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Quote Collection

Favorite quotes:

 

 

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
- Niels Bohr

 

 

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

 

 

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound as they fly by.
- Douglas Adams

 

 


 

You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

Life is cruel? Compared to what?
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

It may be true that there are no atheists in foxholes. But you don't find many Christians there, either. Or about as many as one as the other.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

The basic question is this: Why should anything exist? Nothing would be tidier.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

Civilization, like an airplane in flight, survives only as it keeps going forward.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

The death penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few innocent people more often.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

I am happy to be a regional writer. My region is the American West, old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, the human heart, and the male groin.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

I, too, believe in fidelity. But how can I be true to one woman without being false to all the others?
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

Most people have no business having children. They are unqualified, either genetically or culturally or both, to reproduce such sorry specimens as themselves. Of all our privileges, the license to breed is the one most grossly abused.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

What is reason? Knowledge informed by sympathy, intelligence in the arms of love.
- Edward Abbey

 

 

 

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
- Douglas Adams

 

 

 

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
- Douglas Adams

 

 

 

In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea.
- Douglas Adams

 

 

 

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
- Douglas Adams

 

 

 

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound as they fly by.
- Douglas Adams

 

 

 

There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.
- George Matthew Adams

 

 

 

The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers.
- Scott Adams

 

 

 

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
- Aeschylus

 

 

 

Unus, sed leo! [One, but a lion!]
- Aisopos, Fabulae

 

 

 

Even God cannot change the past.
- Agathon (447-401 BC)

 

 

 

Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.
- Brian Aldiss

 

 

 

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
- Muhammad Ali

 

 

 

The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more.
- Woody Allen

 

 

 

I took a speed-reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
- Woody Allen

 

 

 

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
- Woody Allen

 

 

 

The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.
- Woody Allen

 

 

 

Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right.
- Woody Allen

 

 

 

Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought - particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.
- Woody Allen

 

 

 

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.
- Oscar Ameringer

 

 

 

Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
- Walter Anderson

 

 

 

Women like silent men. They think they're listening.
- Marcel Archard

 

 

 

Education is the best provision for old age.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

 

 

 

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

 

 

 

The gods too are fond of a joke.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

 

 

 

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

 

 

 

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

 

 

 

From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.
- Arthur Ashe

 

 

 

Though science can cause problems, it is not by ignorance that we will solve them.
- Isaac Asimov

 

 

 

Scientific apparatus offers a window to knowledge, but as they grow more elaborate, scientists spend ever more time washing the windows.
- Isaac Asimov

 

 

 

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' ('I found it!') but 'That's funny...'
- Isaac Asimov

 

 

 

The three fundamental Rules of Robotics...One: a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm...Two:... a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law...Three: a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First and Second Laws.
- Isaac Asimov

 

 

 

I married beneath me, all women do.
- Nancy Astor (1879-1964)

 

 

 

I loved not yet, yet I loved to love... I sought what I might love, in love with loving.
- St. Augustine (354-430)

 

 

 

A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.
- St. Augustine (354-430)

 

 

 

Give me chastity and continency, but do not give it yet.
- St. Augustine (354-430)

 

 

 

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.
- Marcus Aurelius

 

 

 

A wrongdoer is often a man that has left something undone, not always he that has done something.
- Marcus Aurelius

 

 

 

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
- Jane Austen (1775-1817) [Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice]

 

 

 

You white people are so strange. We think it is very primitive for a child to have only two parents.
- Australian Aboriginal Elder

 

 

 

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
- Albert Axent-Gyorgyi, The Scientist Speculates

 

 

 

It seems that I have spent my entire time trying to make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort.
- A.J. Ayer (1910-1989)

 

 

 

There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
- Johann Sebastian Bach

 

 

 

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't.
- Richard Bach

 

 

 

Silence is the virtue of fools.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

Words, when written, crystallize history; their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

It is better to have no opinion about God at all than to hold beliefs that are not worthy of Him.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

We cannot command nature except by obeying her.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

Nam et ipse scientia potestas est.
[Knowledge itself is power.]
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

 

 

 

If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us freer and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
- James Baldwin (1867-1947)

 

 

 

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
- James Baldwin (1867-1947)

 

 

 

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
- James Baldwin (1867-1947)

 

 

 

I thought that he [Churchill] was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises.
- Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)

 

 

 

Frank Harris said The fact is, Mr. Balfour, all the faults of the age come from Christianity and journalism. Christianity, of course, but why journalism?
- Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)

 

 

 

History does not repeat itself. Historians repeat each other.
- Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)

 

 

 

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

 

 

 

The more you judge, the less you love.
- Honore de Balzac

 

 

 

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
-Tallulah Bankhead

 

 

 

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.
- Mildred Barthel

 

 

 

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.
- Basho

 

 

 

What is past my help is past my care.
- Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

 

 

 

Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love all year round, madam; that is all there is to distinguish us from other animals.
- Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro

 

 

 

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.
- Samuel Beckett

 

 

 

There is always something rather absurd about the past.
- Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956)

 

 

 

Mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.
- Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956)

 

 

 

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
- Alexander Graham Bell or Helen Keller

 

 

 

Perhaps a new age is opening up before us, in which the intelligentsia and the cultured classes will dream of ways to avoid utopias and to return to a non-utopian society, to a less perfect, a free society.
- Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948)

 

 

 

Suppose everyone cared enough, everyone shared enough, wouldn't everybody have enough? There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.
- Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948)

 

 

 

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
- Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)

 

 

 

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.
- Henri Bergson (1853-1941)

 

 

 

Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.
- Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753)

 

 

 

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-Hector Berlioz

 

 

 

