person lives the way he breathes, with no more effort or glory, with no more affectation and without shame… Simplicity is freedom, buoyancy, transparency. As simple as the air, as free as the air… The simple person does not take himself too seriously or too tragically. He goes on his merry way, his heart light, his soul at peace, without a goal, without nostalgia, without impatience. The world is his kingdom, and suffices him. The present is his eternity, and delights him. He has nothing to prove, since he has no appearances to keep up, and nothing to seek, since everything is before him. What is more simple than simplicity? What lighter? It is the virtue of wise men and the wisdom of saints.”

Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance genius, artist, inventor, and polymath:

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Antoine De Saint-Exupery, French aviator and author of The Little Prince:

“Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing left to take away… And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Jason Fried, founder of 37signals:

“You don’t need to outdo the competition. It’s expensive and defensive. Underdo your competition. We need more simplicity and clarity.”

John Gall, systems theorist:

“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.”

Johann Joachim Winckelmann, German art historian and archaeologist:

“Unity and simplicity are the two true sources of beauty.”

Thomas Aquinas, theologean:

“If a thing can be done adequately by means of one, it is superfluous to do it by means of several; for we observe that nature does not employ two instruments where one suffices.”

Elaine St. James, author:

“Simplifying is not necessarily about getting rid of everything we’ve worked so hard for… It’s about deciding what’s important to us, and gracefully letting go of the things that aren’t.”