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The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

- Thomas Macaulay

 

We cannot prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much reason. On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?

- Thomas Macaulay

 

Luck is the pure product of man's sheer ignorance of the world and his undying need to come to a conclusion.

- Mike MacHenry

 

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

- Charles Mackay

 

The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.

- Shirley Maclaine

 

Wherever the real power in a government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Government the real power lies in the majority of the community...

- James Madison

 

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.

- Maurice Maeterlinck

 

One cannot create an art that speaks to men when one has nothing to say.

- Andre Malraux

 

The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves is what I call hell.

- Andre Malraux

 

Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk-and to act.

- Maxwell Maltz

 

Happy is the man with a wife to tell him what to do and a secretary to do it.

- Lord Mancroft

 

If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.

- Horace Mann

 

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

- Horace Mann

 

Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

- Manly's Maxim

 

Women are repeatedly accused of taking things personally. I cannot see any other honest way of taking things.

- Marya Mannes

 

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.

- Katherine Mansfield

 

We win half the battle when we make up our minds to take the world as we find it, including the thorns.

- Orison S. Marden

 

As adults, we must ask more of our children than they know how to ask of themselves. What can we do to foster their open-hearted hopefulness, engage their need to collaborate, be an incentive to utilize their natural competency and compassion...show them ways they can connect, reach out, weave themselves into the web of relationships that is called community.

- Dawna Markova

 

The successful people are the ones who can think up stuff for the rest of the world to keep busy at.

- Don Marquis

 

Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.

- Don Marquis

 

Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.

- Don Marquis

 

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

- Don Marquis

 

Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint.

- Don Marquis

 

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

- Don Marquis

 

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

- Don Marquis

 

A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.

- Don Marquis

 

A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.

- Peter Marshall

 

You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.

- Dean Martin

 

A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.

- Steve Martin

 

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.

- Groucho Marx

 

One can go back toward safety or forward toward growth.

- Abraham Maslow

 

When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty.

- George Mason

 

I have enough $$ to last me a lifetime, unless I buy something.

- Jackie Mason

 

When one's own problems are unsolvable and all best efforts are frustrated, it is lifesaving to listen to other people's problems.

- Suzanne Massie

 

The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.

- W. Somerset Maugham

 

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

- W. Somerset Maugham

 

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

- W. Somerset Maugham

 

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

- W. Somerset Maugham

 

It's a funny think about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

- W. Somerset Maugham

 

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.

- W. Somerset Maugham

 

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

- W. Somerset Maugham

 

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.

- W. Somerset Maugham

 

Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.

- Rollo May

 

Mathematics is as little a science as grammar is a language.

- Ernst Mayr

 

Life is simply the reification of the process of living.

- Ernst Mayr

 

If you have a great ambition, take as big a step as possible in the direction of fulfilling it. The step may only be a tiny one, but trust that it may be the largest one possible for now.

- Mildred McAfee

 

All people who respond to a situation with love for those involved become models of transformation and provide for all others the supportive presence of their own transforming love.

- David McArthur

 

Giving to oneself in love is as much an expression of true giving as giving to another.

- David McArthur

 

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.

- Charlie McCarthy

 

Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming.

- J. P. McEvoy

 

The more noise a man or a motor makes the less power there is available.

- W. R. McGeary

 

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

- George McGovern

 

Every now and then you run across radiantly attractive people and you're delighted to find they adore you, till you realize that they adore just about everybody -- and that's what's made them radiantly attractive.

- Mignon McLaughlin

 

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you will see why.

- Mignon McLaughlin

 

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

- Mignon McLaughlin

 

It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.

- Mignon McLaughlin

 

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.

- Marshall McLuhan

 

Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise it would be called sure-thing-taking.

- Tim McMahon

 

..it may be that there is no God, that "the existence of all that is beautiful and in any sense good is but the accidental and ineffective byproduct of blindly swirling atoms," that we are alone in a world that cares nothing for us or for the values that we create and sustain--that we and they are here for a moment only, and gone, and that eventually there will be left no trace of us in the universe. "A man may well believe that this dredful thing is true. But only the fool will say in his heart that he is glad that it is true."

- Sterling M. McMurrin

 

I want to get the structural problems out of the way first, so I can get to what matters more.

- John McPhee

 

Love may be what keeps the world spinning 'round, but friendship is what keeps us from throwing ourselves off it.

- David R. Mead

 

One of the oldest human needs is to have someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.

- Margaret Mead

 

Never doubt that a small group of committed people can chage the world - indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

- Margaret Mead

 

As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

- Margaret Mead

 

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

- Margaret Mead

 

Don't be so humble, you're not that great.