Why haven't women got labels on their foreheads saying Danger: Government Health Warning: Women can seriously damage your brains, genitals, current account, confidence, razor blades, and good standing among your friends?!
- Jeffrey Bernard, Spectator

 

 

 

This is like deja vu all over again.
- Yogi Berra

 

 

 

Think?! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?
- Yogi Berra

 

 

 

I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early.
- Yogi Berra

 

 

 

A nickel isn't worth a dime today.
- Yogi Berra

 

 

 

Do you mean now?
- Yogi Berra, when asked for the time

 

 

 

I made a wrong mistake.
- Yogi Berra

 

 

 

Thanks, you don't look so hot yourself.
- Yogi Berra, after being told he looked cool

 

 

 

You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.
- Yogi Berra

 

 

 

You can observe a lot by watching.
- Yogi Berra

 

 

 

Alliance, n: in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), The Devil's Dictionary

 

 

 

Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), The Devil's Dictionary

 

 

 

Future, n. that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), The Devil's Dictionnary

 

 

 

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
- Josh Billings

 

 

 

The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords.
- Frederick Smith, Earl of Birkenhead (1872-1930)

 

 

 

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
- William Blake (1757-1827)

 

 

 

I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's; I will not Reason and Compare; my business is to Create.
- William Blake (1757-1827)

 

 

 

The average person asks of education only that it increase his earning power that he may enjoy in greater quantity or quality the material satisfactions of the uneducated.
- Morris Bishop

 

 

 

To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.
- Otto von Bismarck

 

 

 

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
- Niels Bohr

 

 

 

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr

 

 

 

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

 

 

 

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

 

 

 

If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

 

 

 

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)

 

 

 

If you are lucky enough to be Irish, you're lucky enough.
- Grace Boyle

 

 

 

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
- Victor Borge

 

 

 

For most folks, no news is good news; for the press, good news is not news.
- Gloria Borger

 

 

 

Good ale, the true and proper drink of Englishmen. He is not deserving of the name of Englishman who speaketh against ale.
- George Borrow (1803-1881)

 

 

 

My favourite - I might say - my only study, is man.
- George Borrow (1803-1881)

 

 

 

It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
- Alec Bourne

 

 

 

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk without loss of esteem.
- Elizabeth Bowen

 

 

 

If you want to win her hand / let the maiden understand / that she's not the only pebble on the beach.
- Harry Braisted

 

 

 

Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
- Dick Brandon

 

 

 

I wish my deadly foe no worse / than want of friends, and empty purse.
- Nicholas Breton (1545-1626)

 

 

 

When I say nothing I don't necessarily mean nothing.
- Ashlea Brilliant

 

 

 

I will stop at nothing to reach my objective, but only because my brakes are defective.
- Ashlea Brilliant

 

 

 

The only way to remain a winner is to win once and then not play any more.
- Ashlea Brilliant

 

 

 

My opinions may have changed but not the fact that I'm right.
- Ashlea Brilliant

 

 

 

Forgive me now because tomorrow I may no longer feel guilty.
- Ashlea Brilliant

 

 

 

Admire me now, avoid the June rush!
- Ashlea Brilliant

 

 

 

I may not be perfect, but parts of me are excellent!
- Ashlea Brilliant

 

 

 

Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.
- Ashlea Brilliant

 

 

 

Something there is moves me to love, and I / do know I love, but know not how, nor why.
- Alexander Brome (1620-1666)

 

 

 

Somewhere, beyond space and time / is wetter water, slimier slime.
- Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

 

 

 

Whenever people say »we mustn't be sentimental«, you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, »we must be realistic«, they mean they are going to make money out of it.
- Brigid Brophy

 

 

 

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.
- Lord Broughton

 

 

 

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
- A. Whitney Brown

 

 

 

When your mother is mad & asks you Do I look stupid?, it's best not to answer her.
- Meghann, age 13
You shouldn't stand in a bucket of water and touch an electric fence just because your brother tells you to.
- Melissa, age 13
My grandmother can say more in a sentence than a college professor can say in an hour and a half.
- Angela, age 14
- H. Jackson Brown Jr., Wit & Wisdom - Wise Words From Young Hearts

 

 

 

Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion.
- Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)

 

 

 

Take away the right to say 'fuck' and you take away the right to say 'fuck the government'.
- Lenny Bruce

 

 

 

Everything has been said, and we are more than 7000 years of human thought too late.
- Jean de la Bruyere (1645-1696)

 

 

 

No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)

 

 

 

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
- John Buchan (1875-1940)

 

 

 

Suppose every cared enough, everyone shared enough, wouldn't everybody have enough? There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.
- Frank Buchman (1878-1961)

 

 

 

After studying very hard to get his GED to help him get a promotion, Archie learned that someone else got the job. He replied, 'Jesus Christ, now here I am stuck with a high school education.'
- Archie Bunker

 

 

 

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

 

 

 

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.
- Edmund Burke

 

 

 

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.
- Nicholas Murray Butler

 

 

 

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

 

 

 

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

 

 

 

It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.
- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

 

 

 

Don't go through life, grow through life.
- Eric Butterworth

 

 

 

Education should be the process of helping everyone to discover his uniqueness to teach him how to develop that uniqueness, and then to show him how to share it because that's the only reason for having anything.
- Leo Buscaglia, Love

 

 

 

My turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then.
- Lord Byron (1788–1824)

 

 

 

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
- James Branch Cabell

 

 

 

It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
- Calvin, Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes

 

 

 

Hard to say, Ma'am. I think my cerebellum just fused.
- Calvin, Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes

 

 

 

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
- Simon Cameron

 

 

 

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

 

 

 

Vote early and vote often.
- Al Capone (1899-1947)

 

 

 

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
- Al Capone (1899-1947)

 

 

 

Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did.
- George Carlin

 

 

 

