Quotations

I like quotations. I always have. Here is a list of quotes that I find interesting, amusing, insightful, or worthwhile in some other way. I have organized my quotes in alphabetical order (by the name of the person to whom the quote is attributed). New quotes will be added to the top of the page, and will remain there until the next time new quotes are added to the list. This is to help regular visitors find the new quotes -- hunting through the entire list would be a daunting task indeed.

If you find a quote that you think I'd like, please e-mail me! Also, if I have a quote attributed to "Unknown", this merely means that I do not know the author of the quote. If you know the author of such a quote, or if you want to point out an error on this page, or if you have any comments whatsoever, then please e-mail me!

A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J / K / L / M / N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W / X / Y / Z

"Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven."
  - Edward de Bono

"We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."
  - Eeyore (A.A. Milne)

"Seek simplicity but distrust it."
  - Alfred North Whitehead

A

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
  - Lord Acton

"...I'd far rather be happy than right any day."
  - Douglas Adams (said by Slartibartfast in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")

"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 (from the foreword to "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe")

"...all evidence is circumstantial."
  - Douglas Adams (said by The Ruler of the Universe in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe")

"I couldn't trust the thinking of a man who takes the Universe--if there is one--for granted."
  - Douglas Adams (said by The Ruler of the Universe in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe")

"My Universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay."
  - Douglas Adams (said by The Ruler of the Universe in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe")

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."
  - Douglas Adams

"...this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."
  - John Adams

"It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others."
  - Joseph Addison

"Each generation has its few great mathematicians, and mathematics would not even notice the absence of the others. They are useful as teachers, and their research harms no one, but it is of no importance at all. A mathematician is great or he is nothing."
  - Alfred Adler

"The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be accomplished."
  - Alfred Adler

"It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them."
  - Alfred Adler

"Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties."
  - Aesop

"People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to."
  - George Allen

"If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank."
  - Woody Allen

"How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?"
  - Woody Allen

"Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."
  - Woody Allen

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

"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

"Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought - particularly for people who cannot remember where they left things."
  - Woody Allen

"You mustn't enthrone ignorance just because there is so much of it."
  - American Proverb

"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
  - Joe Ancis

"If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers."
  - Maya Angelou

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain."
  - Maya Angelou

"Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776."
  - Susan B. Anthony

"If someone is violent toward those who seek freedom, that's bad. But if those who seek freedom use violence to achieve it, that's good."
  - Michelangelo Antonioni

"The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning; and when they cannot it's a sign our knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and when a Mathematical Reasoning can be had it's as great a folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark, when you have a Candle standing by you."
  - John Arbuthnot

"The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry, and limitation; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful."
  - Aristotle

"Wit is educated insolence."
  - Aristotle

"The gods too are fond of a joke."
  - Aristotle

"Racism is the snobbery of the poor."
  - Raymond Aron

"My only fear is that reality is actually someone else's dream and when the dreamer wakes up we all cease to exist."
  - Todd M. Atkinson

"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."
  - Saint Augustine

B

"A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream."
  - Gaston Bachelard

"Man...can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything."
  - Francis Bacon

"A prudent question is one-half of wisdom."
  - Francis Bacon

"When will the public cease to insult the teacher's calling with empty flattery? When will men who would never for a moment encourage their own sons to enter the work of the public schools cease to tell us that education is the greatest and noblest of all human callings?"
  - William C. Bagley

"I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world."
  - Russell Baker

"A teacher who is consistently fair, kindly and honest - whatever his religious convictions - does more moral good in a school than a year of religious assemblies."
  - Balaam

"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
  - James Baldwin

"Misfortune, no less than happiness, inspires us to dream."
  - Honore De Balzac

"I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don’t even invite me."
  - Dave Barry

"Taxation WITH representation ain't so hot either."
  - Gerald Barzan

"We are all born mad. Some remain so."
  - Samuel Beckett

"Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood."
  - Louise Beal

"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our fathers used in the great struggle for Independence."
  - Charles A. Beard

"When one door closes another door opens; but we 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

"Civilized people can talk about anything."
  - Clive Bell

"Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions."
  - Eric Temple Bell

"It has always seemed to me that the most difficult part of building a bridge would be the start."
  - Robert Benchley

"Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom."
  - Walter Benjamin

"It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable."
  - Arnold Bennett

"Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made."
  - John Berryman

"Abstainer. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"Absurdity. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"Admiration. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"Bigot. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"Consult. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"Cynic. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"Egotist. a person more interested in himself than in me."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"Marriage. a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"Politeness. The most acceptable hypocrisy."
  - Ambrose Bierce

"The best time to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust."
  - Josh Billings

"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."
  - Josh Billings

"It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer."
  - Sir William Blackstone

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

"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
  - Niels Bohr

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

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

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
  - Napoleon Bonaparte

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."
  - Napoleon Bonaparte

"There was a time when the reader of an unexciting newspaper would remark, 'How dull is the world today!' Nowadays he says, 'What a dull newspaper!'"
  - Daniel J. Boorstin

"Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond."
  - Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein

"The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live."
  - Joan Borysenko

"My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right."
  - Ashleigh Brilliant

"I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it."
  - Ashleigh Brilliant {Law and Politics}

"Anyone that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office."
  - David Broder

"Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool."
  - Bellamy Brooks

"Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom."
  - Merry Browne

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

"Destiny is not a matter of chance, but of choice. Not something to wish for, but to attain."
  - William Jennings Bryan

"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
  - William Jennings Bryan

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."
  - from Thanatopsis, by William Cullen Bryant

"Weep not that the world changes--did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were a cause indeed to weep."
  - William Cullen Bryant

