Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line seperating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties but right through every human heart and all human hearts.
Alexander SolzhenitsynThe Gulag Archipelago
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.
St. Augustine
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Will Rogers
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward in the same direction.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Scratch most feminists and underneath there is a woman who longs to be a sex object. The difference is that is not all she longs to be.
Betty Rollin
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord KelvinPresident, Royal Society1895
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
Napoleon Bonaparte1769-1821
Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.
Savielly Grigorievitch TartakowerChess Master1887-1956
Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
Golda Meir1898-1978
His ignorance is encyclopedic.
Abba Eban1915-
This book fills a much-needed gap.
Moses Hadas1900-1966
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Oscar Wilde1854-1900
Wit is educated insolence.
Aristotle284-322 B.C.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de St. Exupery
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr1885-1962
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 Dirac1902-1984
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein1879-1955
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein1879-1955
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright1868-1959
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde1854-1900
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country.
General George Smith Patton1885-1945
No Sane man will dance.
Cicero106-43 B.C.
Vote early and vote often.
Al Capone1899-1947
One Man, One Vote - and the Patrician is that man.
Terry Pratchet
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
Thomas Jones
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau1817-1862
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain1835-1910
The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
Oliver Wendell Holmes1841-1935
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Mark Twain1835-1910
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
Mark Twain1835-1910
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Mark Twain1835-1910
When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"
Quentin Crisp
If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides.
Yiddish proverb
Lazarus Long: Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind, it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate--and quickly.
Robert Heinlein
Young Woman: Dr. Franklin, if this were on a woman, we'd know what to think.
Ben Franklin: Half an hour ago, Mademoiselle, it was on a woman, and now what do you think?
Ben Franklinthe Humes File
Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
Paul Valery
It depends on your definition of asleep. They were not stretched out. They had their eyes closed. They were seated at their desks with their heads in a nodding position.
John HoganCommonwealth Edison Supervisor of News Information
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.
I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ...".
Isaac Asimov
Children often have been likened to scientists. Both ask fundamental questions about the nature of the universe. Both also ask innumerable questions that seems utterly trivial to others. Finally, both are granted by society the time to pursue their musings.
R. Seigler
Life in uncertain. Eat dessert first.
Ernestine Ulmer
Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian and it's all organised by the Swiss. Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lover's Swiss, the police German and it's all organised by the Italians.
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
George OrwellAnimal Farm
Lady Astor: Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink.
Winston Churchill: Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it.
Winston Churchill
Lady Astor: Mr. Churchill, you're drunk!
Winston Churchill: Yes, and you, Madam, are ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober.
Winston Churchill
Don't think of it as being outnumbered, think of it as a wide target selection.
Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing it, and conquering it.
Richter1763-1825
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
Thomas Sowell
"The only true teaching" is Hillel's negative formulation of the Golden Rule: "d`alakh sani l`havrakh la ta`avid" (Do not do to your neighbor what is hateful to you). This formulation has the advantage that it can be incorporated into an equitable and enforcible - legal system, whereas the "positive" version is mere wishful thinking.
Right behind sex, commerce on the Internet seems to excite people the most.
President, RSA Data Security
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B. F. Skinner
Without Gun Confiscation, The Streets Would Not Be Safe For The SS.
Adolf Hitler
Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Ambrose Bierce
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei
If the designers of X-Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that.
Marus J. RanumDigital Equipment Corporation
A witty saying proves nothing.
Voltaire
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
Don Marquis
Intellectual brilliance is no guarentee against being dead wrong.
David Fasold
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
Albert Camus
Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
Jonathan Swift
If you steal from one another it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.
Wilson Mizner
One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.
Anatol Rapoport
An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.
Konrad Adenauer
Americans always try to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else.
Winston Churchill
Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's you.
Groucho Marx
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
Groucho Marx
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
Groucho Marx
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
Winston Churchill
You're a mouse studying to be a rat.
Wilson Mizner
He used statistics the way a drunkard uses lampposts - for support, not illumination.
Andrew Lang
I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.
Woody Allen
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Joseph HellerCatch-22
In the beginning there was nothing... Then even *that* exploded!
Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.
Diplomacy: The art of letting someone have your way.
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience... well, that comes from poor judgment.
Smile: It's the second best thing you can do with your mouth.
Warning: Dates in Calendar are closer than they appear.
A real friend is someone who knows all about you and still respects you.
Why is "abbreviation" such a long word?
If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished.
The proof of this law is too boring for words.
Gilbert StrangLinear Algebra and its Applications, pp26
How little you know about the age you live in if you think that honey is sweeter than cash in hand.
Ovid43? B.C. - A.D. 18
A closed mouth gathers no feet.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
Pablo Picasso
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.