Some see the glass as half-empty. Some see the glass as half-full. I see the glass as too big.
- George Carlin

 

 

 

Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
- George Carlin

 

 

 

There are no times that don't have moments like these.
- George Carlin

 

 

 

I am not in compliance.
- George Carlin

 

Things you never hear: Please stop sucking my dick or I'll call the police.
- George Carlin

 

 

 

The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.
- George Carlin

 

 

 

No comment is a comment.
- George Carlin

 

 

 

She was only a prostitute, but she had the nicest face I ever came across.
- George Carlin

 

 

 

Shopping and buying and getting and having comprise the Great American Addition. No one is immune: when the underclass riots in this country, they don't kill policemen and politicians; they steal merchandise. How embarrassing.
- George Carlin

 

 

 

I finally accepted Jesus. Not as my personal savior, but as a man I intend to borrow money from.
- George Carlin

 

 

 

History... a distillation of rumor.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

 

 

 

What is all knowledge but recorded experience and a product of history?
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

 

 

 

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

 

 

 

That's the reason they are called lessons, because they lessen from day to day.
- Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

 

 

 

I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.
- Joyce Cary

 

 

 

Where there is great love there are always miracles.
- Willa Cather

 

 

 

Praeterea censeo Carthaginem esse delendam! [Furthermore I believe Carthage should be destroyed!]
- Cato the Elder, a.k.a. Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 BC)

 

 

 

After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
- Cato the Elder, a.k.a. Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 BC)

 

 

 

If (O.J. Simpson) is acquitted, I will renounce my citizenship. And if I converse with him at a cocktail party, I will say, 'Well, there are so many people here who haven't murdered anyone. I think I'll go talk to them.' I'll also riot.
- Dick Cavett

 

 

 

Rest in peace. The mistake shall not be repeated.
- Cenotaph in Hiroshima

 

 

 

Love not what you are, but what you may become.
- Miguel de Cervantes

 

 

 

Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!
- Miguel de Cervantes

 

 

 

Alcohol is like love, he said. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off.
- Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

 

 

 

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
- Coco Chanel

 

 

 

In the end, everything is a gag.
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

 

 

 

Do I love you because you are beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?
- Prince Charming, Roger & Hammerstein's Cinderella

 

 

 

Silence is argument carried out by other means.
- Ernesto Che Guevara (1928-1967)

 

 

 

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
- John Vance Cheney

 

 

 

Learning is acquired by reading books; but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading man, and studying all the various editions of them.
- Lord Chesterfield

 

 

 

Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so.
- Lord Chesterfield

 

 

 

My country, right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, my mother, drunk or sober.
- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

 

 

 

Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.
- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

 

 

 

Poets do not go mad, but chess players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers, but creative artists very seldom. I am not attacking logic; I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not imagination.
- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

 

 

 

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
- Chinese Proverb

 

 

 

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
- Chinese Proverb

 

 

 

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill

 

 

 

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
- Winston Churchill

 

 

 

I have taken more good from alcohol than alcohol has taken from me.
- Winston Churchill

 

 

 

Writing a book is an adventure: to begin with it is a toy and amusement; then it becomes a master, and than it becomes a tyrant; and the last phase is just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude - you kill the monster and fling him to the public.
- Winston Churchill

 

 

 

He who is not a liberal when young is foolish. He who is not conservative at middle age is even more so.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby. If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

Asked what qualifications might help a young man to become a politician, Winston Churchill replied, It is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

Mr. Attlee is a modest man .... with much to be modest about
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

There but for the grace of God, goes God.
- Winston Churchill, again about Attlee

 

 

 

During the 'out years' (the 20's & 30's) he would prepare a retort and then set it up. On one occasion he was shaking his head in a disbelieving manner while an opposition member spoke. The MP took the bait and said Winston , I am only stating my opinion to which Churchill responded And I am only shaking my head.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

When I'm in office I always keep Members of Parliament talking. If they stopped they might start thinking.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

 

 

Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.
- Colley Cibber (1671–1757), Xerxes

 

 

 

Vivere est cogitare.
[To think is to live.]
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

 

 

 

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

 

 

 

In nothing do men approach so nearly to the gods as in doing good to men.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

 

 

 

Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

 

 

 

Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit. [None dances sober, unless he is completely insane.]
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), Pro Murena

 

 

 

Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum. [Nothing can be said that is so absurd that it has not been said by some philosopher.]
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

 

 

 

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
- Tom Clancy

 

 

 

We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't.
- Frank A Clark

 

 

 

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him.
- Arthur C. Clarke

 

 

 

In any bureaucracy, paperwork increases as you spend more and more time reporting on the less and less you are doing.
- Cohn's First Law

 

 

 

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes; and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

 

 

 

There are two types of people - those who come into a room and say, Well, here I am! and those who come in and say, Ah, there you are.
- Frederick L Collins

 

 

 

When you have 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
- Charles Colsen, confidant of Richard Nixon

 

 

 

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
- Charles Caleb Colton

 

 

 

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
- Confucius

 

 

 

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
- Confucius

 

 

 

If we don't know life, how can we know death?
- Confucius

 

 

 

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
- Confucius

 

 

 

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
- Confucius

 

 

 

I've never been hurt by anything I didn't say.
- Calvin Coolidge

 

 

 

Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.
- Cyril Connolly (1903-1974)

 

 

 

Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.
- Bill Cosby

 

 

 

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.
- Bill Cosby

 

 

 

He who stops being better stops being good.
- Oliver Cromwell

 

 

 

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
- e e cummings (1894-1962)

 

 

 

There are no atheists in the foxholes.
- William Thomas Cummings 1903-1944, Field sermon at Bataan [1942]

 

 

 

Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate.
[Abandon all hope, you who enter.]
- Alighieri Dante

