Some favorite quotes
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.
- Edward Abbey
I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.
-Franklin P. Adams
A senator is like a begonia - showy but useless.
- Henry Adams
Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you.
- Joey Adams
Great is the guilt of the unnecessary war.
- John Adams
I disclaim all patriotism as incompatible with the principles of eternal justice.
- John Quincy Adams
Organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
- Mike Adams
You cannot insure success, but you can deserve it.
- Joseph Addison
Anyone can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
- George Ade
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
- Alfred Adler
It is in the nature of men to trample on the fighter once he is down.
Neither anarchy nor tyranny; worship the mean.
- Aeschylus
Even God cannot change the past.
- Agathon
If a problem is too difficult to solve, one cannot claim that it is solved by pointing at all the efforts made to solve it.
- Hannes Alfvern
Never play cards with a man named Doc, never eat at a place named Mom's and never go to bed with anyone who has more troubles than you do.
- Nelson Algren
He writes so well he makes me feel like putting my quill back in my goose.
My editor gets 10% of whatever I get except my blinding headaches
- Fred Allen
Comedy is tragedy plus time.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
I plan to run though the Valley of Death.
I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy next to me.
I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead; not sick, not wounded; dead.
Intellectuals are like the Mafia, they only kill their own.
Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.
The question is not, 'How could this happen?' but 'Why doesn't this happen more often?'
To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
- Woody Allen
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
- Henri Frederic Amiel
I may not believe in life after death, but what a gift it is to be alive now.
- Natalie Angier
Wit is educated insolence.
- Aristotle
In flying the probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.
- Neil Armstrong
You carry a little pad of paper in your pocket, don't you? I knew you did. Well, you set this down. I thought of it the other day. Let's take decay. Now what is decay? It's fire. It burns up wood and other things. You never thought of that? Of course not. This sidewalk here and this feed store, the trees down the street there--they're all on fire. They're burning up. Decay, you see, is always going on. It doesn't stop. Water and paint can't stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It rusts, you see. That's fire, too. The world is on fire. Start your pieces in the paper that way. Just say in big letters 'The World Is On Fire.' That will make 'em look up.
- Sherwood Anderson
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but "That's funny...".
- Isaac Asimov
I wish I knew as much about anything as that young man knows about everything.
- Asquith (on the young Churchill)
Nobody ever did anything that wasn't a verb.
- Athayde
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.
You shall love your crooked neighbor. With your crooked heart.
- W H Auden
As quick as boiled asparagus.
A radish may know no Greek but I do.
- Augustus
Vanity, working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.
Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.
To look almost pretty, is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life, than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.
If it be true that no young lady can ever be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
There seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labor of, and of slighting those performances which have only genius, wit and taste to recommend them.
Man only can be aware of the insensibility of man towards a new gown.
To torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.
In justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire more in woman than ignorance.
To be always firm is to be often obstinate.
Take my word for it, if you are in too great a hurry, you will certainly live to repent it.
It is well to have as many holds on happiness as possible.
- Jane Austen
The Cowboy Code
1. A cowboy never takes unfair advantage -- even of an enemy.
2. A cowboy never betrays a trust.
3. A cowboy always tells the truth.
4. A cowboy is kind to small children, to old folks, and to animals.
5. A cowboy is free from racial and religious prejudice.
6. A cowboy is helpful and when anyone is in trouble, he lends a hand.
7. A cowboy is a good worker.
8. A cowboy is clean about his person and in thought, word, and deed.
9. A cowboy respects womanhood, his parents, and the laws of his country.
10. A cowboy is a patriot.
- Gene Autry
No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.
- Isaac Babel
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
- Francis Bacon
Nothing about me surprises me.
- Honore de Balzac
My father warned me about men and liquor but he never said a word about women and cocaine.
The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.
- Tallulah Bankhead
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.
You know how on the evening news they always tell you that the stock market is up in active trading, or off in moderate trading, or trading in mixed activity, or whatever. Well, who gives a shit.
- Dave Barry
More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing, than by believing too much.
- P. T. Barnum
Like Kafka's Hunger Artist, he was the sole satisfied spectator of his own creation.
- John Barth
Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up.
- Joseph Barth
The discovery and its explanation occupied me for a long time, so that I neglected other things for it; I recognized that I had come upon a fundamental question.
- Erasmus Bartholin
Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse.
- Arthur Baer
All new ideas pass through three stages: first they are dismissed as nonsense, then they are rejected as being against religion and finally they are acknowledged as the truth, with the proviso from the initial opponents that they knew it all along.
- Karl Ernst von Baer
Figaro qua! Figaro la! Figaro su! Figaro giu! (Figaro here! Figaro there! Figaro up! Figaro down!)
- Beaumarchais
Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflection, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot.
Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on the forceps.
There is no lack of void.
When I'm asked how long I've been here, I answer "A second." ........ Or "A day." ........ Or "A century." It all depends on what I mean by "here" ........and "me" ........and "been."
Soon there will be nothing where there never was anything.
That's the way I am - either I forget something immediately or I never forget it.
- Samuel Beckett
Music is a mediator between spiritual and sensual life.
- Ludwig Van Beethoven
A critic is like a eunuch in a harem. He's right there every night. He sees it done every night. He sees how it should be done every night. But he cannot do it himself.
I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse.
- Brendan Behan
A great many people have come up to me and asked me how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated. My answer is, "Don't you wish you knew?" and a pretty good answer it is too, when you consider that nine times out of ten I didn't hear the original question.