Winston ChurchillHouse of Commons, 11 Nov 1947
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Winston Churchillradio speech, Oct. 1, 1939
It's you and me against the world. When do we attack?
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler
He was a wise man who invented God.
Plato427?-348? B.C.
Give me the strength to change those things I should change, The patience to accept those things I shouldn't change, And the wisdom to know the difference.
God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr
What a time! What a civilisation!
Cicero106-43 B.C.
One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop.
Due to budgetary cutbacks, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.
If a synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown too?
If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me.
Most people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.
Bertrand Russell
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
Fletcher Knebel
This text is blinking. Please adjust your monitor.
Freedom of the press belongs to those who own presses.
Nothing is so smiple it can't be stuffed up.
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
Mahatma Gandhi1869-1948
(also attributed to Wilferd A. Peterson)
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
One hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong.
You're not intelligent because you can think. You're only intelligent if you do think.
Everyone is entitled to an informed opinion.
Harlan Ellison
Learn to use a hammer, and the world is full of nails.
That's the trouble with graduate students. Every couple of days, they fall asleep.
I dont suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Duct tape is like the force: It has a Light side and a Dark side, and it binds the universe together.
When I die I want to go quietly, in my sleep like my Grandfather, not screaming like the passengers in his car.
Nothing so absurd can be said, that some philosopher has not said it.
Cicero
May you live in interesting times.
supposedly an ancient Chinese curse
If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier that other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.
Charles Montesquieu1689-1755
There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
Charles Montesquieu1689-1755
Nothing is more common than for great thieves to ride in triumph when small ones are punished.
SenecaB.C. 3-65 A.D.
Translation:Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
People readily believe what they want to believe.
Julius CaesarCommentarii de bello Gallico, III, 18, 49 B.C.
Life is playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow old.
Tryon Edwards
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates
There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
Booker T. Washington
Many a man's tongue broke his nose.
Seumas MacManus
The most popular labour-saving device is still money.
Phillis George
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana1863-1952
A coupla months in the laboratory can save a coupla hours in the library.
Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.
John Archibald Wheeler1911-American J. of Physics, 1978, 46, 323, 1978
Ye have enemies? Good, good; that means ye've stood up for something, sometime in thy life.
Elminster of Shadowdale
Anyone who isn't confused here, doesn't really understand whats going on.
Anonymous Belfast citizen1970
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anais Nin
Sometimes you just have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down.
Kobi Yamada
No one in this world, as far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
H. L. MenckenNotes on journalism, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 19, 1926
Failures are divided into two classes - those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.
John Charles Salak
This [letter] would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal1632-1662Lettres Provinciales
Translation:Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat
Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad.
Euripides480-406 BC
Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity.
Paul Goodman
All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
Gaius Julius Caesar
(quoted in "The Conspiracy of Catiline" by Sallust (c. 50 BC))
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.
Lord Kelvin
This article is a natural product. The slight variation in spelling and grammar enhance its individual character and beauty and in no way are to be considered flaws or defects.
Calvin: Verbing weirds language.
Bill WattersonCalvin and Hobbes
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.
Nathaniel Lee17th century playwright
They [La Prensa] accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them publish it.
Nelba BlandonInterior Ministry Director of Censorship, NicaraguaThe New York Times, 1984
If you say you can, or if you say you can't, you're right.
Cato the Elder
Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.
Horace Walpole
Asking whether a machine can think is precicely as interesting as asking whether a submarine can swim.
Dijkstra?
On the Plains of Hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the Dawn of Victory, sat down to wait, and waiting ... died.
George. W. Cecil(a.k.a. William A. Lawrence)
When the ordinary man attains wisdom, he becomes a sage. When the sage attains wisdom, he becomes an ordinary man.
Zen saying
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
Winston Churchill1874-1965
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.
Woody Allen
Champagne to my true friends and true pain to my sham friends.
A real friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that exalted, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
George Bernard Shaw1856-1950
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
H. L. Mencken1880-1956
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perpetual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
H. L. Mencken1880-1956
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
FRANCOIS, DUC DE LA ROUCHEFOUCALD
Love is a series of 'darlings' and 'dearies,' Of 'honeys,' and 'sweeties' and sugared entreaties. Of moonings, and swoonings, and cooings and billings All tempered, of course, by occasional killings.
E.Y. Harburg1965
The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
Jane Bryant QuinnReader's Digest, 1 Dec. 1980
A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Study nature, not books.
Louis Agassiz
Translation:Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?
But who will guard the guardians?
JuvenalSatires
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
Bertrand Russell1872-1970
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Einstein
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Einstein
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
Einstein
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Einstein
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.
Einstein
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Einstein
The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing.
Gamel Abdel Nasser
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsucessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Calvin Coolidge
The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.