 

 

 

I've never killed a man, but I've read many obituaries with great pleasure.
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

 

 

 

I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone.
- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

 

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.
- Guy Davenport

 

 

 

I'll play it first and tell you about it later.
- Miles Davis

 

 

 

Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
- James Dean

 

 

 

We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

 

The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late.
- Daniel Defoe

 

 

 

While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility.
- Lee DeForest, inventor

 

Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
- Phillip K. Dick

 

 

 

That is the trouble with education, I realized; you have already been everywhere before, seen everything, vicariously; it has all already happened to you.
- Philip K. Dick, The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer

 

 

 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

 

 

 

A word is dead
When it is said
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
- Emily Dickinson

 

 

 

Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards.
- R. A. Dickson

 

 

 

History is philosophy teaching by examples.
- Dionysius of Halicarnassus (40 - 8 BC)

 

 

 

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
- Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

 

 

 

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)

 

 

 

If you can dream it, you can do it.
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)

 

 

 

If Gladstone fell in the Thames, that would be a misfortune. But if someone fished him out again, that would be a calamity.
- Ascribed to Benjamin Disraeli, c. 1867

 

 

 

Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.
- Benjamin Disraeli

 

 

 

If something happened along the route and you had to leave your children with Bob Dole or Bill Clinton, I think you would probably leave them with Bob Dole.
- Bob Dole

 

 

 

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
- John Donne (1572-1631), Devotions upon Emergent Occasions [1624], no. 17

 

 

 

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
- Fedor Dostoevsky

 

 

 

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men -must, I think, have great sadness on Earth.
- Fedor Dostoevsky

 

 

 

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

 

 

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

 

 

... when you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

 

 

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
- Peter F. Drucker

 

 

 

You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments when you really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.
- Henry Drummond

 

 

 

Love is love's reward.
- John Dryden

 

 

 

Ho! Ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust! <<SPROINGGG>>
- Daffy Duck

 

 

 

At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At 40, we don't care what they think of us. At 60, we discover they haven't been thinking about us at all.
- Mike Duduit

 

 

 

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
- Attributed to Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899, but known to be an urban legend

 

 

 

Education is a progressive discovery of ignorance.
- Will Durant

 

 

 

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.
- Bob Dylan

 

 

 

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
- Abba Eban (1915 - )

 

 

 

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
- Thomas Alva Edison

 

 

 

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Alva Edison

 

 

 

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Thomas Alva Edison

 

 

 

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
- Thomas Alva Edison

 

 

 

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Alva Edison

 

 

 

Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work
- Thomas Alva Edison

 

 

 

The thing that most impresses me about America is the way parents obey their children.
- King Edward VIII (1894-1972)

 

 

 

The rules that apply to ordinary people do not fit me.
- Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards

 

 

 

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

The most beautiful experience is the mysterious. He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe is as good as dead. His eyes are closed.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

One thing I have learned in a long life: That all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet, it is the most precious thing we have.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

Everything should be as simple as possible but, not simpler.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

If A is success in life, then A=x+y+z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

He who joyfully marches to music in rank & file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

 

 

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources
- Albert Einstein (1875-1955)

 

 

 

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen
- Albert Einstein (1875-1955)

 

 

 

Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the face of this earth
- Albert Einstein (1875-1955)

 

 

 

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
- Albert Einstein (1875-1955)

 

 

 

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
- Albert Einstein (1875-1955)

 

 

 

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
- Albert Einstein (1875-1955)

 

 

 

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

 

 

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

 

 

 

Between the vision and the act lies the shadow.
- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

 

 

 

And the wind shall say, Here were decent, godless people / their only monument the asphalt road / and a thousand lost golf balls.
- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

 

 

 

It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.
- Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell

 

 

 

It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.
- Havelock Ellis

 

 

 

The two most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
- Harlan Ellison

 

 

 

Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the
very things they want to acquire.
- Anwar El-Sadat

 

 

 

By necessity, proclivity and by delight, we all quote.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 

 

 

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1883), Journals

 

 

 

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 

 

 

Be and not seem.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 

 

 

A man is related to all nature.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 

 

 

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 

 

 

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 

 

 

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 

 

 

Bereavement leave is limited to 3 days immediately following the death of the family member and must be scheduled in advance.
- employee handbook of an Oakland area hospital.

 

 

 

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
- Friedrich Engels (1820–95)

 

 

 

A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.
- English proverb

 

 

 

Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.
- Epicurus

 

 

 

Millions long for immortality but do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
- Susan Ertz

 

 

 

The big mistake that men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen and all of a sudden they’ve reached puberty, they believe that they like women. Actually, you’re just horny. It doesn’t mean you like women any more at twenty-one than you did at ten.
- Jules Feiffer (b. 1929)

 

 

 

I used to think I was poor. Then they
told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then
they told me it was self-defeating to
think of myself as needy. I was deprived.
(Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged)
Then they told me that underprivileged was
overused. I was disadvantaged. I still
don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.
- Jules Feiffer

 

 

 

It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant.
- Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines

 

 

 

I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake - which I also keep handy.
- W C Fields, quoted in Corey Ford, Time of Laughter

 

 

 

Just looking for loopholes.
- W C Fields, asked why he was reading the Bible on his deathbed

 

 

 

I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.
- W.C. Fields

 

 

 

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it.
- W.C. Fields

 

 

 

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929

 

Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

 

 

 

Never confuse a single mistake with a final mistake.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

 

 

 

The test of a first-fate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

 

 

 

Anyone who says businessmen deal in facts, not fiction, has never read old five-year projections.
- Malcolm Forbes

 

 

 

If government is big enough to give you everything you have, it is big enough to take away everything you have.
- Gerald Ford (1909- )