- Golda Meir

 

I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.

- Golda Meir

 

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.

- Bernard Meltzer

 

But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

- Herman Melville

 

That is the whole trouble with being a heretic. One usually must think out everything for oneself.

- Aubrey Menan

 

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.

- Henry Louis Mencken

 

Love cures people -- both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.

- Dr. Karl Menninger

 

Life is thirst.

- Leonard Michaels

 

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish.

- Michelangelo

 

If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to do it.

- Bette Midler

 

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you will cease to be so.

- John Stewart Mill

 

Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation... The other eight are unimportant.

- Henry Miller

 

A man who will not lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings.

- Olin Miller

 

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making discoveries.

- A.A. Milne

 

None can love freedom but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants.

- John Milton

 

Truth...never comes into the world but like a Bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth.

- John Milton

 

I hate careless flattery, the kind that exhausts you in your effort to believe it.

- Wilson Milzner

 

A fellow who is always declaring he's no fool usually has his suspicions.

- Wilson Milzner

 

Be nice to people on your way up because you'll need them on your way down.

- Wilson Milzner

 

Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.

- Wilson Milzner

 

Reality is something you rise above.

- Liza Minnelli

 

The first thing a genius needs is to breath free air.

- Ludwig von Mises

 

The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.

- Ludwig von Mises

 

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

- Ludwig von Mises

 

The meaning of economic freedom is this: that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society.

- Ludwig von Mises

 

Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.

- Ludwig von Mises

 

Business is a means- the only means- to increase the quantity of goods available for preserving life and rendering it more agreeable.

- Ludwig von Mises

 

The essence of democracy is not that everyone makes and administers laws but that lawgivers and rulers should be dependent on the people's will in such a way that they may be peaceably changed if conflict occurs.

- Ludwig von Mises

 

Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow...

- Ludwig von Mises

 

The rich adopt novelties and become accustomed to their use. This sets a fashion which others imitate. Once the richer classes have adopted a certain way of living, producers have an incentive to improve the methods of manufacture so that soon it is possible for the poorer classes to follow suit. Thus luxury furthers progress. Innovation "is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public. The luxury today is the necessity of tomorrow." Luxury is the roadmaker of progress: it develops latent needs and makes people discontented. In so far as they think consistently, moralists who condemn luxury must recommend the comparatively desireless existence of the wild life roaming in the woods as the ultimate ideal of civilized life.

- Ludwig von Mises

 

The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.

- Maria Mitchell

 

Who speaks reason to his fellow man bestows it upon them.

- Richard Mitchell

 

We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we do not love.

- Richard Mitchell

 

When we find ourselves wondering about the meaning of conditions and events, its always useful to ask, who profits?

- Richard Mitchell

 

A man's treatment of money is the most decisive test of his character -- how he makes it and how he spends it.

- James Moffatt

 

To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil by evil is evil.

- Mohammed

 

The friend of all humanity is not to my taste.

- Moliere

 

Those who danced where thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.

- Angela Monet

 

I endeavor to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended and patient when there is no redress.

- Elizabeth Montagu

 

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables to us!

- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

 

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

 

An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.

- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

 

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.

- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

 

I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I've met.

- Dwight Moody

 

The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.

- Thomas More

 

A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.

- J.Pierpoint Morgan

 

There is only one success-to be able to spend your life in your own way.

- Christopher Morley

 

We have an opportunity to live in joy. Do not postpone happiness until the debts are settled and relationships rearranged. Joy doesn't exist out in the world somewhere; we find it inside.

- Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey

 

Some of us treat life like a spectator sport, never budging from the sidelines. As children of God, we are destined for something greater. You are the one through whom God can love and create magnificence. Step onto the field of your own life.

- Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey

 

Dare to choose the highest form of living. Dare to live in open, honest, unconditional love.

- Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey

 

The world is divided into people who do things--and people who get the credit.

- Dwight Morrow

 

Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have.

- Doris Mortman

 

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.

- Christopher Morley

 

We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central.

- Iris Murdoch

 

The average beast of prey is a decent creature who merely kills for the sake of food or in a fight against an enemy. It is only man who calls killing "sport" and kills for the pleasure of killing; not for food, not for self-defense, but just to satisfy some primitive instinct, once necessary and now perverted.

- Gilbert Murray

 

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.

- Edward R. Murrow

 

I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and mature than most of the broadcast industry's planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence.

- Edward R. Murrow

 

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

- Edward R. Murrow

 

We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom--what's left of it--but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

- Edward R. Murrow

 

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. This is no time . . . to keep silent.

- Edward R. Murrow