Alexander Penney
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams
Be it resolved that all women, of whatever age, rank,profession, or degree; whether virgin maids or widows; that shall after the passing of this Act, impose upon and betray into matrimony any of His Majesty's male subjects, by scents, paints,cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes, or bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the laws now in force against witchcraft, sorcery, and such like misdemeanours, and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void.
Act of Parliament, 1670
Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.
Chuck Yeager1923-
To feed applied science by starving basic science is like economising on the foundations of a building so that it may be built higher.
Sir George PorterNew Scientist, 9/4 p16., 1986
I readily accept all that biologists postulate in respect of my brain, yet I find my own consciously experiencing self not satisfactorily accounted for... The further we progress in research, the more each of us will realise the tremendous mystery of our personal existence as a consciously experiencing being with imagination and a sense of value and a systematisation of knowledge.
J.C. EcclesFacing reality, 1971
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong -- but that's the way to bet it.
Damon RunyonMore Than Somewhat
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
George Bernard ShawMaxims for Revolutionists, 1903
Failure? I never encoutered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks.
Dottie Walters
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
John E. E. Dalberg, Lord Acton1834-1902The History of Freedom and Other Essays, ch. 1, 1907
Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance; yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall walk with vigor three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe.
Samuel Johnson
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments -- there are consequences.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Out of the air a voice without a face Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place.
W.H. AudenThe Shield of Achilles
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.
Kahlil GibranThe Voice of the Master, pt. 2, ch. 8, 1960
(repr. in A Second Treasury of Kahlil Gibran, tr. by Anthony Ferris, 1962)
The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of statistics. These are raised to the nth degree, the cube roots are extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts down anything he damn well pleases.
Sir Josiah Stamp
(Garbage In, Garbage Out)
The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight but has no vision.
Helen Keller
Most conventional soldiers think of the jungle as being full of lurking enemies. Under our system, we will do the lurking.
(I have this attributed as the motto of the Australian SAS in Vietnam. This doesn't sound quite right.)
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
Robert Hutchins
It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.
Moliere
It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.
Freeman Dyson
The hammer shatters glass but forges steel
Russian Proverb
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
George Eliot
Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.
King James Bible, Proverbs 17:28
Let him who wishes for peace prepare for war.
Vegetius
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
Jonathan Swift
He chased her and chased her until at last she caught him.
And then she was no longer chaste.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill
We are the protagonists and authors of our own drama. It is up to us; there is no one left to blame. Neither the "system," not our leaders, nor our parents. We can't go out and hang the first amoeba.
Rebecca McClen Novick
Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
W. C. Fields
King James Bible, Proverbs 24:5: A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength.
King James Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:18: For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
A good speech is like a miniskirt - short enough to be interesting, long enough to cover the essentials.
Correct morals arise from knowing what man is - not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.
Robert A HeinleinStarship Troopers
Caesar: Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian and thinks the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
George Bernard ShawCaesar and Cleopatra, 1898
What good is reason if it drives out beauty, terror, and vivid emotion? Can a thousand facts compare with that epiphanic moment, when a poet stands tall in a lightning storm, hurling challenges at God?
David BrinOtherness
Science gives man what he needs, but magic gives man what he wants.
Tom RobbinsAnother Roadside Attraction
When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
La Rochefoucauld
Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
Mary Ellen Kelly
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line.
Oscar Levant
Translation:On tue un homme, on est un assasin. On tue des millions d'hommes, on est un conquérant. On tue les nous, on est un dieu.
Kill a man, you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, you are a conqueror. Kill all, you are a god.
Jean Rostand
Only an unlit candle lasts forever.
The most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness.
Thomas Jeffersonletter to George Wythe, August, 1786
At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
George OrwellFrom his notebooks, published in Collected Essays.
Be satisfied with life always, but never with oneself.
George Jean Nathan
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
Tom Clancy
A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
Charles R. Darwin1809-1182
Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my teachers that many of my answers were meant ironically.
Calvin Trillin
Imagine a person with a gift of ridicule [He might say] First that a negative quantity has no logarithm; secondly that a negative quantity has no square root; thirdly that the first non-existent is to the second as the circumference of a circle is to the diameter.
Augustus de Morgan
the artist: Nothing ... will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.
Samuel JohnsonRasselas
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
George Bernard ShawMrs. Warren's Profession
It's supposed to be hard; if it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.
Tom HanksA League of Their Own
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Mark Twain
The users took much longer than we anticipated to adapt to the intuitive user interface.
Microsoft Consulting project manager
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
John Wicker
Your lips are two course red threads intertwined in an eternal dance of laugh and frown.
Octavio Paz??
It stands to reason that self-righteous, inflexible, single-minded, authoritarian true believers are politically organized. Open-minded, flexible, complex, ambiguous, anti-authoritarian people would just as soon be left to mind their own fucking business.
R. U. Sirius?
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
G.B. Shaw
Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, "I am not the kind of person I want to be." It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.