 

 

 

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

 

 

 

History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

 

 

 

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.
- E.M. Forster (1879-1970)

 

 

 

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
- Harry Fosdick

 

 

 

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
- Anatole France

 

 

 

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
- St. Francis of Assisi

 

 

 

Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
- St. Francis of Assisi

 

 

 

A young person should never be made to feel that no great thing is expected of him or her.
- Father Flanagan

 

 

 

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
- Anne Frank, July 15, 1944

 

 

 

There are three faithful friends - an old wife, an old dog and ready money.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Poor Richard's Almanac

 

 

 

There never was a good war or a bad peace.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), 1783 Letter to Josiah Quincy

 

 

 

Well done is better than well said.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

 

 

 

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

 

 

 

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

 

 

 

There never was a good war, or a bad peace.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

 

 

 

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

 

 

 

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

 

 

 

The great question... which I have not been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

 

 

 

It is a mistake to believe that science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand made by those who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to replace the religious catechism by something else, even if it be a scientific one.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

 

 

 

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

 

 

 

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

 

 

 

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses.
- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

 

 

 

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.
- Erich Fromm (1900-1980)

 

 

 

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
- Eric Fromm

 

 

 

Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

 

 

 

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

 

 

 

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

 

 

 

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

 

 

 

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

 

 

 

God, to me, it seems / is a verb / not a noun / proper or improper.
- R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

 

 

 

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
- R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

 

 

 

I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry.
- John Gage (1912- )

 

 

 

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
- Attributed to Bill Gates, 1981, but believed to be an urban legend.

 

It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - )

 

 

 

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - )

 

 

 

These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - )

 

 

 

It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
- Galileo Galilei

 

 

 

I could prove God statistically.
- George Gallup

 

 

 

The good man is the friend of all living things.
- Mohandas Karamchand [Mahatma] Gandhi (1869-1948)

 

 

 

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
- Mohandas Karamchand [Mahatma] Gandhi (1869-1948)

 

 

 

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
- Mohandas Karamchand [Mahatma] Gandhi (1869-1948)

 

 

 

Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty, it is it's own reward. Everything else is in God's hands.
- Mohandas Karamchand [Mahatma] Gandhi (1869-1948)

 

 

 

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
- Mohandas Karamchand [Mahatma] Gandhi (1869-1948)

 

 

 

The earth and heaven are one.
- Mohandas Karamchand [Mahatma] Gandhi (1869-1948)

 

 

 

History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.
- John Gardner (1912- )

 

 

 

If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.
- Stanley Garn

 

 

 

What do you take me for, an idiot?
- General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy

 

 

 

How can you be expected to govern a nation that has 246 kinds of cheese?
- General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

 

 

 

Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.
- Christian Furchtegott Gellert

 

 

 

The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
- Edward Gibbon (1737-97)

 

 

 

History... little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
- Edward Gibbon (1737-97)

 

 

 

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
- Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam, 1926

 

 

 

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
- Andre Gide

 

 

 

Whoever controls the media - the images - controls the culture.
- Allen Ginsberg

 

 

 

We all know here that the law is the most powerful of schools for the imagination. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the law.
- Jean Giraudox (1882-1944)

 

 

 

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
- Gail Godwin

 

 

 

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

 

 

 

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

 

 

 

It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

 

 

 

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it is written on.
- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)

 

 

 

Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)

 

 

 

A meeting is an event in which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
- Gould's Axiom

 

 

 

The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages.
- Horace Greeley

 

 

 

I am by no means trying to condone adultery, but the fact is, it's one of the most popular of the Ten Commandments to break. Who goes around making graven images today?
- Lewis Grizzard

 

 

 

Writing a daily newspaper column is like being married to a nymphomaniac: The first two weeks, it's fun.
- Lewis Grizzard

 

 

 

Monogamy isn't so bad, once you're used to it. It's safe, it's simple, and you don't have to remember all those names.
- Lewis Grizzard

 

 

 

Human nature is interesting not because it is human, but because it is nature.
- Georg Groddeck, psychoanalyst

 

 

 

When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
- Matt Groening

 

 

 

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)

 

 

 

You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty.
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)

 

 

 

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it.
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

 

 

 

This book fills a much-needed gap.
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review

 

 

 

I have read your book and much like it.
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

 

 

 

We do not inherit this land from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.
- Haida Indian saying

 

 

 

There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness.
- Han Suyin

 

 

 

The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
- Lucille S. Harper

 

 

 

We will either find a way or make one.
- Hannibal

 

 

 

War makes rattling good history; but peace is poor reading.
- Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

 

 

 

Sex is the gateway to life.
- Frank Harris (1856-1931)

 

 

 

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'
- Sydney Harris

 

 

 

If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for.
- Vaclav Havel

 

 

 

The more we do, the more we can do.
- William Hazlitt

 

 

 

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
- William Hazlitt

 

 

 

What experience and history teach is this - that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or act on principles deduced from it.
- Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831)

 

 

 

Education is the third greatest cause of human misery in the world. The first, of course, is life.
- Joseph Heller, Good As Gold

 

 

 

I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.
- Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961)

 

 

 

Never mistake motion for action.
- Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961)

 

 

 

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
- Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961)

 

 

 

Never confuse movement with action.
- Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

 

 

 

Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.
- Anne Herbert, Co-Evolution Quarterly, 1983

 

 

 

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.
- Frank Herbert

 

 

 

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.
- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

 

 

 

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
- Herman Hesse

 

 

 

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blue prints of your ultimate achievements.
- Napoleon Hill

 

 

 

Girls are like pianos. When they're not upright, they're grand.
- Benny Hill

 

 

 

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.
- Sir Edmund Hillary

 

 

 

I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon.
- Bill Hirst

 