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.
Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs.
Anything can happen, but it usually doesn't.
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
Does the average man get enough sleep? What is enough sleep? What is the average man? What is does?
Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony.
Every man owes it to himself (and to his friends) to get away entirely alone in an isolated shack every so often, if only to find out just what bad company he can be.
I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists.
I can't bring myself to say, 'Well, I guess I'll be toddling along.' It isn't that I can't toddle. It's just that I can't 'guess I'll toddle.'
I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.
I find that, while working, a pipe is a great source of inspiration. A pipe can be placed diagonally across the keys of a typewriter so that they will not function, or it can be made to give out such a cloud of smoke that I cannot see the paper.
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Just think of all the things you can do after 40! Professor Webster was 57 when he cut up Dr. Parkman and threw him into the furnace of the Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Parkman was 70 himself!
One of the easiest forms of pretense to break down is the pretense of enthusiasm for exotic foods. Just bring on the exotic foods.
Sand is also a good place on which to write, "I love you," as it would be difficult to get into court after several years have passed.
Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
The only cure for a real hangover is death.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
The work can wait, I said, quoting our business motto.
There are various forms of the disease, the victim of which is unable to say "No." Some of these forms are more serious than others, and often lead to electrocution or marriage.
There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.
When I was a child I was of an affectionate disposition, but not enough to get arrested.
Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?
- Robert Benchley
Hypocrisy is better than no standards at all.
-Bill Bennett
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
- Ingrid Bergman
A man may be hot but he's not when he's shot 'cause you can't get a man with a gun.
- Irving Berlin
Bach is Bach just as God is God.
- Hector Berlioz
A critic is a virgin who would teach Don Juan how to make love.
- Tristan Bernard
There is none who is worthy of my love or hatred.
- Bhagavat
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. [Ecclesiastes 7:4]
- Bible
Here's to woman! Would that we could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.
- Ambrose Bierce
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
- Josh Billings
The supreme geopolitical fact of the modern era is that Americans speak English.
- Otto von Bismarck
All great events begin with the pulsation of an artery.
- William Blake
Weather! This isn't weather! This is divine vengeance!
I got my shit together and found I couldn't lift it.
- Roy Blount, Jr.
Sticks and stones may break your bones but words do permanent damage.
When things aren't going well, it's easier to blame someone else.
There is nothing more boring than people who love you.
- Eric Bogosian
It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.
We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?
- Niels Bohr
When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.
- James H. Boren
If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.
- Max Born
I spent half my life grasping a baseball only to find out it was the other way around.
- R. Boulton
The first time a man goes into battle is like the first time a man makes love to a woman: the anticipation is overpowering; the ignorance is obstructive; the fear of disgrace is consuming and survival is triumphant.
- Ben Bradlee
It's fun to be the sucker - if you can afford it.
- 'Diamond Jim' Brady
Erst das Fressen, dann die Moral.
Mrs. Peachum: Money talks. Mr. Peachum: Not too much, I hope.
First whore: Plain linen puts men off. Second whore: Naah, plain linen makes 'em feel at home.
Terrible is the temptation to do good.
- Bertholt Brecht
I may be a bad woman, but I'm awfully good company.
- Fanny Brice
How I wish I could enumerate pi easily, since all these (censored) mnemonics prevent recalling any of pi's sequences more simply. [number of letters in each word give first digits of pi]
- Peter Brigham
By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me.
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.
Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is.
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target.
Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
- Mel Brooks
The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum and light but the shadow of God
- Sir Thomas Browne
The English invented cricket to make other human endeavors look interesting.
- Bill Bryson
To every man is given the key to the gate of heaven; the same key opens the gate of hell.
- Buddhist proverb
The stock exchange closes on Saturdays and Sundays and I don't break out in hives.
If you're in a poker game for thirty minutes and don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.
If you don't know jewelry, know your jeweler.
If you don't want to tap dance, you're in the wrong business.
It is difficult to teach a new dog old tricks.
To expect big prizes for small investments is to encourage stupid behavior.
- Warren Buffett
Heredity is nothing but stored environment.
- Luther Burbank
The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and goodwill would wish, five and ten years hence, had been done.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke
The deities that I adore are social peace and plenty.
Some have meat and cannot eat, some cannot eat that want it. But we have meat and we can eat, so let the Lord be thanked.
- Robert Burns
Once your reputation is shot you can get away with quite a lot.
- Wilhelm Busch
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.
- Nicholas Murray Butler
I'm telling the truth as God himself would tell it if he could only talk.
- Erskine Caldwell
If a computer is a god, it is an Old Testament god with lots of rules and no mercy.
Let us worship Zarathustra, just the way we useta. I'm a Zarathustra boosta and he's good enough for me.
Let us worship Aphrodite. She's beautiful but flighty. She doesn't wear a nightie, but she's good enough for me.
- Joseph Campbell
Love can burn or love can last but not both.
There is no defense against scorn.
- Camus
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
- Al Capone
Bourbon to artifice bears the same relation as tears to mascara.
Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.
- Truman Capote
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
- Dale Carnegie
They are the omelet makers and we are the eggs.
- Jon Carroll
"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
The rule is: jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam today.
- Lewis Carroll
When it comes to a wife, give me a woman everytime.
- Joyce Cary
Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with necessity.
- Thomas Caryle
After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
- Cato
As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.