Frank HerbertDune
My eyes discover you naked and cover you with a warm rain of glances...
Octavio Paz
What's a freudian whip, er slip? Well, its where you say one thing and mean a mother, er another.
Eagles may soar in the clouds, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.
Jason Hutchison
I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.
Practice random acts of intelligence and senseless acts of beauty.
I code like the wind - the wind crashes many things.
Attention span is defined as ... oooo pretty.
Susan Dernyar
... a book should not reveal things. A book should simply help us discover them.
Jorge Luis Borges
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
Richard Feynman
If dogs move in two dimensions and birds move in three dimensions, then cats must be fractal.
Paula
All I want it a warm bed, a kind word, and unlimited power.
We've been through so much together - and most of it was your fault.
mirrors and copulation are abominations, for both multiply the number of mankind.
Jorge Luis Borges
Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
David Lloyd George
You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place.
Jonathan Swift?
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out.
Thomas Cardinal Wolsey1471-1530
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
Kahlil GibranThe Prophet. On Work
It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit which we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins the victory.
General George Catlett MarshallMilitary Review
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
...As Aristotle said, happiness is not a condition that is produced or stands on its own; rather, it is a frame of mind that accompanies an activity. But another frame of mind comes first. It is a steely determination to do well.
George WillMen at Work
Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
Kimberly Johnson
I quote others only the better to express myself.
Montaigne
I used to say that Politics is the second oldest profession, but I have come to realize that it bears a gross similarity to the first.
Ronald Regan
Give us clear vision, that we may know where to stand and what to stand for - because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything.
Peter MarshallUS Senate Chaplain1947
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.
John O'Hara
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
Robert Frost
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
Leo C. Rosten
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
W. Somerset Maugham
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
Andres S. Tannenbaum
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
George Bernard Shaw
The trick is to stop thinking it as 'your' money.
IRS auditor
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
Keynes
Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.
Baron Henry Peter Brougham
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
Galileo
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
Laurence J. Peter
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
W. H. Auden1907-1973
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask reamins a fool forever.
It's better to keep your mouth closed and let them think you a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
Woody Allen
Language is a wonderful thing. It can be used to express thoughts, to conceal thoughts, but more often, to replace thinking.
Kelly Fordyce
If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!
"Ma" FergusonGovernor of Texas
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole FranceLe Lys rouge, 1910
The best team for operating a computer system consists of a man and a dog. The dog's job is to keep the man away from the system.
Roy Maxion
A life without cause is a life without effect.
Barbarella
My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.
James F. Byrnes
Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.
Comte DeBussy-Rabutin
Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come.
Nietchze
Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway.
Judith Viorst
Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
Mark Twain
Never try to guess your wife's size. Just buy her anything marked 'petite' and hold on to the receipt.
University President: Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now the Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers . . . and the Department of Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers.
Isaac Asimov
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
M.C. Reed
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
Paul Beatty
Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is.
Ashleigh Brilliant
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
Gordon R. Dickson
Only those who attempt the absurd...will achieve the impossible. I think ...I think it's in my basement...Let me go upstairs and check.
Escher
Expressing anger is a form of public littering.
Willard Gaylin
I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving; To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it--but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Nothing else in the world ... not all the armies ... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
Victor HugoThe Future of Man
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nearly all men can stand adveristy, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln
Some people have so much respect for their superiors they have none left for themselves.
Peter McArthur
The bigger the real-life problems, the greater the tendency for the discipline to retreat into a reassuring fantasy-land of abstract theory and technical manipulation.
Tom Naylor
I don't mind occasionally having to reinvent a wheel; I don't even mind using someone's reinvented wheel occasionally. But it helps a lot if it is symmetric, contains no fewer than ten sides, and has the axle centered. I do tire of trapezoidal wheels with offset axles.
Joseph Newcomer
I didn't think; I experimented.
Wilhelm Roentgen
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
Mark Twain
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
English Professor, Ohio University
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
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM!
Lyndon B. Johnson
Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe-spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Aristotle
That's the nature of research-you don't know what in hell you're doing.
"Doc" Edgerton
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas Edison
There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's Factor; that's engineering.
Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are nomads-by- choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.
Benoit Mandelbrot
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research.
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
Charles Babbage
Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
Aaron Levenstein
A good talk is like a good dress. Short enough to be interesting, long enough to cover the essentials.
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.
Jean Gieraudoux
I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.
Harry Truman
Academic politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Edmund Burke1729-1797Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, 1770
The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night.
Otto von Bismarck
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.
Nicholas Murray ButlerPresident Columbia UniversityCommencement Address
(...until he knows everything about nothing. Compare to the generalist who knows less and less about more and more till he knows nothing about everything.)
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Desiderius Erasmus1465-1536Adagia, 1508
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
R.A HeinleinNotebook of Lazarus Long
But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.