 

 

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
- Adolf Hitler

 

 

 

Hell is paved with good Samaritans.
- William M. Holden

 

 

 

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

 

 

 

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

 

 

 

A mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimension.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

 

 

Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

 

 

People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, 'Why wasn't it done the other way?'
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

 

 

Est modus in rebus.
[There is moderation in everything.]
- Horace

 

 

 

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero! (Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!)
- Horace

 

 

 

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
- Elbert Hubbard

 

 

 

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman is as bad as she dares.
- Elbert Hubbard

 

 

 

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
- Hubert Humphrey (1911-1978)

 

 

 

There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.
- Victor Hugo

 

 

 

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
- Aldous Huxley (1904-1963)

 

 

 

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored
- Aldous Huxley (1904-1963)

 

 

 

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
- Aldous Huxley (1904-1963)

 

 

 

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
- Aldous Huxley (1904-1963)

 

 

 

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
- Aldous Huxley (1904-1963)

 

 

 

The strongest man on earth is he who stands most alone.
- Henrik Ibsen

 

 

 

The majority never has the right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of the social lies that a free, thinking man is bound to rebel against. Who makes up the majority in any given country? Is it the wise men or the fools? I think we must agree that the fools are in a terrible overwhelming majority, all the wide world over.
- Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

 

 

 

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
- Dolores Ibarruri (1895-1989)

 

 

 

Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give.
- Robert G. Ingersoll

 

 

 

May the hinges of our friendship never grow rusty.
- Irish blessing

 

 

 

God often pays debts without money.
- Irish proverb

 

 

 

We drink to your coffin. May it be built from the wood of a hundred-year-old oak tree that we shall plant tomorrow!
- Irish toast

 

 

 

May you live all the days of your life.
- Irish toast

 

 

 

We was robbed!
- Joe Jacobs

 

 

 

A great many people think they are changing when they are only rearranging their prejudices.
- William James

 

 

 

The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.
- Thomas Jefferson

 

 

 

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
- Thomas Jefferson

 

 

 

It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
- Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)

 

 

 

Better to have 'em inside the tent pissin' out than outside pissin' in.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson

 

 

 

I ain't never learned nothin' talking.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson

 

 

 

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
- Samuel Johnson

 

 

 

No, sir: there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
- Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson

 

 

 

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
- Samuel Johnson

 

 

 

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.
- Samuel Johnson

 

 

 

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
- Samuel Johnson

 

 

 

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
- Samuel Johnson

 

 

 

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill ... Great works are performed, not by strength, but perseverance.
- Samuel Johnson

 

 

 

A cucumber should be well sliced,
and dressed with pepper and vinegar,
and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
- Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, Tour to the Hebrides

 

 

 

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
- Samuel Johnson

 

 

 

The most efficient labor-saving device is still money.
- Franklin P. Jones

 

 

 

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.
- Franklin P Jones

 

 

 

I have not yet begun to fight.
- John Paul Jones

 

 

 

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
- Thomas Jones

 

 

 

Bigamy is having one husband too many; monogamy is the same.
- Erica Jong

 

 

 

Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.
- Joubert, Pensées

 

 

 

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
- James Joyce (1882-1941)

 

 

 

Why don't you write books people can read?
- Nora Joyce to her husband James

 

 

 

The idea of an incarnation of God is absurd: why should the human race think itself so superior to bees, ants, and elephants as to be put in this unique relation to its maker?... Christians are like a council of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung-hill croaking and squeaking for our sakes was the world created.
- Julian the Apostate

 

 

 

Religion is a defense against the experience of God.
- Carl Jung (1875-1961)

 

 

 

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.
- Carl Jung (1875-1961)

 

 

 

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
- Carl Jung (1875-1961)

 

 

 

Two things only the people actually desire - bread and circuses.
- Juvenal

 

 

 

The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.
- Genghis Kahn

 

 

 

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
- Immanuel Kant

 

 

 

The more things change, the more they are the same.
- Alphonse Karr

 

 

 

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
- Alan Kay

 

 

 

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
- Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, p.420

 

 

 

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
- Helen Keller or Alexander Graham Bell

 

 

 

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but, it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.
- Helen Keller

 

 

 

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
- Helen Keller

 

 

 

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors and no slave who has not had a king among his.
- Helen Keller

 

 

 

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.
- Edward Kennedy

 

 

 

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

 

 

 

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), 1961 inaugural speech

 

 

 

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), Letter from Birmingham Jail

 

 

 

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
- Jonathan Kozol

 

 

 

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
- Robert F Kennedy

 

 

 

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
- Brian W. Kernighan

 

 

 

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
- Charles F. Kettering

 

 

 

In the long run, we are all dead.
- John Maynard Keynes

 

 

 

Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.
- Siren Kierkegaard

 

 

 

How could they possibly be Japanese planes?
- Admiral Husband E. Kimmel

 

 

 

Life's most urgent question is: what are you doing for others?
- Martin Luther King

 

 

 

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
- Martin Luther King

 

 

 

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King

 

 

 

We act as though comfort and luxury are the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
- Charles Kingsley

 

 

 

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
- Rudyard Kipling

 

 

 

Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad
- Henry Kissinger

 

 

 

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
- Stanley Kubrick (1928- )

 

 

 

Help yourself, and heaven will help you.
- Jean de LaFontaine

 

 

 

Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.'s if possible.
- R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience

 

 

 

Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.
- Ann Landers

 

 

 

The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.
- Doug Larson

 

 

 

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
- Doug Larson

 

 

 

Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.
- Doug Larson

 

 

 

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self requires strength.
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Perseverance is a sign of will power.
He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.
- Lao-tse (c604-c531 BC)

 

 

 

Know the masculine, keep to the feminine.
- Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)