- Dick Cavett
Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offence.
Even among galley slaves ten percent were volunteers.
The beginning of the end begins with the loss of the sense of proportion.
- Celine
The majority of those who put together collections of verses or epigrams resemble those who eat cherries or oysters; they begin by choosing the best and end by eating everything.
- Chamfort
LA doesn't have the heart of a paper cup.
She was a blond who could make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.
LA is a mail order city. Everything you can get in the catalog you can get better somewhere else.
They knocked over tombs and sneered at the dead. Which is only as it should be. [on new generation]
I could have so easily become everything the world has no use for.
To live in a place you must either love it or hate it or do both by turns, as you do with a woman.
- Raymond Chandler
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage.
- William Ellery Channing
In some cases non-violence requires more militancy than violence.
- Cesar Chavez
What nedeth it to sermone of it moore?
- Chaucer
A woman of forty whose fine skin and clear features could be counted among her organizational gifts.
...the essence of her beauty was disenchantment.
...it looked as if it had been put together by old ladies and mice.
...where people drank their gin surrounded by the relics of an arduous and orderly way of life of which they knew nothing.
All things of the sea belong to Venus; pearls and shells and alchemist's gold and kelp and the riggish smell of neap tides, the inshore water green and purple further out and the joy of distances, all these are hers.
- John Cheever
Anyone watching us would thing that we were not traveling but going insane! [during a particularly difficult trip through Siberia]
To be in continual ecstasies over nature shows poverty of imagination.
- Chekhov
People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.
- Lord Chesterfield
When one man finds the way, his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven.
Eight immortals cross the sea; each shows a saintly passage.
The sky is high; the emperor is far away.
When you mention Cao Cao, he soon arrives.
Never pull on your shoes in a melon patch; never adjust your cap under a plum tree.
Lord Jiang casts a line, a fish wants to be caught.
- Chinese proverbs
The more you don't do it, the more fun it is to read about it.
- C. Churchill
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals
It's a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it
There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
The truth deserves a bodyguard of lies.
- Winston Churchill
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.
- John Ciardi
There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.
- Cicero
It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.
- Arthur C. Clarke
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
- Tom Clancy
There is a connection between neurosis and talent but there is also a connection between genius and mental illness.
- John Cleese
I feel that there is an angel inside me whom I am forever shocking.
- Jean Cocteau
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
- Charles Caleb Colton
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
- Confucius
Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it.
- Jimmy Connors
It was blackness without a single gleam.
It was solemn, and a little ridiculous, too, these struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of his moral identity.
A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be better than total blindness but has been of no advantage to me, I can assure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen.
...and forthwith had gone out of the remnants of their minds.
The onlookers see most of the game.
All those things which had made him a master had made him a captive, too.
Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom.
He was one of those brilliantly endowed men who are not dull enough to nurse a success.
His object seemed to awaken the indignant attention of the universe.
His loathsomeness, too, was abject, so that a simply disgusting person would have appeared noble by his side.
Obviously it would be something very simple, the simplest impossibility in the world.
All she knew of the world was a betrayed woman and a sinister pantaloon.
[The letter was full of] easy morality and family news.
- Joseph Conrad
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
- Robert R. Coveyou
It's amazing how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
One should start everyday by asking everyone how they are. It oils the wheels.
The devil is not wise because he is the devil but because he is old.
Down with the head, up with the heart and you're over the top and skimming down the other side like a dragonfly.
- Noel Coward
If the earth and the moon were about to clash, many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision.
- Stephen Crane
There is no accounting for laws.
The only person more cynical than a drunk is a reformed drunk.
One of the great things about America is that moral superiority is so damn cheap.
Consideration touches more deeply and longer than passion.
- James Crumley
I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
- E. E. Cummings
There is nothing worse than a self made man who worships his own creation.
- Paul Curan
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
- Leonardo Da Vinci
Just go ahead and faith will follow. (on calculus)
-d'Alembert
She was so wild that when she made French toast she got her tongue caught in the toaster.
- Rodney Dangerfield
Doubt, no less than knowledge, pleases.
Heaven wheels above you displaying to you her eternal glories and still your eyes are on the ground.
Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold blooded and the sins of the warm blooded on different scales.
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral.
- Dante
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.
- Clarence Darrow
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
- Charles Darwin
Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.
- Guy Davenport
We are only as good as the times we are in.
- David-Weill
Beautiful women should be open handed, parsimony ruins the complexion after a while.
There is no such bitter judge of old friends as a brilliant failure.
He was one of those who thought women were lovely creatures whose sexual coals could be blown into warmth by raunchy academic chit-chat.
Speaking like a man who had come to disturb the sleep of the world.
They looked on uncomprehendingly, like cows at a passing train.
Have faith in your whim.
I know flattery when I hear it but I do not often hear it.
Treat marvels with the seriousness of fact.
His compelling love affair was with himself.
Patronization is not much different from bullying.
The revenge of the unlived life is that suddenly it makes a fool of you.
She had been kissed more often then a police court Bible and by much the same class of people.
If I had the power to cast curses, I should rank the curse of being enviable very high.
The wife of an academic is twice removed from the center of events.
The truth is always an interim judgment.
The evidence of things not seen.
A: Intellect is at harmony with emotion, intelligence integrated through recollected experience, sentiment tempered by fact, desire directed toward world objects and controlled by a sense of humor and proportion. B: I'm glad to hear there is going to be some humor in it.