King James Bible, James 5:12
The first casualty when war comes is truth.
Hiram Johnsonstatement to the U.S. Senate, 1917
Pogo: We have met the enemy - and he is us.
Walt Kelly
First they went after the Communists, and I did not stand up, because I was not a Communist. Then they went after the homosexuals and infirm, and I did not stand up, because I was neither. Then they went after the Jews, and I did not stand up, because I was not a Jew. Then they went after the Catholics, and I did not stand up, because I was Protestant. Finally, they went after me, and there was no one left to stand up for me.
Pastor Martin Neimoller1892-1984
( Howard Samuels recalling in the Congressional Record 14 October 1968. Not a primary source or definitive wording. )
A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.
Gloria Steinem
The best is the enemy of the good.
Voltaire1694-1778Dramtic Art, 1764
Hell is a giant banquet room with tables filled with every possible good thing to eat and drink. The people are all seated at the banquet tables, but they are all starving, emaciated, skin on skeleton figures. They are chained in such a way that they can reach out and pick up the food, but the chains prevent them from bringing the food to their mouth.In the ultimate cruelty, they are dying of starvation with food in their hands. Surprisingly, the Heaven is also a giant banquet room with tables filled with all the same, wonderful, choices as before. And just as before, the people are all chained so that they can pick up the food, but can't bring it to their mouth. However, in this banquet room, the people are all healthy. They are laughing, singing and enjoying themselves. The difference? In Heaven, they have realized that although they cannot feed themselves, the chains allow them to feed each other.
Ancient Persian legend
(see also chinese version where everyone has long chopsticks and the European version where everyone has long spoons)
Nearly all people in England are of the superior sort, superiority being an English ailment.
D. H. Lawrence
Which beginning of time according to our chronology, fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the twenty third day of October in the year of the Julian Calender, 710.
James UssherArchbishop of Armagh1581-1656Annals of the World, 1658
(4004 B.C.)
Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul.
Marilyn Monroe
In Hollywood, all marriages are happy. It's trying to live together afterwards that causes the problems.
Shelley Winters
Pigmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves.
LucanA.D. 39-65
If I have seen further ( than you and Descartes ) it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants.
Sir Isaac Newton1642-1727in a letter to Robert Hooke, Feb. 1675
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
Hal Abelson
If I have seen further, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves.
Spiro Agnew?
It does a scientist good to discard a favorite theory every morning before breakfast.
Conrad Lorenz
(paraphrased)
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Socrates
The devil is not wise because he is the devil but because he is old.
Noel Coward?
If we think we hear, we no longer listen If we think we see, we no longer look If we think we know, we no longer search.
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of £10. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat.
Rule 46, Oxford Union Society
You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.
Irish proverb
Behold the turtle. He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.
James Bryant Conant?
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson1709-1784Boswell, Life
debating opponent: I don't understand you, Sir;
Johnson: Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
Samuel Johnson1709-1784Boswell, Life
The length of our life is less important than its depth.
Mary David Fisher
Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.
Samuel Johnson1709-1784June 30, 1750
...a common observation, that few are mended by imprisonment, and that he, whose crimes have made confinement necessary, seldom makes any other use of his enlargement, than to do, with greater cunning, what he did before with less.
Samuel Johnson1709-1784The False Alarm
Those who made the laws have apparently supposed, that every deficiency of payment is the crime of the debtor. But the truth is, that the creditor always shares the act, and often more than shares the guilt, of improper trust. It seldom happens that any man imprisons another but for debts which he suffered to be contracted in hope of advantage to himself, and for bargains in which proportioned his own profit to his own opinion of the hazard; and there is no reason, why one should punish the other for a contract in which both concurred.
Samuel Johnson1709-1784September 16, 1758
No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
Samuel Johnson1709-1784Boswell, Life
We have more respect for a man who robs boldly on the highway, than for a fellow who jumps out of a ditch, and knocks you down behind your back. Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
Samuel Johnson1709-1784Boswell, Life
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
Voltaire
Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.
P.J. O'Rourke
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
D. Elton Trueblood
As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.
Harold Macmillan1894-1986Speech to London Conservatives, 1962.03.07
If we are unwilling to let our ideals cost us anything, our ideals aren't worth anything.
Zora Neale Hurston
Success covers a multitude of blunders.
George Bernard Shaw
There are fools everywhere, even in asylums.
George Bernard Shaw
There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realised until personal experience has brought it home.
John Stuart Mill
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
John Stuart MillOn Liberty
I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
Jerome K. Jerome
Love is like an hourglass with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
Jules Renard
I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Robert McCloskeyState Department SpokesmanBriefing during vietnam war
Familiarity breeds content.
Anna Quindlen
I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker Brothers and they are going to make a game of it.
