The Quotation IndexThe trusted reference for quotations and the sources behind them
Tag Tag Public opinion
The idea that Britain loses every battle except the last has proved correct so many times in the past that the average Englishman is unwilling to make great personal sacrifices until the danger is overwhelmingly apparent.
John F. Kennedy Why England Slept · 1940

Quotes

“Imagination rules the world.”

Napoleon Bonaparte · The Memorial of Saint Helena, 1824 · Secondary source

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“We stated before that men’s ideas change slowly and that a nation’s ideas change even more slowly. It takes shocks—hard shocks—to change a nation’s psychology.”

John F. Kennedy · Why England Slept, 1940 · Primary source

Related Tags

Imagination 16 Persuasion 4 Leadership 6 Political symbolism 1 Nonconformity 14 Originality 9 Independence 29 Self-reliance 48 Duty 11 Independent judgement 7 Moral courage 5 National confidence 1 Rearmament 1 Risk perception 2 Collective sacrifice 1 Collective psychology 1 Social change 8 Crisis 4 National attitudes 1