Canadian religion in its proper place is neither mocked nor heeded.
Academicism runs in the blood like syphilis.
Science is discovery and revelation and that is not art.
Oh the malice of these bony ectomorphs!
A good dinner is one of civilization's triumphs over barbarism.
Never hope to find wisdom in colleges alone. Consult old women
The prevailing Canadian skin color is that of an arrowroot biscuit.
I like my cheese opinionated.
Not eating enough is not necessarily a path to holiness. How many visions of Eternity have been born of low blood sugar?
Many believe science has no history. It is all here and now.
He spoke in a way so as to give Dr. Johnson the jim-jams.
His life is ebbing away and he thinks he can hold it with the brandy of gossip.
The Protestant Prayer is "God forgive me, but for God's sake keep this under your hat."
- Roberston Davies
Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.
- Charles G. Dawes
Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.
- Daniel Defoe
The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
- Charles de Gaulle
Once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
- Thomas De Quincey
The unexamined life may not be worth living but the examined one is no bed of roses either.
Giocondaphobia: the fear of being smiled at by women.
They preened themselves on their ignorance of those areas of life familiarity with which would stigmatize them as commonplace.
He often saw himself as Christ beating the bejesus out of everyone in sight.
He chewed more than he bit off.
It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.
One dreams of the goddess Fame and winds up with the bitch Publicity.
- Peter DeVries
Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.
- Thomas Dewar
A look of contempt which might of withered an anchor.
We are going in neck and crop for fashion.
Eat your meat while its warm and comfortable.
Some would say the Good Samaritan was a bad economist.
- Charles Dickens
The left annoys me but the right insults my intelligence.
The interests of big business are not a proxy for morality.
Poor folks can only afford the present tense.
- Debra Dickerson
I tell the truth, but I tell it aslant.
- Emily Dickinson
Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
- Gordon R. Dickson
We owe most of what we know to about one hundred men. We owe most of what we have suffered to another hundred or so.
- R.W. Dickson
There are those who want books and to obtain their end would turn a human being into printed matter.
- Isak Dinesen
God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
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.
- Dirac
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
- Benjamin Disraeli
The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.
- J. Frank Dobie
Love's mysteries in souls do grow, but the body is his book.
- Donne
If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.
- Dostoyevsky
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A man who had a harp in his throat with a hurricane behind it. [William Jennings Bryan]
He was the living image of a great mind in the midst of a large and gloomy think.
I voted for him when voting for him was the only way of proclaiming to that world that I couldn't pay me room rent.
- Peter Finley Dunne
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
- Will Durant
Engineers treat physics like a pimp treats a whore.
In science nothing is more repugnant than a miracle.
The pauper king of truth...
- Friedrich Durrenmatt
Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it.
- Aubrey Eben
Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn't.
- Sir Arthur Eddington
That's the nature of research - you don't know what in hell you're doing.
- Doc Edgerton
Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Thomas Edison
In poverty, as in physics, the starting conditions are everything.
If you wonder why Americans are so obese, consider the fact that waitresses both express their humanity and earn their tips though the covert distribution of fats.
- Barbara Ehrenreich
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
It seems hard to look at God's cards.
Most men revere words they cannot understand and consider a writer whom they can understand to be superficial.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Only a monomaniac gets what we commonly refer to as results.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Still there are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
There are only two truly infinite things, the universe and stupidity. And I am unsure about the universe.
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.
Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
This has been done elegantly by Minkowski; but chalk is cheaper than gray matter, and we will do it as it comes.
- Albert Einstein
God is inconceivable, immortality unbelievable but duty is peremptory and absolute.
It is never to late to be what you might have been.
Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error.
- George Eliot
What might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present.
I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker.
It is strange, isn't it/ that a man should have a consuming passion/ to do something for which he lacks the capacity.
In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
- T. S. Eliot
It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.
- Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell
The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
- Havelock Ellis
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.
Never read a book that is not a year old.
Always do what you are afraid to do
No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic.
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
The reward for a thing well done is to have done it
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Emerson
It's too soon to tell. [when asked about implications of French revolution]
- Chou Enlai
Good night, dear void.
Could I treat you to a coffee, buy you dinner, take you to a movie until death do us part.
- Nora Ephron
War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
- Desiderius Erasmus
There's a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me.
- John Erskine
Freedom is the only guardian of freedom.
- Yaron Ezrahi
The unprecedented comes into sudden and explosive contact with the atavistic. (modern civil war)
- Hans Erzenberger
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
- Susan Ertz
A signature always reveals a man's character-and sometimes even his name.
- Evan Esar
The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.
When asked by a politician what was the good of induced emf's, he replied "What good? Why, Prime Minister, some day you will tax it!"
- Michael Faraday
[During World War I] the Germans fought for territory, the British fought for control of the seas, the French fought for patriotism and the Americans fought for souvenirs.
- Bryon Farwell
Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong.
- David Fasold
You don't need new stories, you just need a new audience.
- John Henry Faulk
The past is never dead. It is not even past.
- William Faulkner
The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit.
- Felelon
Faith is the absence of proof.
I believe in me and after that there's room for doubt.
- Jules Feiffer
I am the emperor and I want dumplings.
- Ferdinand I
A general principle of physics is that no matter what a guy thinks, it is almost always wrong.
Accept nature as She is - absurd.
Nobody knows how it can be like that. [on quantum mechanics]
One of the most important tools of physics is the wastebasket.