Woody Allen
Let me pass! I have to follow them; I am their leader.
Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollinone of the instigators of the short-lived Communist Revolution15 May 1848
If it weren't for pickpockets I'd have no sex life at all.
Rodney Dangerfield
Mordechai Anielewicz: Obvious differences are the differences one is used to... Subtle differences are the differences someone else is used to.
Harry TurtledoveSecond Contact
He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.
Ayn Rand
I see her as one great stampede of lips directed at the nearest derriere.
Noël Coward
The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.
Desmond MorrisThe Human Zoo, 1969
You've got to sing like you don't need the money, Love like you'll never get hurt. You've got to dance like no one is watching, It's gotta come from the heart, if you want it to work.
Kathy MatteaIt's Got to Come From the Heart
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Woody AllenIn Search of Excellence, 1982
Translation:Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.
Knowledge is power.
Francis bacon1561-1626Meditationes Sacrae, De Haeresibus
Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.
Douglas Bader
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
Robert Browning1812-1889Andrea del Sarto, 1855
What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dreams you went to heaven and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeBiographia Literaria, 1817
(Drugs are a wonderful thing :P)
Translation:Cogito, ergo sum.
I think, therefore I am.
Rene Descartes1596-1650Le Discours de la methode, 1637
Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Whom the Gods love dies young.
MenanderThe Double Deceiver
An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
John Gardner
(attributed to John Gardner in a speech by George J. Mitchell, former US Senator, in his commencement address to Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, PA.)
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
I asked God for strength, that I might achieve; I was made weak, that I may learn humbly to obey.
I asked God for health, that I may do greater things; I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.
I asked for riches, that I may be happy; I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men; I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life, I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing I asked for but everything I hoped for. I am, among all men, most richly blessed.
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Raymond Adams
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
G. B. Shaw
Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.
Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.
George Gordon Noel Byron1788-1824
Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.
G. K. ChestertonThe Uses of Diversity, 1921
I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken; the choosing was not. You have to move on.
Stephen Sondheim
Quantum leaps are the smallest leaps possible.
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Thomas Paine
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they beat you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right...Time makes more converts than reason.
Thomas PaineCommon Sense
Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.
Albert Einstein
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin FranklinPennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755
People who pray for miracles usually don't get miracles...But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayers answered. Their prayers helped them tap hidden reserves of faith and courage that were not available to them before.
Harold S. Kushner
Show me the boy until he is 7 and I will show you the man.
Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterwards.
(variously attributed to St. Francis Xavier, a Jesuit saying, Piaget...)
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
King James Bible, Proverbs 22:6
Tis education forms the common mind, Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
Alexander PopeMoral Essays, Epistle I
Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission .. the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.
Saki
Never explain -- your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
Elbert Green Hubbard1856-1915Motto Book, 1907
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.
Theodore Hesburgh
Lucy: I'm very idealistic. I want to make the world a better place for me to live in.
Charles SchulzPeanuts
The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
William James
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Fredrich Nietzsche
I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of toleration.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeBiographica Literaria, 1817
Tolerance does not...do anything, embrace anyone, champion any issue. It wipes the notes off the score of life and replaces them with one long bar of rest. It does not attack error, it does not champion truth, it does not hate evil, it does not love good.
Walter FarrellThe Looking Glass, 1951
Like the bee gathering honey from differenct flowers, the wise man accepts the essence of different Scriptures and sees only the good in all religions.
Srimad Bhagavatamc1200-500 BC
We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech.
David Brin
Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow's too lazy to form an opinion.
Will Rogers
The true way to overcome the evil of class distinctions is not to denounce them as revolutionists denounce them, but to ignore them as children ignore them.
Charles Dickens1906
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
William Hazlitt
Without the aid of prejudice and custom I should not be able to find my way across the room.
William Hazlitt
Man is condemned to be free.
Jean Paul Sartre
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
George Bernard Shaw1856-1950Man and Superman, 1903
Education is not filling a pail, but lighting a fire.
William Butler Yeats
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H. L. Mencken
The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, because nobody ever tries to ban the other kind.
Mike Godwin
If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world peace for an hour, imagine how serene and quiet it would be until the looting started.
I can picture in my mind a world with out war, a world with out hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
Jack HandeyDeep Thoughts
... once, when my feet were bare, and I had not the means of obtaining shoes. I came to the chief of Kufah in a state of much dejection, and saw there a man who had no feet. I returned thanks to God and acknowledged his mercies, and endured my want of shoes with patience ...
I once was sad that I had no shoes, until I met a man with no feet.
Sa'diThe Gulistan, 1258
Tell your boss what you think of him, and the truth shall set you free.
War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.
George Orwell
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness - all foes to real understanding. Likewise, tolerance or broad, wholesome charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in our little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain
Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
Seneca
Translation:Oderint, dum metuant.
Let them hate so long as they fear.
Lucius Accius170-c.85 B.C.Quoted in Cicero's Philippic, I. 14
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
Lord Acton1834-1902letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 1887
(Historical Essays and Studies, Appendix)
The gods help them that help themselves.
Aesop550 B.C.Hercules and the Waggoner
Even God cannot change the past.
Agathon447?-401 B.C.Quoted in Aristotle's Nicomachaean Ethics, 6
I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
Alexander the Great356-323 B.C.
It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend.
BlakeJerusalem, 1804
We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you.
Lady Cordelia Vorkosigan: But pain ... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
Lois McMaster BujoldBarrayar, 1996
Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops of significantly after age 25.
Mary Anne TebedoRepublican member of the Colorado State SenateThe Denver Post, May 14, 1995
Races north of the Pyrenees ... never reach maturity; they are of great stature and of a white colour. But they lack all sharpness of wit and penetration of intellect.
Said of ToledoMoorish savant1100 AD
Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life.
Orrin HatchSenator from UtahMay 16, 1988
Quite a number of people ... describe the German classical author, Shakespeare, as belonging to English literature, because - quite accidentally born at Stratford-on-Avon - he was forced by the authorities of that country to write in English.
Deutscher Weckruf und BeobachterNew York National Socialist organThe American Mercury, July 1940
Reagan doesn't have the presidential look.
United Artists executive
I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and he seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed.
Mohandas K. GandhiMay 1940
Better a broken bone than a broken spirit.
Lady Allen of Hurtwood
Serenity isn't freedom from the storm, but peace within the storm.
Man will not fly for fifty years.
Wilbur Wright1901
(This is the same Wilbur and Orville Wright that made the first powered, heavier than air flight on December 17, 1903.)
Translation:Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; Si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi.
When in Rome, live as the Romans do; When elsewhere, live as they do elsewhere.
St. Ambrosequoted by Jeremy Taylor
He that fights and runs away May live to fight another day.
Musarum Deliciae, 17th Century
The law doth punish man or woman, That steals the goose from off the common, But lets the greater felon loose, That steals the common from the goose.
On enclosures, 18th Century
Know thyself.
Translation:Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant.
Hail Caesar, we who are about to die salute you.
(Gladiator's salute upon entering the arena)
Translation:Cet animal est tres mechant, Quand on l'attaque il se defend.
This animal is very wicked. It defends itself when attacked.
Theodore P. K.La Menagerie, 1868
Translation:Le roi est mort, vive le roi.
The King is dead. Long live the King.
(First used by French heralds in 1461)
Give me a firm spot on which to stand and I will move the earth.
Archimedes287-212 B.C.
(using a lever)
Give me chastity and continency, but not yet.
St. Augustine354-430Confessions, VIII. 7
The verdict of the world is final.
St. Augustine354-430Contra Epistolam Parmeniani
And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.
Marcus Aurelius Antonius121-180Meditations, II. 5
Remember that to change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free than you were before.
Marcus Aurelius Antonius121-180Meditations VIII. 16
All important issues are decided by violence. An alternative way of stating this corollary is: Any issue not worth defending violently is not considered important.
Iben BrowningPast and Future History
Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.
G.K. ChestertonTremendous Trifles
War is not 'the best way of settling differences'; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.
G.K. ChestertonILN, 7/24/15
Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
G.K. ChestertonThe Speaker, 12/15/00
Translation:Non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est.
It is not the man who has little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
SenecaEpistulae morales, II, 6
God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them.
Aughey
You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing in.
Heraclitusc500 BC
Oh wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, And foolish notion.
Robert Burns1759-1796
Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.
Stephen Vincent Benet
In philosophy, we must distrust the things we understand too easily as well as the things we don't understand.
Voltaire1694-1778lettres philosophiques, 1734
Which is it: is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders?
Friedrich Wilhelm NietzscheTwilight of the Idols, 1889
No group or class should be freed from doing the toil of the culture. One of our current problems is that there are too many people who simply have no idea how much unpleasant, tedious, and repetitive work is required to support their 'high-level' activities, and how ineffective they would be without the effort of those they all too often disdain.
Robert Theobald
Liberty too can corrupt, and absolute liberty can corrupt absolutely.
Getrude Himmelfarb
What we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down.
Mary Pickford
Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.
Juvenalc. 55-130
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Simplicity of character is no hindrance to subtlety of intellect.
John MorleyLife of Gladstone, 1903
The most important thing in politics -- and the hardest -- is to say no to your friends.
Fiorello LaGuardia?
That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.
William J. H. Boetcker
She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. It's easier to feel the sunlight without them, she said.
Brian Andreas
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
James Baldwin
The crab instructs its young, "Walk straight ahead - like me."