"No one really understood music unless he was a scientist, her father had declared, and not just a scientist, either, oh, no, only the real ones, the theoreticians, whose language is mathematics. She had not understood mathematics until he had explained to her that it was the symbolic language of relationships. 'And relationships,' he had told her, 'contained the essential meaning of life.'"
  - Pearl S. Buck (from The Goddess Abides, Pt. I)

"Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive."
  - Bugs Bunny

"Superstition is a religion of feeble minds."
  - Edmund Burke

"Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe."
  - Edmund Burke

"If a sane dog fights a mad dog, it's the sane dog's ear that is bitten off."
  - Burmese Proverb

"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg."
  - Samuel Butler

"Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule."
  - Samuel Butler

"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them."
  - Samuel Butler

"The wide spread use of drugs is a symptom of a sick society."
  - David Byrne (Member of the Talking Heads)

"There is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything."
  - Lord Byron

"I know two and two make four -- & should be glad to prove it too if I could -- though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 & 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure."
  - Lord Byron

"All men are intrinsical rascals, and I am only sorry that not being a dog I can't bite them."
  - Lord Byron

C

"An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought."
  - Simon Cameron {Law and Politics}

"The second we see somebody on the street or meet someone, we make snap judgments about them, about who they are and why we wouldn't necessarily sit with them or why we would or what's cool or not cool. But if you ignore all that shit, everybody's cool. And that's really important. You waste no time."
  - Max Cannon

"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
  - Al Capone

"Alice laughed: 'There's no use trying,' she said; 'one can't believe impossible things.'
'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"
  - Lewis Carroll (from Alice in Wonderland)

"'Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on.
'I do,' Alice hastily replied; 'at least I mean what I say, that's the same thing, you know.' 'Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. 'Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see!''"
  - Lewis Carroll (from Alice in Wonderland)

"Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter."
  - Stephen Carter

"The difference between e-mail and regular mail is that computers handle e-mail, and computers never decide to come to work one day and shoot all the other computers."
  - Jamais Cascio

"I've never been accused of a felony. I never spent time behind bars except for a few overnight jail times back in the Sixties. [But] I think there's a little bit of a criminal in all of us. Everybody's done something they don't want anybody to know about."
  - Johnny Cash

"Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil-not the strength to choose between the two."
  - John Cheever

"Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination."
  - G. K. Chesterton

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
  - Chinese proverb

"If you save a life, you are responsible for it."
  - Chinese proverb

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

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself."
  - Chinese proverb

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
  - Noam Chomsky

"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on."
  - Sir Winston Churchill

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
  - Sir Winston Churchill

"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
  - Sir Winston Churchill

"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."
  - Sir Winston Churchill

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
  - Sir Winston Churchill

"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
  - Sir Winston Churchill

"The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live -- moreover, the only one."
  - E. M. Cioran

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

"He is next to the gods whom reason impels."
  - Claudian

"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
  - William Clayton

"War is too important a matter to be left to the military."
  - George Clemenceau

"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?"
  - Jean Cocteau {Success and Failure}

"Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet."
  - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind."
  - Charles Caleb Colton

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
  - The Communist Manifesto (1898)

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

"Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart."
  - Confucius

"Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change."
  - Confucius

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

"Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."
  - William Congreve

"He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes, but he who never asks a question remains a fool forever."
  - Tom J. Connelly

"Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end."
  - Joseph Conrad

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
  - Calvin Coolidge

"Cherishing children is the mark of a civilized society."
  - Joan Ganz Cooney

"Ideas are precious. An idea is the only lever which moves the world."
  - Arthur F. Corey

"A man said to the universe:
'Sir, I exist!'
'However,' replied the universe,
'The fact has not created in me
a sense of obligation.'"
  - Stephen Crane

"When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty."
  - Norm Crosby

"Revolutions never occur in mathematics."
  - Michael Crowe

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

"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."
  - Marie Curie

D

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad."
  - Salvador Dali

"...the Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide conversation. The Government may not...interrupt that conversation. As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion."
  - Judge Stewart Dalzell

"I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure--that is all agnosticism means."
  - Clarence Darrow

"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it."
  - Clarence Darrow

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

"The most heroic word in all languages is revolution."
  - Eugene Debs

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things."
  - René Descartes

"To be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it."
  - Rene Descartes

"Cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am."
  - Rene Descartes

"A word is dead when it is said, some say.
I say it just begins to live that day."
  - Emily Dickenson

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

"...it is absurd to wish upon others the same wishes one would entertain for oneself."
  - Diderot

"Somewhere, and I can't find where, I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?'
'No,' said the priest, 'not if you did not know.'
'Then why,' asked the Eskimo earnestly, 'did you tell me?'"
  - Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

"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

"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known."
  - Walt Disney

"The difference of race is one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist; because race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance."
  - Benjamin Disraeli

"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action."
  - Benjamin Disraeli

"Everything is permitted."
  - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
  - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (said by Sherlock Holmes)

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
  - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated."
  - R. Drabek

"He that will not reason is a bigot, He that cannot reason is a fool, He that dares not reason is a slave."
  - William Drummond

E

"Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives."
  - Abba Eban

"Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself."
  - Sir Arthur Eddington

"Genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration."
  - Thomas Alva Edison

"So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake...Religion is all bunk."
  - Thomas Alva Edison

"If you ask mathematicians what they do, you always get the same answer. They think. They think about difficult and unusual problems. They do not think about ordinary problems: they just write down the answers."
  - M. Egrafov

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
  - Albert Einstein

"How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?"
  - Albert Einstein

"The search for truth is more precious than its possession."
  - Albert Einstein

"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."
  - Albert Einstein

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
  - Albert Einstein

"Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations. All this is put in your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children."
  - Albert Einstein

"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
  - Albert Einstein

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

"If A equal success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut."
  - Albert Einstein

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
  - Albert Einstein

"How much choice did God have in constructing the universe?"
  - Albert Einstein

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
  - Albert Einstein

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
  - Albert Einstein

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
  - Albert Einstein

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
  - Albert Einstein

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
  - Albert Einstein

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
  - Albert Einstein

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
  - Albert Einstein

"He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
  - Albert Einstein

"Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience."
  - Albert Einstein

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
  - Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Come under the shadow of this red rock,
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
  - T. S. Eliot

"The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down."
  - T. S. Eliot

"It is not length of life, but depth of life."
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"All life is an experiment."
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success."
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There are no guarantees. From the viewpoint of fear, none are strong enough. From the viewpoint of love, none are necessary."
  - Emmanuel

"God is a child; and when he began to play, he cultivated mathematics. It is the most godly of man's games."
  - V. Erath

"A Mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."
  - Paul Erdös

"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
  - Susan Ertz

F

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
  - William Faulkner

"We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work."
  - Richard Feynman

"Strange is it not? That of the myriads who before us pass'd the Door of darkness through, not one returns to tell us of the Road, which to discover, we must travel to."
  - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note."
  - Doug Floyd

"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
  - Henry Ford

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
  - E. M. Forster

"Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction."
  - Anne Frank

"The willow knows what the storm does not: that the power to endure harm outlives the power to inflict it."
  - Benjamin Franklin

"Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?"
  - Benjamin Franklin

"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it."
  - Benjamin Franklin from "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", Nov. 20, 1728

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
  - Benjamin Franklin

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
  - Benjamin Franklin

"Well done is better than well said."
  - Benjamin Franklin

"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
  - Benjamin Franklin

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
  -Benjamin Franklin

"Thinking isn't agreeing or disagreeing. That's voting."
  - Robert Frost

"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."
  - Robert Frost

"Poetry is what gets lost in translation."
  - Robert Frost

"I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
  - Robert Frost (from "The Road Not Taken")

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
  - Robert Frost

"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."
  - Buckminster Fuller

"Care and diligence bring luck."
  - Thomas Fuller

G

"Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue."
  - John Kenneth Galbraith

"Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so."
  - Galileo Galilei

"Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe."
  - Galileo Galilei

"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

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
  - Mahatma Gandhi

"One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him."
  - John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983

"In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters."
  - Paul Gauguin

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
  - Charles de Gaulle

"The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature."
  - Edward Gibbon

"To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to."
  - Kahlil Gibran

"No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it."
  - Ellen Glasgow

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

"One ought, everyday, to hear a song, read a fine poem, and, if possible, to speak a few reasonable words."
  - Goethe

"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action."
  - Goethe

"Whoever invented the meeting must have had Hollywood in mind. I think they should consider giving Oscars for meetings: Best Meeting of the Year, Best Supporting Meeting, Best Meeting Based on Material from Another Meeting."
  - William Goldman

"1-800-COLLECT is a scam, and so are all carnival games."
  - Alix Goodlad

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
  - Matt Groening

"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
  - Sacha Guitry

"Truth is not determined by majority vote."
  - Doug Gwyn

H

"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do."
  - Edward Everett Hale

"Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it."
  - Sir William Haley

"Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own questions, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical special case? What about the degenerate cases? Where does the proof use the hypothesis?"
  - Paul Halmos

"It's fascinating to think that all around us there's an invisible world we can't even see. I'm speaking, of course, of the World of the Invisible Scary Skeletons."
  - Jack Handey

"...if something cannot be tested, it doesn't matter."
  - Matthew Harding

"One of man's great failings is his inability to see the obvious, and the abstract."
  - Matthew Harding

"Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. "Immortality" may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean."
  - G. H. Hardy

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

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
  - Sydney Harris

"However, if we do discover a complete theory [GUT], it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone. not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find an answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason--for then we would know the mind of God."
  - Stephen Hawking (from "A Brief History of Time")

"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?"
  - Stephen Hawking (from "A Brief History of Time")

"To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue."
  - William Hazlitt

"Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people."
  - Heinrich Heine

"Yes, we ought to forgive our enemies, but not until they are hanged."
  - Heinrich Heine

"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house."
  - Robert Heinlein (said by Lazarus Long in "Time Enough For Love")

"Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny."
  - Robert Heinlein (said by Lazarus Long in "Time Enough For Love")

"The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful."
  - Robert Heinlein (said by Lazarus Long in "Time Enough For Love")

"A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an 'intellectual'--find out how he feels about astrology."
  - Robert Heinlein (said by Lazarus Long in "Time Enough For Love")

"Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."
  - Robert Heinlein (said by Lazarus Long in "Time Enough For Love")

"History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help."
  - Robert Heinlein (said by Lazarus Long in "Time Enough For Love")

"Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love."
  - Robert Heinlein (said by Lazarus Long in "Time Enough For Love")

"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in."
  - Robert Heinlein

"Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth."
  - Lillian Hellman

"Never mistake motion for action."
  - Ernest Hemingway

"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit."
  - Nelson Henderson

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"
  - Patrick Henry

"Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then."
  - Katherine Hepburn

"Kindness is the beginning of cruelty."
  - Frank Herbert (from "Dune")

"A man should be moderately wise, but not overwise, lest he know his fate in advance."
  - Herger

"I turn away in fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
  - Charles Hermite