The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things.
To understand ice you have to understand things that are themselves very unlike ice.
You must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
- Richard Feynman
Mae West is a plumber's idea of Cleopatra.
Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.
There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
- W. C. Fields
Next time you want to tell someone you love them, say it to yourself and see if you believe it.
Talk is cheap but listenin' will cost ya.
- Harvey Fierstein
Experience is what allows us to repeat our mistakes, only with more finesse!
- Derwood Fincher
Asked his opinion of undergraduates he replied "They recur."
- HAL Fisher
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't either.
- Joseph Fischer
Taste is the feminine of genius.
- Edward Fitzgerald
Creativity often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?
- Bernice Fitz-Gibbon
To be fierce in business, you need to be utterly conventional at home.
- Gustave Flaubert
You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.
- Doug Floyd
It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper.
- Errol Flynn
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
- E. M. Forster
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
- Gene Fowler
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread
To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
- Anatole France
We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire.
- Francois I
His father kept a slave, who he was married to.
- Johnathan Franzen
Dialogue begins at home.
- Thomas Friedman
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
- Robert Frost
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
Well done is better than well said.
Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
When passion governs she never governs wisely.
- Ben Franklin
The situation will not be changed by a single act of heroism. We must be aware of the fact that to achieve lasting political and social change and to build a truly self governing and independent society will take many years of hard work. We must become our own hope.
- Wladyslaw Frasynece
All things are difficult before they are easy.
- Thomas Fuller
He who wants to defend everything defends nothing, and he who wants to be everyone's friend has no friends in the end.
-Frederick the Great
All my libido is given to Austria-Hungary [on the outbreak of WWI]
The reason wealth doesn't bring happiness is that money is not an infantile concept.
- Freud
Ever since young men have owned motorcycles incest has been dying out.
- Max Frisch
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
- Erich Fromm
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
The world is full of willing people; some wiling to work, the rest willing to let them.
- Robert Frost
When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
There are some ideas so preposterous only the educated can believe in them.
- Paul Fussell
I am the world's only reactionary revolutionary.
Never light a candle carelessly and make sure you know what you are doing when you blow one out.
- Athol Fugard
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
Philosophy is written in that great open book -- I mean the universe -- that forever stands open before our eyes, but you cannot read it until you have first learned to understand the language and recognize the symbols in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics and its symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures without which one does not understand a word, without which one wanders through a dark labyrinth in vain.
- Galileo
Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.
- Ava Gardner
By all means throw up a screen! Sing hymns! Speak verse! Smile sweetly and let a little fart.
- John Gardner
An eye for an eye ends up with the whole world blind.
Anything you do will not make any difference, but it is very important that you do it.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win.
Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
- Gandhi
If it ain't broke, fix it to it is.
- Bill Gates
That we can comprehend the little we know already is mindboggling in itself.
- Tom Gates
Ask her to wait a moment -I am almost done.
- Carl Friedrich Gauss, when informed that his wife is dying while he was working
We only part to meet again.
- John Gay
I wouldn't mind dying --it's the business of having to stay dead that scares the shit out of me.
- R. Geis
Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
- David Lloyd George
anspruchsverhalten - a sense of entitlement ('I'm owed this...')
Lastenausgleich - an equalization of burdens
schlapp - a wimp
Truemmerfrauen - women who cleared away rubble after WW II
Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung - coming to grips with Nazi past
Vielschrieber - a scribbler
- German words
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
- Kahlil Gibran
I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
I am a child of Nature, and take after my mother.
Posterity shall know of me even less than I shall know of posterity.
- William Gilbert
Only the mediocre are always at their best.
- Giraudoux
Poverty is not deprivation, it is isolation.
- Malcolm Gladwell
The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.
Too many people keep looking forward to the good old days.
- Arnold Glasow
Relativity eliminated the Galilean illusion of absolute space; quantum theory eliminated the Newtonian dream of controllable measurement; chaos eliminated the Laplacian fantasy of deterministic predictability.
- James Gleick
A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation.
- Max Gluckman
Did you ever feel like the whole world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?
- George Gobel
I'm proud of paying taxes. The only thing is - I could be just as proud for half the money.
- Arthur Godfrey
Repeat anything often enough and it becomes the truth.
- Joseph Goebbels
A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss
Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
My friend, all theory is gray and the golden tree of life is green.
The decisions of one heart offer no precedence for another.
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
The rabble fears nothing more than intelligence. But it is stupidity they should fear, if only they understood how fearful it is.
When ideas fail, words come in handy.
- Goethe
The person with the biggest drum doesn't always lead the band.
- Dan Goggin
If you have both feet planted on level ground, then the university has failed you.
- Robert F. Goheen
Spare no expense to make everything as economical as possible.
- Samuel Goldwyn
Are you going to come along quietly or do I have to use ear plugs?
Was I in the war?! I was with the Fourth Armored Deserters!
- The Goon Show
Real men read Montaigne.
Knowledge is hyperbolic: the number of people understanding any subject to a particular depth times that depth is a constant.
Growing up in the suburbs of the '50's I had a childhood that was half Huckleberry Finn and half Studs Lonigan.
- Goth
I love being single; it's almost like being rich.
My notion of an elegant table is you don't leave the knife sticking out of the mayonnaise jar.
Something in the brain comes alive about 2 AM and it's usually in a chatty mood.
There's a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain.
- Sue Grafton
Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.