Hindustani proverb
There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville1805-?Democracy in America, Book 1 -Chapter III
If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten!
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.
Stalin
Political correctness is just tyranny with manners.
Charlton Heston
All truth goes through three stages: First it is ridiculed; second it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.
Arthur Shopenhauer
The reason angels can fly is that they take themselves very lightly.
Chesterton
It is the answer that fate gives to all who ask that question, when disaster, death, tragedy, hardship overtake them. "Why me? Why me? Why me?"... And Fate answers these fools--"Why not?"
John GardnerScorpius
One of the unkindest things about the Universe is that more often than not the bullet doesn't have _your_ name on it; it likes to mass produce ones with "to whom it may concern".
I know the world isn't fair, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?
Bill WattersonCalvin and Hobbes
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark Twain
Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like a toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
Shakespeare
Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.
Nixon
God was satisfied with his work, and that is fatal.
Samuel ButlerNotebooks, 1912
Wit can stand its ground against Truth only a little while.
Samuel JohnsonSwift (Lives of the Poets)
Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.
Benjamin DisraeliConingsby, Bk. III, Ch. 1, 1844
Not all who wander are lost.
J. R. R. TolkeinLord of the Rings
Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their canyons.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
Chuang-tzu
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise: seek what they sought.
Basho
History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
George Santayana?
Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmer agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not as stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard... But no-one said anything. The cowards, each man thought.
Terry PratchettGuards! Guards!, 1989
'I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,' said the man [the Patrician]. 'You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'
Terry PratchettGuards! Guards!, 1989
Dolgan: 'Tis a wise thing to know what is wanted, and wiser still to know when 'tis achieved.
Raymond E. FeistMagician
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Frank Zappa
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
Albert von Szent-GyorgyiBiochemistThe Independent
Here's a good rule of thumb; Too clever is dumb.
Ogden Nash
The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.
St. Augustine
(Quoted in Dune by Frank Herbert)
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
C. A. R. Hoare
People always call me up and ask me these stupid things they already know or could easily find out. But they want me to tell them... I feel like some kind of religious leader.
Geoff Plitt
Be aware that a halo has to fall only a few inches to be a noose.
Dan McKinnon
To live outside the law you must be honest.
Bob Dylan
Criticism is not just a question of taste, but of whose taste.
James Grandc.1980
To my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you ... They will listen to your problems and never ask a thing in return. They will be your friends forever. And when you get tired of them, you can kill and eat them. Perfect.
Bill BrysonNeither Here Nor There
If I had to live my life again I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
Tallulah Bankhead1903-1968
Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.
It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired.
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.
But life wasn't yes-no, on-off. Life was shades of gray, and rainbows not in the order of the spectrum.
L. E. Modesitt, Jr.Adiamante
What a debasing thing is war, when it suggests to man such horrible, ghastly ideas, and his fellow man applauds him for them, and instead of calling him an inhuman monster, calls him a 'great man'!
Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burtonwho would have thought it
Well Manicured Man: We predict the future. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
The X-Files, series 3, 'The Blessing Way'
Reality is what, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Failure is not an option. It is a privilege reserved for those who try.
If Parliament does not mean what it says, my lord, it must say so.
A.P. Herbert
Satan: The mind is its own place, and of itself Can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell.
Paradise Lost
Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time.
H. L. Mencken
When you're hard enough on yourself, noone elses criticism matters.
Elizabeth MoonOnce A Hero
The three cardinal virtues of a master technologist are: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
Larry Wall
You can cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful and before you know it, it's neither of those things, and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.
Clive BarkerThe Damnation Game
Josh: Maybe it's better not to be the best. Then you can lose and it's OK.
Fred Waitzkin and Steven ZaillianSearching For Bobby Fischer, 1993
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
Justice Louis BrandeisOlmstead v US, 1928
Adults are obsolete children.
Dr. Seuss1904-1991
If you want to see what God thinks of money, just look at all the people He gave it to.
Dorothy Parker
Is it not the beauty of an asynchronous form of discussion that one can go and make cups of tea, floss the cat, fluff the geraniums, open the kitchen window and scream out it with operatic force, volume, and decorum, and then return to the vexed glowing letters calmer of mind and soul?
Bridget SpitznagelCarnegie Mellon University, Computer Science Dept., public Zephyr chat service, Tue May 12 17:42:34 1998
(This was added to the 'cube' database of CMU CS zephyr and hence forum3000.org and is sometimes attributed there.)
The right to fork is like the right to strike, the right to sue, or the right to bear arms -- you don't want to have to exercise any of these rights, but it's a signal of serious danger when anyone tries to take them away.
John Cowan
(on an Open Source Initiative mailing list with the following addition, "my contribution to one of ESR's essays, slightly rewritten by him".)
The believer is happy, the doubter is wise.
Hungarian proverb?
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Mark Twain?