"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life."
  - Burton Hills

"By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell -- and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed."
  - Adolf Hitler (from "Mein Kampf")

"I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few."
  - Adolf Hitler

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
  - Adolf Hitler

"Sometimes I think that the biggest difference between men and women is that more men need to seek out some terrible lurking thing in existence and hurl themselves upon it... Women know where it lives but they can let it alone."
  - Russell Hoban

"Mathematics is indeed dangerous in that it absorbs students to such a degree that it dulls their senses to everything else."
  - Prinz zu Hohlenlohe-Ingelfingen Kraft

"Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children."
  - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"No man would listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next."
  - E. W. Howe

"To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."
  - Elbert Hubbard

"A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company."
  - Charles Evans Hughes

"The supreme happiness in life it the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."
  - Victor Hugo

"Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river."
  - Cordel Hull

"Personal responsibility is a difficult thing to ask for in a nation which has attempted to find a societal 'root cause' for all things."
  - Shapley R. Hunter

"Maybe this world is another planet's hell."
  - Aldous Huxley

"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him."
  - Aldous Huxley

"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing."
  - Thomas Huxley

I

"At the moment of death I hope to be surprised."
  - Ivan Illich

J

"To change one's life: 1. Start immediately, 2. Do it flamboyantly, 3. No exceptions."
  - William James

"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare."
  - Japanese Proverb

"...it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
  - Thomas Jefferson

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
  - Thomas Jefferson

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
  - Thomas Jefferson

"I have never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as a cause for withdrawing from a friendship."
  - Thomas Jefferson

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."
  - Thomas Jefferson

"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."
  - Thomas Jefferson

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
  - Thomas Jefferson

"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
  - -Thomas Jefferson

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
  - Thomas Jefferson

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
  - Thomas Jefferson

"It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar."
  - Jerome K. Jerome

"No news at 4:30 a.m. is good."
  - Lady Bird Johnson

"Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it."
  - Lyndon B. Johnson

"Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking."
  - Samuel Johnson

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

"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads."
  - Erica Jong

"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it."
  - Jeseph[sic] Joubert

"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism."
  - Carl Jung

K

"Problems are only opportunities in work clothes."
  - Henry Kaiser

"Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it."
  - Danny Kaye

"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

"If man could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."
  - Florynce Kennedy

"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."
  - John F. Kennedy

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
  - John F. Kennedy

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
  - John F. Kennedy

"The only people for me are the mad ones: mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."
  - Jack Kerouac

"Had I to carve an inscription on my tombstone I would ask for none other than 'The Individual.'"
  - Soren Kierkegaard

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards."
  - Søren Kierkegaard

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for someone else's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.'"
  - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
  - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."
  - Rudyard Kipling

"The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own."
  - Michael Korda

"Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility... in the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have... is the ability to take on responsibility."
  - Michael Korda

"There are two ways to slice easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking."
  - Alfred Korzybski

"One sign of maturity is the ability to be comfortable with people who are not like us."
  - Virgil A. Kraft

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
  - Irving Kristol

"God made the integers, all else is the work of man."
  - Leopold Kronecker

"Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it."
  - Milan Kundera

L

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
  - Dalai Lama

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
  - Ann Landers

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

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

"What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of living high."
  - Doug Larson

"The reason people blame things on the previous generations is that there's only one other choice."
  - Doug Larson

"If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets."
  - Irving Layton

"Since I no longer expect
anything from mankind except
madness,
meanness and mendacity;
egotism,
cowardice,
and
self-delusion,
I have stopped
being a
misanthrope."
  - Irving Layton

"The world does not pay for what a person knows. But it pays for what a person does with what he knows."
  - Laurence Lee

"Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs."
  - Fran Leibowitz

"A lie told often enough becomes truth."
  - Vladimir Ulyanov Lenin

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

"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
  - Abraham Lincoln

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

"Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves."
  - Abraham Lincoln

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
  - Abraham Lincoln

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can excercise their constitutional right of amending it, or excercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."
  - Abraham Lincoln

"People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."
  - Abraham Lincoln

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."
  - Abraham Lincoln

"It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!"
  - Abraham Lincoln

"The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. Godlike he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words; whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis completely expressible in words."
  - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"When all men think alike, no one thinks very much."
  - Walter Lippmann

"I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts."
  - John Locke

"The average person thinks he isn't."
  - Father Larry Lorenzoni

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And in strange eons, even death may die."
  - H.P. Lovecraft

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
  - John Lubbock

M

"...the question [is] whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared..."
  - Niccolo Machiavelli (from "The Prince")

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation."
  - James Madison

"Nature does not loathe virtue: it is unaware of its existence."
  - Françoise Mallet-Joris

"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me."
  - Dudley Field Malone

"What happens to a man is less significant than what happens within him."
  - Louis L. Mann

"From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need."
  - Karl Marx

"The danger of scientific thought is the temptation to atheism."
  - Cotton Mather

We all have an extension, and it is .TMP"
  - mathew (meta@pobox.com) in talk.bizarre 19 Jan 2000

"The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion, but rather to know it."
  - Andre Maurois

"I still say a church steeple with a lightening rod on top shows a lack of confidence."
  - Doug McLeod

"Anybody who has any doubt about the ingenuity or the resourcefulness of a plumber never got a bill from one."
  - George Meany

"The mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it."
  - P.B. Medawar

"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
  - Golda Meir to a visiting diplomat

"When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands."
  - H. L. Mencken

"Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another."
  - H. L. Mencken

"Adultery is the application of democracy to love."
  - H. L. Mencken

"Penetrating so many secrets,
we cease to believe in the unknowable.
But there it sits, nevertheless,
calmly licking it's chops."
  - H. L. Mencken

"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking."
  - H. L. Mencken

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."
  - H. L. Mencken

"Demagogue: One who preaches a doctrine he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
  - H. L. Mencken

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."
  - H. L. Mencken

"The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence."
  - H. L. Mencken

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."
  - H. L. Mencken

"Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry later, for another thing, they die earlier."
  - H. L. Mencken

"We must respect the other fellow's religion,but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
  - H. L. Mencken

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark."
  - Agnes de Mile

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
  - John Stuart Mill

"Women don't like guys who are dangerous. Women just want us to think that because women are trying to kill us."
  - Dennis Miller

"Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning."
  - Henry Miller

"You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do."
  - Olin Miller

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

"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
  - Wilson Mizner

"Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens."
  - Michel de Montaigne

"There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees."
  - Michel de Montaigne

"It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous for its prey."
  - Moliere

"Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come."
  - Montesquieu

"'The thing to remember about love affairs,' says Simone, 'is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney. ... We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney ... And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped that the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead.' Simone swallows some wine. 'Love affairs are like that,' she says. 'They all are like that.'"
  - Lorrie Moore, in Birds of America

"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."
  - John Morley (from "On Compromise", 1874)

"Any paint will adhere permanently to any surface if applied accidentally."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will."
  - Murphy's Laws

"The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Kovac's Conundrum: When you dial a wrong number you never get a busy signal."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Bocklage's Law: The one who laughs last probably didn't get the joke."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Finagle's Sixth Rule: Do not believe in miracles--rely on them."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Barth's Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't."
  - Murphy's Laws

"To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Gumperson's Law: The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to it's desirability."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Ginsberg's Theorem:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't even quit the game."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Pardo's First Postulate: Anything good in life is illegal, immoral, or fattening."
"Steinkopff's Extension to Pardo's First Postulate: The good things in life also cause cancer in laboratory mice and are taxed beyond reality."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Walton's Law of Politics: A fool and his money are soon elected."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Farnsdick's Corollary: After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself."
  - Murphy's Laws

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."
  - Murphy's Laws

N

"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
  - Mahfouz Naguib

"We protest against unjust criticism, but we accept unearned praise."
  - Jose Narosky

"To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up."
  - Ogden Nash

"We do not inherit the land, we borrow it from our children."
  - Native American Proverb

"Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy."
  - Cythina Nelms

"In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."
  - Johann von Neumann

"If we are not responsible for the thoughts that pass through our doors, we, at least, are responsible for those which we admit and entertain."
  - Charles B. Newcomb

"If I have been able to see farther than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants."
  - Sir Isaac Newton

"In Germany they first came for the Communists,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
And I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me --
And by that time no one was left to speak up."
  - Pastor Martin Niemoller

"For what purpose humanity is there should not even concern us: why you are there, that you should ask yourself: and if you have no ready answer, then set for yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible..."
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter."
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you."
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

"A true man wants two things: danger and play. For this reason, he chooses woman as the most dangerous plaything."
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

"The Heaviest Burden. What if a demon crept after you one day or night in your loneliest solitude and said to you: 'This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times without number; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakable small and great in your life must return to you, and everything in the same series and sequence - and in the same way this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and in the same way this moment and I myself. The eternal hour-glass of existence will be turned again and again - and you with it, you dust of dust!' - Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who thus spoke? Or have you experienced a tremendous moment in which you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never did I hear anything more divine!' If this thought gained power over you it would, as you are now, transform and perhaps crush you; the question in all and everything: 'do you want this again and again, times without number?' would lie as the heaviest burden upon all your actions. Or how well disposed towards yourself and towards life would you have to become to have no greater desire than for this ultimate eternal sanction and seal?"
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?"
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose."
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

"There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths."
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

"There are no facts, only interpretations."
  - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Our government has become too responsive to trivial or ephemeral concerns, often at the expense of more important concerns or an erosion of our liberty, and it has made policy priorities more dependent on where TV journalists happen to point their cameras....As a nation we have lost our sense of tragedy, a recognition that bad things happen to good people. A nation that expects the government to prevent churches from burning, to control the price of bread or gasoline, to secure every job, and to find some villan for every dramatic accident, risks an even larger loss of life and liberty."
  - William A. Niskanen

"The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools."
  - Larry Niven (from "Ringworld")

"...the universe is too complicated a toy for a sensibly cautious being to play with."
  - Larry Niven (said by Louis Wu in the novel "Ringworld")

"I would have made a good Pope."
  - Richard M. Nixon

"Hope is nature's veil for hiding truth's nakedness.
  - Alfred Nobel

O

"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."
  - Aristotle Onassis

"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."
  - Aristotle Onassis

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet."
  - James Oppenheim

"Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."
  - Robert Orben

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face- forever"
  - George Orwell

"In a few generations more, there will probably be no room at all allowed for animals on the earth; no need of them, no toleration of them. An immense agony will have then ceased, but with it there will also have passed away the last smile of the world's youth."
  - Ouida

P

"My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm--as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy."
  - Camille Paglia

"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."
  - Thomas Paine

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
  - Thomas Paine

"Men despise religion; they hate it, and they fear it is true."
  - Blaise Pascal

"Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it."
  - Blaise Pascal

"Reason is the slow and tortuous method by which these who do not know the truth discover it. The heart has its own reason which reason does not know."
  - Blaise Pascal

"I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room."
  - Blaise Pascal

"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
  - General George S. Patton

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

"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."
  - Linus Pauling

"Doubt is the key to knowledge."
  - Persian proverb

"...adults are just children who owe money."
  - From the movie "Peter's Friends"