- Cary Grant
Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money either.
- Robert Graves
A vacation doesn't exist without a life that you are vacationing from.
Original sin was not Adam eating the apple but Adam not eating it slowly enough to really enjoy it.
- Spauling Gray
Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.
Middle age is the period of sad caution.
- Graham Greene
German history: humanity, nationality, bestiality.
- Franz Grillparzer
Don't make it too easy for God to find you.
The mind can be fooled in ways the heart can never be.
- Lillian Groag
Figures won't lie, but liars will figure.
- Charles H. Grosvenor
Silence is argument carried out by other means.
- Ernesto "Che" Guevara
You can't have an open mind and an open mouth at the same time.
I hate to make the same mistakes over and over but what else is there?
- Cathy Guisewite
The little I know I owe to my ignorance.
You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty.
- Sacha Guitry
I accommodate every son of a bitch who gets to me.
- Merle Haggard
The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.
- Alexander Haig
The world is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
- JBS Haldane
Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
- Alex Hamilton
I distrust a man who says "When."
- Dashiell Hammett
I am a man of no convictions - at least I think I am.
- Christopher Hampton
Virtue is its own revenge.
- E Y Harburg
As true as light.
To infuriate the viciously disposed and terrify the mild.
The painting in of the day
He stood as if idiotized.
A mad freak.
A rouge's march or cherubim's warble.
Like a bee and a butterfly in league for life.
Every word cost twice its length in pain.
The brass, wood, catgut and leather band.
To rub salt on a green wound.
It took in the whole circumference of his glance.
- Thomas Hardy
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
- Lucille S. Harper
Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
The only way to understand a woman is to love her - and then it isn't necessary to understand her.
- Sydney Harris
I'll just stay behind with the women and cowards.
The goal of every journey is to explore yourself in new surroundings.
The garden I wish to stroll is a soft, moist hill with a trench of fire.
First at the banquet, last at the brawl.
The bottom half of me is in love.
To Englishmen, life is a topic, not an activity.
Sex is the driving force of most religions. In some, like the Hindu faith, it is overt and in some, like the religion of poor Saint Paul, it is pervert, and in others, like the faith of the great Confucius, it is inert.
It is not your ignorance I detest, it is your ignorance of your ignorance.
The soft chains of the nest.
- William Harrison
In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.
- Paul Harvey
Brochures never won a war.
Bullshit is infectious.
If the devil does exist then above all he exists within ourselves.
You cannot serve two masters at once and deceive them both at the same time.
- Vaclav Havel
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
- Stephen Hawking
Cut off from the world, with no one to confuse or torture me, I was forced to become original.
- Franz Josef Haydn
The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of; the last he does not concern himself about.
- William Hazlitt
The only difference between a friend and an enemy is five minutes and the right price.
- William Randolph Hearst
bat gol - the daughter of the voice of God
- Hebrew expressions
Dieu me pardonnera. C'est son motier. (God will forgive me. It's his job.)
Mit der Dummheit kampfen Gotter selbst vergebens.
The men of the past had convictions, the men of the present have only opinions.
Woman is at once apple and serpent.
- Heinrich Heine
Don't ever become a pessimist; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun - and neither can stop the march of events.
If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship
- Robert A. Heinlein
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
- Heisenberg
Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.
- H.L.F. von Helmholtz
Never mistake motion for action.
- Ernest Hemingway
The brighter you are, the more you have to learn.
- Don Herold
Unfair in practice is not the same thing as wrong in principle, but sometimes it has to do.
- Hendrik Hertzberg
This is no place to be weak, but if you are, keep it to yourself and get the hell out of here as soon as you can.
To feel sorry for yourself, and not just a little bit proud, is a poor combination.
With some dogs you're better off just to let them lie in the sun.
- H Hickam, Jr
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
- D. J. Hicks
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex -but Congress can.
- Cullen Hightower
Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
- Alfred Hitchcock
I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon.
- Bill Hirst
The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
Transport a German to Kiev and he remains a German. But transport him to Miami, and you make a degenerate out of him - in other words, an American.
- Adolph Hitler
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
- Eric Hoffer
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
- Abbie Hoffman
Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important.
- Lisa Hoffman
At the heart of the New Deal there was not a philosophy but a temperament.
- Richard Hofstadter
Hell is paved with good Samaritans.
- William M. Holden
I could believe in something, if something believed in me back.
- Michael Holland
The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it unfriendly. It is simply indifferent.
- John H. Holmes
The greatest act of faith is when man decides he is not God.
The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A man should be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.
- Homer
The cardinal sin, when we are looking for truth of fact or wisdom of policy, is refusal to discuss, or action which blocks discussion.
Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness.
- Sidney Hook
There are two kinds of atheists - a tiny group who do not believe in God and a much larger number who live as though God did not exist.
- Richard Hooker
Justice is incidental to law and order.
- J. Edgar Hoover
Those who dance are thought to be mad by those who cannot hear the music.
- G M Hopkins
I have completed a monument more lasting than brass.
Mingle some brief folly with your wisdom.
Now is the time for drinking, now the time to beat the earth with unfettered foot.
Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.
You have played enough; you have eaten and drunk enough. Now it is time for you to depart.
- Horace
A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
- Elbert Hubbard
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men
Nobody kicks on being interrupted if it's by applause.
When a fellow says it ain't the money but the principle of the thing, it's the money.
- Kin Hubbard
A man's tie should never be louder than his wife.