 

 

 

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.
- Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)

 

 

 

Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis.
- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his celestial mechanics make no mention of God

 

 

 

If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets.
- Irving Layton (b. 1912), The Whole Bloody Bird

 

 

 

Turn on, tune in, and drop out.
- Timothy Leary (1920-1996)

 

 

 

There are three side effects of acid. Enhanced long term memory, decreased short term memory, and I forget the third.
- Timothy Leary (1920-1996)

 

 

 

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
- Ursula K. LeGuin

 

 

 

Life is what happens while you are making other plans.
- John Lennon

 

 

 

We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity.
- John Lennon

 

 

 

The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.
- Gloria Leonard

 

 

 

Noblesse oblige. [Nobility has its obligations.]
- Duc de Levis

 

 

 

The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.
- Claude Levi-Strauss

 

 

 

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up save in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
- C.S. Lewis

 

 

 

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.
- A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)

 

 

 

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.
- Harry Lime, The Third Man

 

 

 

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
- Lin Yutang

 

 

 

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

 

 

 

I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

 

 

 

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

 

 

 

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

 

 

 

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

 

 

 

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

 

 

 

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

 

 

 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...We here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

 

 

 

The pursuit of the development of the human mind; this is the role of the historian.
- Maximilien-Paul-Emile Littre (1801-81)

 

 

 

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.
- Titus Livius

 

 

 

Winning is not a sometime thing; its an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit.
- Vince Lombardi

 

 

 

We guarantee the quality of our product or return the boy.
- Abbot Lawrence Lowell (1856-1943), president of Harvard University

 

 

 

Universities are full of knowledge; the freshmen bring a little in and the seniors take none away, and knowledge accumulates.
- Abbot Lawrence Lowell (1856-1943), president of Harvard University

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
- Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)

 

 

 

Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming.
- J.P. McEvoy

 

 

 

You are the architect of your personal experience.
- Shirley MacLaine

 

 

 

Those who draw a distinction between education and entertainment don't know the first thing about either.
- Marshall McLuhan, Classroom Without Walls

 

 

 

Some of my fellow academics are very hostile, but I sympathize with them. They've been asleep for 500 years and they don't like anybody who comes along and stirs them up.
- Marshall McLuhan

 

 

 

Sometimes it's risky not to take a risk.
- Harvey MacKay

 

 

 

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), The Prince

 

 

 

Injuries should be inflicted all at once, for the less they are tasted, the less they offend, while benefits should be granted little by little, so that they might be better enjoyed.
- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), The Prince

 

 

 

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order to things.
- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

 

 

 

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one.
- Tom Mackie

 

 

 

Love isn't just doing good things. It is the spirit with which we do good things.
- Merritt Malloy

 

 

 

I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don’t know where I would be without it.
- Thomas Mann (1875–1955)

 

 

 

In waking a tiger, use a long stick.
- Mao Tse-tung

 

 

 

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

 

 

 

Hegel says somewhere that all great events and personalities in world history reappear in one fashion or another. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
- Karl Marx (1818-83)

 

 

 

Only talk when it improves the silence.
- Christopher Matthews

 

 

 

People don't mind being used; what they mind is being taken for granted.
- Christopher Matthews

 

 

 

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
- W. Somerset Maugham

 

 

 

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say 'I don't know'.
- W. Somerset Maugham

 

 

 

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
- W. Somerset Maugham

 

 

 

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
- W. Somerset Maugham

 

 

 

An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
- W. Somerset Maugham

 

 

 

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
- W. Somerset Maugham

 

 

 

American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
- W. Somerset Maugham

 

 

 

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead

 

 

 

We have nowhere else to go...this is all we have.
- Margaret Mead

 

 

 

Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
-Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat

 

 

 

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run
as courses, and they come back to us as effects.
- Herman Melville

 

 

 

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
- Herman Melville

 

 

 

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

 

 

 

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

 

 

 

For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong.
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

 

 

 

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

 

 

 

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

 

 

 

The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded and disbursed only when absolutely necessary. The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in Hell.
-H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series

 

 

 

We are apt to forget that a great man is thus not only great, but also a man: that a philosopher, in a life time, spends less hours pondering the destiny of the race than he gives over to wondering if it will rain tomorrow and to meditating upon the toughness of steaks.
- H.L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

 

 

 

In brief, she assumed that, being a man, I was vain to the point of imbecility, and this assumption was correct, as it always is.
- H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Second Series, 1920

 

 

 

Heckler:  I wouldn't vote for you if you were the archangel Gabriel.
Menzies: Madam, if I were the archangel Gabriel, you wouldn't be in my constituency.

 

 

 

Heckler: Tell us all you know, Bob. It won't take long!
Menzies: I'll tell you everything we both know - it won't take any longer.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes.
- Henry Miller

 

 

 

In political discussion, heat is in inverse proportion to knowledge.
- J.G.C. Minchin

 

 

 

Any simple problem can made insoluble if enough meetings are called to discuss it.
- Mitchell's Law of Committees

 

 

 

I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
- Wilson Mizner

 

 

 

If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.
- Wilson Mizner

 

 

 

One should eat to live, and not live to eat.
- Moliere

 

 

 

The idea is to die young as late as possible.
- Ashley Montagu

 

 

 

I readily relapse into my reflections on the uselessness of our education. Its aim has been to make us not good and wise, but learned; and in this it has succeeded. It has not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and wisdom, but has imprinted their derivations and etymologies on our minds. We are able to decline 'virtue' even if we are unable to love it; if we do not know what wisdom is in fact and by experience, we are familiar with it as a jargon learned by heart.
- Michel de Montaigne, Essays

 

 

 

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself.
- Michel de Montaigne

 

 

 

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
- Michel de Montaigne

 

 

 

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she isn't amusing herself with me more than I am with her?
- Michel de Montaigne

 

 

 

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
- Michel de Montaigne

 

 

 

You're not free until you've been made captive by a supreme belief.
- Marianne Moore

 

 

 

When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.
- Christopher Morley

 

 

 

No eternal reward can forgive us now for wasting the dawn.
- Jim Morrison

 

 

 

There is no knowledge that is not power
- Mortal Kombat 3

 

 

 

The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.
- Desmond Morris

 

 

 

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.
- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

 

 

 

By the time a baby born today finishes college, the amount of information available to him will have quadrupled
- Guy Murchie, The Seven Mysteries of Life

 

 

 

Murphy's Law: If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.
- Edward A. Murphy Jr.

