Paine, Thomas

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Pangborn, Edgar

Everything made easy - and how are you going to make education easy? You might as well try to build an athlete by keeping him in a hammock with cream puffs and beer.

Parker, Robert B., Promised Land

Zealots were always hard. Zeal distorts them. Makes the normal impulses convolute. Makes people fearless and greedless and loveless and finally monstrous. I was against zeal.

Parker, Robert B. Early Autumn

If your father goes around saying he likes ballet, or that you like ballet, then he runs the risk of someone else saying men don't do that. If that happens, then he has to consider what makes a man, that is, a good man, and he doesn't know. That scares the shit out of him. Same for your mother. So they stick to the tried and true, the conventions that avoid the question, and whether it makes them happy, it doesn't make them look over the edge. It doesn't scare them to death.

… Reality is uncertain. Lot of people need certainty. They look around for the way it's supposed to be. They get a television commercial view of the world. Businessmen learn the way businessmen are supposed to be. Professors learn the way professors are supposed to be. Construction workers learn how construction workers are supposed to be. They spend their lives trying to be what they're supposed to be, and being scared they aren't. Quiet desperation.

Pascal, Blaise

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Patton, Gen. George S.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

Picasso, Pablo.

Pink Floyd. "A Momentary Lapse of Reason"

One slip, and down the hole we fall
It seems to take no time at all
A momentary lapse of reason
that binds a life to a life
A small regret, you won't forget,
There'll be no sleeping here tonight.

Pink Floyd. "The Dark Side of the Moon"

"Breathe In The Air"

Run rabbit run
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down, it's time to start another one

For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race toward an early grave.

"Brain Damage"

The lunatic is on the grass ...
Got to keep the loonies on the path

There's someone in my head, but it's not me.

"Time"

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun


And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Pitt, William

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Planck, Max

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Plato

Man is the measure of all things.

Porteus, Beilby

He who foresees calamities, suffers them twice over.

Pound, Ezra.

• Ethics according to Chung Yung, author of The Unwobbling Pivot: The archer, when he misses the bullseye, turns and seeks the cause of the error in himself.

• All great art is born of the metropolis.

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