"I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money."
  - Pablo Picasso

"He was a wise man who invented God."
  - Plato

"No guest is so welcome in a friend's house that he will not become nuisance after three days."
  - Titus Maccius Plautus

"The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune."
  - Plutarch

"It is not enough to teach exponential curves to young girls who will be impregnated like rabbits across the landscapes. Math does not sink in until later in life, after the damage is done. The only curve an adolescent understands is the curve of the buttock."
  - Ludwig Plutonium

"There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man."
  - Edgar Allen Poe

"After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment."
  - Edgar Allan Poe

"Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics."
  - Siméon Poisson

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
  - Alexander Pope

"The curse of me and my nation [U.S.] is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort."
  - Ezra Pound

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."
  - John Powell

Q

R

"Compromise does not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody; it does not lead to any general fulfillment, but to general frustration; those who try to become everything to all people end up by not being anything to anyone."
  - Ayn Rand

"Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil."
  - Ayn Rand (commencement speech to Naval Academy)

"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila."
  - Mitch Ratliffe

"The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away."
  -Ronald Reagan

"The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with facts for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life."
  - Ernest Renan

"In this world, there is one terrible thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons."
  - Jean Renoir

"For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse."
  - Samuel Richardson

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
  - Stephen Roberts

"An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out."
  - Will Rogers

"The blues is losing someone you love, and not having enough money to drink yourself into oblivion."
  - Henry Rollins

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
  - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own mind."
  - Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
  - Theodore Roosevelt

"...all children are Atheists, and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so."
  - Ernestine Rose

"I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism."
  - Robert Rossellini

"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
  - Theodore Rubin

"It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong--but that is the way to bet."
  - Damon Runyon

"Drunkenness...is temporary suicide."
  - Bertrand Russell

"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."
  - Bertrand Russell

"Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact."
  - Bertrand Russell

"It can be shown that a mathematical web of some kind can be woven about any universe containing several objects. The fact that our universe lends itself to mathematical treatment is not a fact of any great philosophical significance."
  - Bertrand Russell

"The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."
  - Bertrand Russell

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."
  - Bertrand Russell

"Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed."
  - Bertrand Russell

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
  - Bertrand Russell

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
  - Bertrand Russell

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
  - Bertrand Russell

"The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry."
  - Bertrand Russell

S

"God is dead---
All things are possible."
  - Marquis de Sade

"The greatest service it were possible to render humankind would have been instantly to cut the throat of the first impostor who took it into his head to speak of God to men. How much blood that one murder would have spared the universe!"
  - Marquis de Sade

"This idea [of God] alone is responsible for the most withering and appalling ills in the life of man; 'tis this idea that constrains him to deprive himself of life's most delectable pleasures, terrified as he is at all times lest he displease this disgusting fruit of his delirious imagination."
  - Marquis de Sade

"What, then, are religions if not the restraints wherewith the tyranny of the mightier sought to enslave the weaker? Motivated by that design, he dared to say to him whom he claimed the right to dominate, that a God had forged the irons with which cruelty manacled him, and the later, bestialized by this misery, indistinctly believed everything the former wished. Can religions, born of these rogueries, merit respect?"
  - Marquis de Sade

"We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."
  - Carl Sagan

"I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind."
  - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another; people are friends in spots."
  - George Santayana

"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring."
  - George Santayana

"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
  - George Santayana

"When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different."
  - George Santayana

"Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do."
  - Jean-Paul Sartre

"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
  - Jean-Paul Sartre

"Hell is other people."
  - Jean-Paul Sartre

"My God and I are one and the same
We have the same face we have the same name
We share the same body and have the one mind
My God is my life, and my life is divine
No idols I worship, no gods made by man
My God I've created, his strength in my hand
My God and I are one and the same
I am my God and my God has my name."
  - Paul Satele

"So he shaves his legs to _reduce_ drag?"
  - Ma Sayler

"Compassion is the basis of all morality."
  - Arthur Schopenhauer

"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made."
  - Daniel Schorr {Success and Failure}

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?"
  - Dr. Robert Schuller

"I love mankind; it's people I can't stand."
  - Charles Schultz, Creator of "Peanuts"

"Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace."
  - Albert Schweitzer

"Don't marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper."
  - Scottish Proverb

"Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he's ripping your ticket and away you go. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you hang on to that bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up."
  - Jerry Seinfeld

"Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness."
  - Seneca

"Thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us."
  - William Shakespeare (said by Prince Henry in 2 King Henry IV)

"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."
  - William Shakespeare (said by Antonio in The Merchant of Venice)

"Foolery, sir, doth walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere."
  - William Shakespeare (said by the clown in Twelfth Night)

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
  - William Shakespeare (said by Hamlet in Hamlet)

"Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance."
  - William Shakespeare (said by Autolycus in The Winter's Tale)

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
  - William Shakespeare (said by Hamlet in Hamlet)

"Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"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 that they want, and if they can't find them, make them."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."
  - Goerge Bernard Shaw

"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"When a man wants to murder a tiger, it's called sport; when the tiger wants to murder him, it's called ferocity."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"A reasonable man adapts himself to suit his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
  - George Bernard Shaw {Vice and Virtue}

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"A man never tells you anything until you contradict him."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
  - George Bernard Shaw

"Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't go on strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way."
  - Homer Simpson

"Better to die standing on your feet than sitting on your knees."
  - Sitting Bull

"I have always said that if I were a rich man I would employ a profesional praiser."
  - Osbert Sitwell

"We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all."
  - William Reece Smith, Jr.

