Khalil Gibran Quotes

While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors, he is a moral coward.

I don't understand it. Jack will spend any amount of money to buy votes but he balks at investing a thousand dollars in a beautiful painting.

The Roman Empire was very, very much like us. They lost their moral core, their sense of values in terms of who they were. And after all of those things converged together, they just went right down the tubes very quickly.

The Republicans have lost their way. Principle has been swapped for power, and they have gotten neither. They deserve to have lost.

There are certain seasons in the course of human affairs, when Genius, Virtue, and Patriotism, seems to nod over the vices of the times.

I am inheriting a country which has been badly ravaged by years of misrule and ineptitude. There has been a wide disconnect between the people and the government.

In government, the scum rises to the top.

In Southern Europe, we have, of course, very bad governments.

The King is only fond of words, and cannot translate them into deeds.

Germany has become the economic heart of Europe because our leaders are weak.

. . . if gold rust, what then will iron do?/ For if a priest be foul in whom we trust/ No wonder that a common man should rust. . . .

No government has ever been, or can ever be, wherein time-servers and blockheads will not be uppermost.

Barack Obama said today that politics has become too gummed up by money and influence ... and then he had to leave to attend a fundraiser.

I applaud strong government, but not overweening government sustained by cronies, ciphers and a personality cult.

The political mirage of something for nothing, from leaders who 'care,' has ruined many a nation.

In a state of nature, the weakest go to the wall; in a state of over-refinement, both the weak and the strong go to the gutter.

The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.

States are doomed when they are unable to distinguish good men from bad.

In the acceptance of depravity the sense of the past is most truly captured. What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time.

Maybe a vague president and an incompetent and somewhat corrupt administration is what the nation needs.

If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.

How about this John Edwards thing? Imagine that, a personal injury attorney who turns out to be a sleaze ball. Who could have seen that coming?

Alternatively, suppose Qaddafi winds up hanging from a lamppost in his favorite party dress. If you're a Third World dictator, what lessons would you draw? Qaddafi was the thug who came in from the cold, the one who (in the wake of Saddam's fall) renounced his nuclear program and was supposedly rehabilitated in the chancelleries of the West. He was a strong partner in the war on terrorism, according to U.S. diplomats. And what did Washington do? They overthrew him anyway.

All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time but finally destroys itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay.