quotes

Selection, sorting, and a few comments by K. K. Likharev

1

C:\User\Personal\Literature\From Quotes of the Day.doc

450 favorites from Quotes of the Day (a Google gadget based on Michael Moncur’s collection of quotations - http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html)

ON QUOTATIONS

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. - Sir Winston Churchill

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought. - Dorothy L. Sayers

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit. - W. Somerset Maugham

He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors. - Rudyard Kipling

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote. - Edward Young

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good. - Seneca

The point of quotations is that one can use another's words to be insulting. - Amanda Cross

Misquotation is the pride and privilege of the learned. - Hesketh Pearson

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. - Ambrose Bierce

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. - Robert Benchley

There's a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker. - Charles M. Schulz [Yeah, the bumper sticker is readable. – KKL]

A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire

ON THE WISE AND OTHERWISE

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. - Mark Twain

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. - Plato

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. - Baltasar Gracian

The greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer. - Charles Caleb Colton

Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions. - Cullen Hightower

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. - E. F. Schumacher


2


There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have. - Don Herold

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. - Friedrich von Schiller

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool. - Jane Wagner

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. - Sir Winston Churchill

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. - G. K. Chesterton

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true. - Robert Wilensky

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein

The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. - C. S. Lewis

We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways. - Samuel McChord Crothers

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The smaller the mind the greater the conceit. - Aesop

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity. - Frank Leahy

There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. - Robert Half

ON SANITY AND MADNESS

Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy. - Janet Long

In a mad world only the mad are sane. - Akira Kurosawa

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

The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums. - G. K. Chesterton

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. - Friedrich Nietzsche

ON FAITH AND RELIGION

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. - Bertrand Russell

Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people. - Doris Egan

If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits. - Dan Barker


3


You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic. - Doris Egan

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world. - Georges Duhamel

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't. - Jules Renard

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. - Paul Valery

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends. - Woody Allen

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. - Voltaire

If there were no God, there would be no Atheists. - G. K. Chesterton

I'm a born-again atheist. - Gore Vidal

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them. - H. L. Mencken

A cult is a religion with no political power. - Tom Wolfe

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. - Oscar Wilde

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

We’re not playing. - Craig Venter [On accusations that he was playing God when trying to create the first artificial bacterium. - KKL]

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. - Joseph Conrad

It is bad luck to be superstitious. - Andrew W. Mathis

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion. - Abraham Lincoln

ON PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. - Thomas A. Edison

The only people who find what they are looking for in life are the fault finders. - Foster's Law

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities. - Walt Kelly

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems. - John W. Gardner

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

Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult. - Samuel Johnson

Things are only impossible until they're not. - Jean-Luc Picard


4


The best way out is always through. - Robert Frost

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. - Jack London

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. - Abraham Maslow

Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle. - Ken Hakuta

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards. - Arthur Koestler

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. - Bertrand Russell

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. - Arthur Schopenhauer

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. - Albert Einstein

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it. - Terry Pratchett

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. - George Orwell

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. - Isaac Newton

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. - Jane Wagner

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit. - Sir Frederick G. Banting

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. - Harry S. Truman

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. -Oliver Wendell Holmes

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. - Rene Descartes

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

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

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is. - Chuck Reid

Invention is the mother of necessity. - Thorstein Veblen

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

You know you’ve achieved perfection in design not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. - Dwight D. Eisenhower


5


The shortest distance between two points is under construction. - Noelie Altito

Get the facts, or the facts will get you. - Thomas Fuller

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

Seek simplicity, and distrust it. - Alfred North Whitehead

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken

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

It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem. - Malcolm Forbes

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. - Henry J. Tillman

ON SCIENCE, RESEARCH, AND TECHNOLOGY

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense. - Thomas H. Huxley [This situation did not outlive T. H. Huxley (1825-1895) for too long. – KKL]

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. - Nikola Tesla

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. - M. Cartmill

All science is either physics or stamp collecting. - Ernest Rutherford [A century later, some combos emerged. For example, theoretical neuroscientists are mostly physicists by education, who have opted for stamp collecting. – KKL]

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them. - Sir William Bragg

Just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science. - Henri Poincare

Where facts are few, experts are many. - Donald R. Gannon

Being in politics [and science – KKL] is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important. - Eugene McCarthy

Television is for appearing on - not for looking at. - Noel Coward [Similarly, journals like Science and Nature are for being published in - not for reading of. – KKL]

If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it. - Emerson Pugh

Management [and physics – KKL] is doing things right; leadership [and engineering – KKL] is doing the right things. - Peter Drucker [Applied physics is doing right things right. – KKL]

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

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. - Bertrand Russell


6


If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. - Vannevar Bush

In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself - nature does it for you. - Frank Wilczek

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. - E. W. Dijkstra

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it. - Patrick Young

An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible. - Alfred A. Knopf

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. - John Kenneth Galbraith

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them. - Leo Tolstoy

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons. - R. Buckminster Fuller

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. - John Gaule

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. - Richard Feynman

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. - Flannery O'Connor

2 is not equal to 3, not even for large values of 2. - Grabel's Law

No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar. - Donald Foster

Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. - Michael Crichton

ON EDUCATION

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week. - Evan Esar

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. - Will Durant

Education is what survives when what had been learned has been forgotten. - B. F. Skinner

Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. - Laurence J. Peter

Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. - G. M. Trevelyan

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. - Thomas Henry Huxley

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

No amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it. - Stephen Vizinczey