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
  - Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher."
  - Socrates

"Let him that would move the world first move himself."
  - Socrates

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
  - Socrates

"A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him."
  - Alexander Solzenitsyn

"One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."
  - Josef Stalin

"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
  - Star Trek (said by Harry Mudd, "I, Mudd," stardate 4513.3)

"Men don't talk peace unless they're ready to back it up with war."
  - Star Trek (said by Col. Green, "The Savage Curtain," stardate 5906.4)

"Uncontrolled power will turn even saints into savages. And we can all be counted on to live down to our lowest impulses."
  - Star Trek (said by Parmen, "Plato's Stepchildren," stardate 5784.3)

"Can you imagine how life could be improved if we could do away with jealousy, greed, hate....
It can also be improved by eliminating love, tenderness, sentiment -- the other side of the coin."
  - Star Trek (said by Dr. Roger Corby and Kirk, "What are Little Girls Made Of?," stardate 2712.4)

"Men of peace usually are [brave]."
  - Star Trek (said by Spock, "The Savage Curtain," stardate 5906.5)

"Look at these three words written larger than all the rest, and with special pride never written before or since -- tall words, proudly saying "We the people" .. these words and the words that follow ... must apply to everyone or they mean nothing."
  - Star Trek (said by Kirk, "The Omega Glory," stardate unknown)

"A species that enslaves other beings is hardly superior -- mentally or otherwise."
  - Star Trek (said by Kirk, "The Gamesters of Triskelion," stardate 3211.7)

"Only a fool would stand in the way of progress."
  - Star Trek (said by Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer," stardate 4725.4)

"The time is past. There is no room for gods."
  - Star Trek (said by Apollo, "Who Mourns for Adonais?" stardate 3468.1)

"[The people of Vaal] have taken their first step [towards achieving true human stature]. They've learned to kill."
  - Star Trek (said by Spock, "The Apple," stardate 3715.6)

"It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we could milleniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth."
  - John Steinbeck

"If men could menstruate...clearly menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event: Men would brag about how long and how much...Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of such commercial brands as Paul Newman Tampons, Muhammed Ali's Role-A-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi Pads, and Joe Namath Jock Shields -- 'For Those Light Bachelor Days.'"
  - Gloria Steinem

"Mathematics is the most exact science, and its conclusions are capable of absolute proof. But this is so only because mathematics does not attempt to draw absolute conclusions. All mathematical truths are relative, conditional."
  - Charles P. Steinmetz

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
  - Adlai Stevenson

"We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend."
  - Robert Louis Stevenson

"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself."
  - Potter Stewart

"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
  - Tom Stoppard

"May you live every day of your life."
  - Jonathan Swift

T

"Paste up in public places a xerox flyer, photo of a beautiful twelve-year-old boy, naked and masturbating, clearly titled: THE FACE OF GOD."
  - The Temporary Autonomus Zone

"A (christian) god, to me, is a bit like the hippo in a coffee cup: There's no proof that it's true, but there's none that it's false. Therefore, until such time that concrete proof is established, I'm going to operate on the assumption that there is no (christian) god."
  - Mike Tetreault

"To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best."
  - William M. Thackeray

"Can't shake the devil's hand
and say you're only kidding
...
I can't stand here listening to you
And your racist friend."
  - They Might Be Giants (from the song "Your Racist Friend")

"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
  - Henry David Thoreau

"There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature."
  - Henry David Thoreau

"It can be of no practical use to know that Pi is irrational, but if we can know, it surely would be intolerable not to know."
  - E. C. Titchmarsh

"Not all who wander are lost."
  - J. R. R. Tolkien

"What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness."
  - Leo Tolstoy

"I always wanted to be somebody, I guess I should have been more specific."
  - Lily Tomlin

"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."
  - Lily Tomlin

"It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours."
  - Harry S. Truman

"I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: 'Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.' I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have."
  - Harry S. Truman

"If you cannot convince them, confuse them."
  - Harry S. Truman

"A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way."
  - John Tudor

"Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for."
  - Mark Twain

"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."
  - Mark Twain

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
  - Mark Twain

"My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got."
  - Mark Twain

"Never put off until tomorrow that which can be done the day after tomorrow."
  - Mark Twain

"Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough."
  - Mark Twain

"It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."
  - Mark Twain

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that 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

"The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong."
  - Mark Twain

"The clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
  - Mark Twain

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."
  - Mark Twain

"Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
  - Mark Twain

"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."
  - Mark Twain

"Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
  - Mark Twain

"I am prepared to meet anyone, but whether anyone is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
  - Mark Twain

"Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to."
  - Mark Twain

"Never tell the truth to those unworthy of it."
  - Mark Twain

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
  - Mark Twain

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
  - Mark Twain

"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
  - Mark Twain

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
  - Mark Twain

"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read."
  - Mark Twain

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
  - Mark Twain

U

"A poet is someone who is astonished by everything."
  - Unknown

"A sinner can reform, but stupidity is forever."
  - Unknown

"You cannot expect a person to see eye to eye with you when you're looking down on him."
  - Unknown

"He who knows nothing, doubts nothing."
  - Unknown

"The difference between a conviction and a prejudice is that you can explain a conviction without getting angry."
  - Unknown

"War decides who's left, not right."
  - Unknown

"When arguing with a fool, remember he is doing the same."
  - Unknown

"Just because a man died for it doesn't make it true."
  - Unknown

"When someone says `Society has a desperate need for bug-free software', my first thought is `Well, the residents of Hell need icewater. That doesn't mean they're gonna get it'. Maybe that's why I'm not in marketing."
  - Unknown

"I often feel that my life would be much easier if I were allowed to pass out scripts to the main characters occasionally"
  - Unknown