- John Hughes
[A maze of streets] made by the devil in the image of his fork.
Forty is the old age of youth, fifty the youth of old age.
Without France, the world would be alone.
- Victor Hugo
Hypocrisy is the lubricant of society.
- David Hull
There is a country in Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal.
- Sigfried Hulzer
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
- Hubert H. Humphrey
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
- Robert Hutchins
Eagles may soar in the clouds, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.
- Jason Hutchison
Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.
Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
- Aldous Huxley
Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules.
The great tragedy of Science -the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
- Thomas Huxley
The empty fisted are always in a rush to gamble.
The pool of fire is not for those who splash about on the surface.
Troll, be thyself and thyself alone.
Hedda: I have a talent for one thing and one thing only. Brockman: What is that? Hedda: Boring myself to death.
- Henrik Ibsen
An aperitif is the foreplay of gastronomy.
- Clifford Irving
Expectation now stood on stilts.
- Washington Irving
acqua in bocca (water in the mouth; mum's the word)
che violino (what a violin; what a toady)
tieni duro (stay hard; stick to your guns)
la tratta a pesci in fascia (he throws fish in her face; he treats her like dirt)
piove sul bagnato (it's never raining on the bathtub; it never rains but it pours)
mi gratto in pancia (I scratch my belly; I'm twiddling my thumbs)
di riffe o di raffe (by raffle or lottery; by hook or by crook)
sta come un papa (he's like a pope; he lives like a king)
- Italian proverbs
You have to have fun while fighting for freedom.
Never advocate despair but to ignore reality is just as destructive.
He was on the outside of enough.
He was on a first name basis with the bottom of the deck.
He was weaker than bus station chili.
- Molly Ivins
That is a subject, which even at this far remove, causes my pulses to slow. [when asked to review a book on the navy's role in the War of 1812]
There are no differences but differences of degree between degrees of difference and no difference. [while on laughing gas]
Though it might have its momentary alarms, paternity is not an exciting vocation.
- Henry James
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness - then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream.
- William James
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
- Jerome K. Jerome
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM.
When you tell a fellow to go to hell, you had better make sure you can get him there.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson
A lady came up to me on the street and pointed to my suede jacket. "You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too."
I'm originally from Iowa. It took a long time for me to realize we were free to go.
- Jake Johannsen
Whoever surveys the world must see many things that give him pain.
Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess.
Let me smile with the wise and feed with the rich.
Dictionaries are like watches. The worst is better than none; the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
- Samuel Johnson
Cheer up, the worst is yet to come.
- Philander Johnson
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
- F.P. Jones
Two American Jews go into a nightclub in Tel Avid to find a comic making cracks in Hebrew to an appreciative audience. One of the Americans breaks into uproarious laughter. The other asks him - as neither speaks Hebrew - why he is laughing. "Why not?" he answers. "I trust these people." That is the essence of science. Even though you may not understand quantum mechanics or the nerve cell membrane, trust those who do. Most scientists are quite ignorant about most sciences but all use a shared grammar that allows them to recognize their craft when they see it.
- Steven Jones
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
- Thomas Jones
But one more invention and my brain would burst.
[to a person with a cold] Breath less...and further off.
Down on your knees and wiggle!
May a horse drag you to the hangman - you and your flies together.
- Ben Jonson
The man who invented weights and measures converted the innocent simplicity in which man had lived into a miserable existence dominated by fraud and deceit.
- Flavius Josephus
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
To teach is to learn twice.
- Joseph Joubert
Luxury is more ruthless than war.
- Juvenal
For DeMille, decadence was people boozing and dancing and watching drag shows. For Bergman, decadence was people doing all that and not enjoying it.
- Pauline Kael
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
- Franz Kafka
Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
- Henry Kaiser
I am anorexic for an opera singer but I'm a fat anorexic.
- Kiri Te Kanawa
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
- Immanuel Kant
Some times you have to pause a moment to savor the bouquet of so absurd a situation.
Fancies may be as you please but facts are as the Universe pleases.
- Robert Kaplan
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.
- Garrison Keillor
I been readin' 'bout how maybe they is planets peopled by folks with advanced brains. On the other hand, maybe we got the most brains... maybe our intellects is the universe's most advanced. Either way, it's a mighty soberin' thought.
- Waklt Kelly ('Pogo')
It is easier to believe than to think.
- James Kemper
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
- John F. Kennedy
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
- John Maynard Keynes
We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees.
- Jason Kidd
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
- Soren Kierkegaard
When the shooting starts they always send for the sons-of-bitches.
- Adm. Ernest King
I do not discount your talents because of their housing.
...and so on into the trackless wastes of theory.
- Laurie King
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
A gaffe occurs not when somebody lies, but when he says what he really thinks.
- Michael Kingsley
Although the universe is under no obligation to make sense, students in pursuit of a Ph. D. are.
- Robert Kirshner
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
- Henry Kissinger
Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
- Jonathan Kozol
It's not what you know that's important. It's not even who you know that's important. It's what you know about who you know that's important.
God's Own Wonder-Working Tonic is an invigorating compound with three potent ingredients: work to be done (keeps the eyes bright and looking at the future), self-respect (keeps the head up, also the corners of your mouth, and makes the past, on the whole, a pleasant place to visit), and lust (keeps important bodily fluids flowing and makes the present thrilling).
- Eric Kraft
In the world of human thought generally, and in physical science particularly, the most important and fruitful concepts are those to which it is impossible to attach a well-defined meaning.