 

 

 

We Irishmen are banking heavily on the fact that God has a sense of humor.
- Jim Murray

 

 

 

The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well off, have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the greatest misery without almost noticing them.
- Gunnar Myrdal

 

 

 

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.
- Napoleon

 

 

 

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
- Napoleon

 

 

 

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am the thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on the snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there. I did not die.
-- attributed to Native American sources

 

 

 

When the pupil is ready the teacher will appear.
- Native American saying

 

 

 

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.
- John von Neumann (1903-1957)

 

 

 

No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.
- Sir Isaac Newton

 

 

 

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.
- Sir Isaac Newton

 

 

 

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
- Sir Isaac Newton

 

 

 

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
- Sir Isaac Newton

 

 

 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold Niebuhr

 

 

 

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

 

 

 

Woman was God's second mistake.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

 

 

 

There are no educators. As a thinker, one should speak only of self-education. The education of youth by others is an experiment, conducted on one as yet unknown and unknowable, or a leveling on principle, to make the new character, whatever it may be, conform to the habits and customs that prevail: in both cases, therefore, something unworthy of the thinker - the work of parents and teachers, whom an audaciously honest person has called 'nos enemis naturels.'
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), The Wanderer and His Shadow

 

 

 

They have something of which they are proud. What do they call that which makes them proud? Education they call it; it distinguishes them from goatherds. That is why they do not like to hear the word 'contempt' applied to them.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), Thus Spake Zarathustra

 

 

 

Plato was a bore.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

 

 

 

How can I lose to such an idiot?!
- A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)

 

 

 

Everything starts as somebody's daydream.
- Larry Niven

 

 

 

There comes a time when you've got to either shit or get off the pot.
- Richard Nixon

 

 

 

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
- Anais Nin

 

 

 

Many people think they are taking life seriously when they are only taking themselves seriously.
- Joseph T. O'Callahan

 

 

 

He who takes himself seriously is overly conscious of his rights. He who takes life seriously is fully conscious of his obligations.
- Joseph T. O'Callahan

 

 

 

Nothing is politically right that is morally wrong.
- Daniel O'Connell

 

 

 

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

 

 

 

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

 

 

 

It is hard to let old beliefs go. They are familiar. We are comfortable with them and have spent years building systems and developing habits that depend on them. Like a man who has worn eyeglasses so long that he forgets he has them on, we forget that the world looks to us the way it does because we have become used to seeing it that way through a particular set of lenses. Today, however, we need new lenses. And we need to throw
the old ones away.
- Kenich Ohmae

 

 

 

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

 

 

 

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.
- Robert Orben

 

 

 

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.
- P. J. O'Rouke

 

 

 

Never fight an inanimate object.
- P. J. O'Rourke

 

 

 

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
- P.J. O'Rourke

 

 

 

Drugs have taught an entire generation of American kids the metric system.
- P. J. O'Rourke, Vancouver Sun, Dec. 20, 1991

 

 

 

Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
- P. J. O'Rourke

 

 

 

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
- George Orwell

 

 

 

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
- George Orwell

 

 

 

A woman is always buying something.
- Ovid (43 BC - 18 AD)

 

 

 

Teenage boys, goaded by their surging hormones . . . run in packs like the primal horde. They have only a brief season of exhilarating liberty between control by their mothers and control by their wives.
- Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

 

 

 

Any system of religion which has anything in it which offends the mind of a child cannot be a true system.
- Thomas Paine

 

 

 

I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.
- Blaise Pascal (1625-62), Lettres Provinciales [1656-1657], no. 16

 

 

 

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees (1670)

 

 

 

Chance favors only the prepared mind.
- Louis Pasteur

 

 

 

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.
- Louis Pasteur

 

 

 

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
- General George Patton (1885-1945)

 

 

 

People become educated, as against trained, insofar as they achieve a grasp of certain critical principles, and the passion to choose, organize and shape their own ideas by means of them. Education is not a mere piling up of more and more bits and pieces of information. It is a process of deciding for ourselves what we believe. It implies a self-motivated action upon our own mental nature and a process in which we learn to open our mind, to correct and refine it, to enable it rationally to learn; thus to empower it to analyze and digest its own knowledge, to gain command over its own faculties, to achieve flexibility, fair-mindedness, and critical exactness. More and more students should have assignments that challenge their minds to think for themselves. This requires, of course, that they are encouraged to question what is presented to them for belief, not only in the various subject areas, but on TV programs and movies, in news broadcasts, in the talk of their peers and others, in political speeches and personal discussions, in everyday decisions and ways of living. And they should do this not to
discover that everything is relative and arbitrary or a matter of opinion, but that all beliefs and points of view are subject to rational analysis and assessment. Ideally the process will come to pervade the school climate and be reflected in the deepest structures of school life. By this means, schools can perhaps become, as they should be, leading institutions in society, paradigms of rationality, helping an irrational society to become what itself has said is its own highest goal: a free society of free and autonomous persons.
- Richard Paul