"Who is more foolish? The fool who jumps blindly, or the fool who waits to know everything?"
  - Unknown

"They called me mad, I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me."
  - Unknown

"Do not regret growing older. It's a privilege denied to many."
  - Unknown

"There is nothing as remarkable as learning how to think better."
  - Unknown

"Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers."
  - Unknown

"We more frequently fail to face the right problem than fail to solve the problem we face."
  - Unknown

"...each step in life is a step towards death."
  - Unknown

"What he lacks in intelligence, he more than makes up for in stupidity."
  - Unknown

"Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson."
  - Unknown

"Boredom sets into boring minds."
  - Unknown

"Why do we have to hide from the police, Daddy?"
"Because we use vi, son. They use emacs."
  - Unknown

"Disclaimer: My Mac programming experience is limited to groveling through the Inside Macintosh books, writing a few utterly non-Apple-compliant apps for device control, and hanging around a friend who's a Mac programmer who swears a lot while programming."
  - Unknown

"Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat."
  - Unknown

"Jesus Christ is the Santa Claus for adults."
  - Unknown

"It's better to be hated for who you are, than loved for who you are not."
  - Unknown

"...the problem with the inevitable is that it always happens."
  - Unknown

"In the beginning there was nothing. Then God said 'Let there be light!' and there was still nothing - but you could see it!"
  - Unknown

"The most powerful weapon is the mind."
  - Unknown

"God says take what you want...and pay for it."
  - Unknown

"If ignorance is bliss then a lot of people are going to die of joy."
  - Unknown

"Never ask the barber if you need a haircut."
  - Unknown

"Hypocrisy is the vaseline of social intercourse."
  - Unknown

"Familiarity breeds contempt."
  - Unknown

"Cynics are made, not born."
  - Unknown

"A man never stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child."
  - Unknown

"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must."
  - Unknown

"Life is a first draft...with NO rewrite."
  - Unknown

"Behind every successful man is a surprised mother-in-law."
  - Unknown

"A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to Hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip."
  - Unknown

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
  - Unknown

"Philosophy is a study that lets us be unhappy more intelligently."
  - Unknown

"Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, three times, enemy action."
  - Unknown

"I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am."
  - Unknown friend of Samuel Johnson's

"... Jesus saves, passes to Moses, shoots, SCORES!"
  - Unknown tagline

V

"Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."
  - Henry Van Dyke

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
  - Gore Vidal

"I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
  - Gore Vidal

"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity -- much less dissent."
  - Gore Vidal

"The most couragous decision you make each day is the decision to be in a good mood."
  - Voltaire

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."
  - Voltaire

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
  - Voltaire

"I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
  - Voltaire

"Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
  - Voltaire (on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan)

"I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool."
  - Kurt Vonnegut (said by Walter F. Starbuck in the novel "Jailbird")

W

"The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel."
  - Horace Walpole

"Why was not 'faith' included on the list of words not to say in public?"
  - Tom Warmbrodt

"...for what can be fouler then faith with no proof?"
  - Tom Warmbrodt

"I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."
  - Booker T. Washington

"All humans are hypocrites; the biggest hypocrite of all is the one who claims to detest hypocrisy."
  - Peter Wastholm

"Mathematics alone makes us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don't happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data..and yet we don't understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness."
  - Simone Weil

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
  - H. G. Wells

"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
  - Mae West

"'The best thing for being sad,' replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, 'is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.'"
  - T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"

"When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figure, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars."
  - Walt Whitman

"Of all the words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these... it might have been."
  - John Greenleaf Whittier

"Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any condition other than those he has selected."
  - Oscar Wilde

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
  - Oscar Wilde

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one."
  - Oscar Wilde

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
  - Oscar Wilde

"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at."
  - Oscar Wilde

"Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more."
  - Oscar Wilde

"Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity."
  - Oscar Wilde

"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
  - Oscar Wilde

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."
  - Oscar Wilde

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
  - Oscar Wilde

"I am not young enough to know everything."
  - Oscar Wilde

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
  - Oscar Wilde

"Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative."
  - Oscar Wilde

"Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance."
  - Oscar Wilde

"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments."
  - Earl Wilson {Life and Death}

"Cynics regard everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regard everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves."
  - Robert Anton Wilson

"There can never be surprises in logic."
  - Ludwig Wittgenstein

"The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love."
  - William Wordsworth

"The truth is more important than the facts."
  - Frank Lloyd Wright

X

"Dear God, don't know if you've noticed but..
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book
And us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look
And all the people that you made in your image
Still believing that junk is true
Well I know it ain't, and so do you, dear God"
  - XTC (from the song "Dear God")

"Books are burning
In our own town, watch us turn 'round
And cast our glances elsewhere"
  - XTC (from the song "Books Are Burning")

"Books are burning
In the playground
Smell of burnt book is not unlike human hair"
  - XTC (from the song "Books Are Burning")

"I believe the printed word is more than sacred
Beyond the gauge of good or bad
The human right to let your soul fly free and naked
Above the violence of the fearful and sad"
  - XTC (from the song "Books Are Burning")

"I believe the printed word should be forgiven
Doesn't matter what it said
Wisdom hotline from the dead back to the living
Key to the larder for your heart and your head"
  - XTC (from the song "Books Are Burning")

"Books are burning
In the still air
And you know where they burn books
People are next"
  - XTC (from the song "Books Are Burning")

Y

"Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed."
  - Cao Yu

Z

"As a final incentive before giving up a dificult task, try to imagine it successfully accomplished by someone you violently dislike."
  - K. Zenios

"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
  - Emile Zola

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