- H.A. Kramers
God created the integers and the rest is the work of man.
- Leopold Kronecker
Yet surely if there is anything in this world clear and obvious it is the fact that nature has cast us all in the same mold in order that we may behold in one another companions, indeed brothers.
- La Boetie
We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
- François La Rochefoucauld
The middle aged talk about sleep the way frat boys talk about sex. Did you get any last night? Nah, but this weekend, believe me, I'm gonna go all night long.
- Marcus Laffey
Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. [on Byron]
- Lady Caroline Lamb
I'm a Christian, except for the Jesus part.
She lived in fear of ironic endings.
We're all crazy but most of you don't have my style.
Holding on to resentment is like eating rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
You must not inflict life on someone who will be resented.
Happiness, sometimes, weighs a bit more.
Ignorance is curable, stupidity is forever.
I am not a religious woman but even I know that if you try a pair of shoes on and say out loud 'Oh God,' you should buy them
The prize, from Menelaus on, has always been the teenage girl.
- Anne Lamott
Comedy is still our least bestial way of admonishing the wreckage of our lives but too much comedy, or nothing but comedy, has a subtle, feline habit of pushing our lives so far away from us that they cease, as if in a dream, to be our responsibility.
He wanted a good life, or, failing that, a quiet life, and he found that it was most readily available between hard covers.
I am not, as far as I can ascertain, a Fascist, except when seated behind the wheel of a car.
- Anthony Lane
It is remarkable that a science which began with the consideration of games of chance should have become the most important object of human knowledge.
The most important questions of life are, for the most part, really only problems of probability.
Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration.
- Pierre-Simon Laplace
The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.
- Doug Larson
Norma loquendi [everyday speaking]
Licentia loquendi [liberty of speaking]
Lex terrai [law of the land]
In flagrante delicto [caught in the act]
Nitor in adversum [struggle in adversity and/or shine in opposition]
Furiosus furore solum punitur [a nut is punished by his own nuttiness]
Interest reipublicae ut sit finis litium [For the public good, let there be an end to contention]
Scribere est agere [to write is to act]
Salvo pudore [decency being observed]
Custos morum [keeper of the morals]
De minimis non curat lex [the law cannot be concerned with trifles]
Duae tabulae rasae in quibus nihil scriptum est [two minds without a single thought]
post hoc, ergo propter hoc [after it, therefore because of it]
- Latin phrases
Morality is in the method.
When the world is destroyed, it will not be destroyed by madmen but by experts and bureaucrats.
There is one thing worse than change and that is the status quo.
- John Le Carre
People don't ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.
- Robert Keith Leavitt
In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.
Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
There are so many alcolholic writers because if you have to be face to face with yourself, it is best if one of you is drunk.
- Fran Lebowitz
This is one thing worse than change and that is the status quo.
- John LeCarre
Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to show the world we mean business.
- Michael Ledeen
Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money.
- Leon Lederman
Disclaimer: If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared to not only retract it, but also to deny under oath I ever said it.
I wish people who have trouble communicating would shut up.
- Tom Lehrer
This world may be a phantasm and existence merely a dream, but this dream or phantasm to me is real enough in that by using reason well, we are never deceived by it.
- Leibniz
There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure.
- Jack E. Leonard
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces.
-Aldo Leoplold
Election Day has become so commercialized that people forget it is about Jesus.
- David Letterman
Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we'll find it.
- Sam Levenson
Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
- Aaron Levenstein
Ask a man which way he is going to vote, and he will probably tell you. Ask him, however, why, and vagueness is all.
- Bernard Levin
No sane man can afford to dispense with debilitating pleasures. Mens sano in corpore sano is a contradiction in terms.
- A J Liebling
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I ever met.
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it is best to let him run.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
- Lincoln
Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.
- Walter Lippmann
Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.
- Jon Lithgow
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
- John Locke
Who earned your income? Your father. You stand on dead man's legs.
Their method was one of assertion, assumption and denunciation. [on those who argue about something about which they know nothing]
Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eat life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.
If I was the President of the United States tomorrer, 'ow would it fill my belly for one time w'en I was a kiddy and it went empty?
The value of a life is what that life puts upon itself.
It is the life within you that makes the rating.
With immortality before me I might elevate my soul to all sorts of altitudes.
All my handiwork was strong, none of it beautiful, but I knew it would work and I felt myself a man of power as I looked at it.
God is noddin' and not doing his duty, though it's me as shouldn't say it.
The lines of his life were cast in different places.
- Jack London
If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.
- Konrad Lorenz
The average person thinks he isn't.
- Father Larry Lorenzoni
It's just the news; it's not real.
The past is something we wake up to.
- Craig Lucas
It's no disgrace to be old. But damn if it isn't inconvenient.
- Moms Mabley
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but unlike charity, it should end there.
- Clare Boothe Luce
If boyhood questions aren't answered before a certain point in time, they can't ever be raised again.
[on despised brothers-in-law] It's no pleasure to see your wife's face on somebody you don't like.
Help is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.
I don't care much for taking instructions, even from myself.
You can love completely without understanding completely.
It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.
I suppose that an early stage in coming to hate someone is just running out of things to talk about.
When exhausted and feeling sorry for yourself, at least change your socks.
Life every now and then becomes literature.
He was noted for playing poker as if he breathed through gills.
Sometimes death has no meaning to men if they can lie down