7


College isn't the place to go for ideas. - Helen Keller

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. - John Ciardi

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

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. - George Bernard Shaw [“…and he who cannot do even that, teaches how to teach.” – Anon.; was broadly used in the former USSR to characterize the Soviet Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. - KKL]

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving. - Russell Green

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. - Thomas Carlyle

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. - Niels Bohr

An expert is a person who avoids small error as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy. - Benjamin Stolberg

An expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared. - P. J. Plauger

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it. - Samuel Johnson

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair

You live and learn. At any rate, you live. - Douglas Adams

ON SPEACH

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both. - John Andrew Holmes

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. - Soren Kierkegaard

It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them. - Dame Rose Macaulay

What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to. - Hansell B. Duckett

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible. - George Burns

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

Silence is the virtue of fools. - Sir Francis Bacon

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately. - Michel de Montaigne

Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much. - Peter Ustinov

Speech was given to conceal thought. - Sir William Osler


8


Language is the source of misunderstandings. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously. - Thomas Sowell

Speak the truth, but leave immediately after. - Slovenian Proverb

Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter because nobody listens. - Nick Diamos

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why. - Mignon McLaughlin

When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. - George Orwell

When ideas fail, words come in very handy. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. - Mark Twain

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care. - William Safire

Rule #1. Never tell everything at once. - Ken Venturi

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything. - Voltaire

Take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then say it with the utmost levity. - George Bernard Shaw

The squeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced. - Vic Gold

ON WRITING

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations. - Charles de Montesquieu

All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things. - Bobby Knight

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. - Henry David Thoreau

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. - T. S. Eliot

After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity. - George Ade

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book. - Edward Gibbon

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. - Robert Benchley

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. - Sir Winston Churchill

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment. - Josh Billings

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time. - George Bernard Shaw


9


Autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other people. - Philip Guedalla

Your life story would not make a good book. Don't even try. - Fran Lebowitz

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. - Thomas Mann

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it. - Leo Rosten

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. - Jules Renard

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. - Robert Heinlein

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard. - Daphne du Maurier

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good. - Samuel Johnson

This book fills a much-needed gap. - Moses Hadas

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. - Flannery O'Connor

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it. - Russel Lynes

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. - G. K. Chesterton

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. - Fred Allen

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. - Walter Bagehot

The fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning. - Sir Winston Churchill

The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good. - Robert Graves

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. - Stephen King

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. - Samuel Johnson

Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people. - Adrian Mitchell

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not. - Henry Fielding

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

ON ARTS

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. - Andre Gide

Art is either plagiarism or revolution. - Paul Gauguin


10


Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. - Tom Stoppard

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable. - Samuel Johnson [Seems strange now, but SJ evidently meant the music of his time, now called the classical music – KKL]

Wagner's music is better than it sounds. - Edgar Wilson Nye

A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn't. - Unknown

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings. - Ed Gardner

If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it. - Pierre Beaumarchais

All television is children's television. - Richard P. Adler

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other. - Ann Landers

Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want. - Clive Barnes

ON HUMAN CONDITION

The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race. - Don Marquis

You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it. - Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image. - Stephen Hawking

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. - Bertrand Russell

Humankind cannot stand very much reality. - T. S. Eliot

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth. - Edith Sitwell

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. - H. L. Mencken

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool. - Jane Wagner

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

The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. - H. L. Mencken

I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell. - Harry S. Truman

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you. - Don Marquis

Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to. - H. Mumford Jones


11


Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. - Martin Luther King Jr.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. - George Bernard Shaw

Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born. - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. - Albert Einstein

Stoop and you'll be stepped on; stand tall and you'll be shot at. - Carlos A. Urbizo

Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us. - Henrik Tikkanen

ON SOCIETY, GOVERNMENT, AND POLITICS

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - Krishnamurti

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane. - Philip K. Dick

The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. - David Brin

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. - Martin Luther King Jr.

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork. - Edward Abbey

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence. - Henry Adams

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. - H. L. Mencken

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity. - Robertson Davies

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. - Juan Ramón Jiménez [Ray Bradbury used this line as the epigraph for his Fahrenheit 451. – KKL]

There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause. - P. J. O'Rourke

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. - Eric Hoffer

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. - Michael Crichton

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that. - G. H. Hardy

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking. - A. A. Milne


12


People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest. - Hermann Hesse

Excellence makes people nervous. - Shana Alexander

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered. - Voltaire

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death. - Joan D. Vinge

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from. - Peter Ustinov

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself. - John Ciardi

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. - George Bernard Shaw

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois. - Gustave Flaubert

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. - Clement Atlee

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed. - H. L. Mencken

That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent. - Aldous Huxley

When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody. - W. S. Gilbert

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. - George Bernard Shaw

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob. - G. K. Chesterton

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. - Thomas Sowell

A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment. - Willis Player

A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time. - Alfred E. Wiggam

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

The intermediate stage between socialism and capitalism is alcoholism. - Norman Brenner

The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything - or nothing. - Nancy Astor

All movements go too far. - Bertrand Russell

A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures. - Daniel Webster

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution. - Hannah Arendt

The world is run by 'C' students. - Al McGuire


13


Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything. - Frank Dane

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. - Aesop

I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office. - H. L. Mencken

I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses. - Victor Hugo

No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. - Judge Gideon J. Tucker

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. - P. J. O'Rourke

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

The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'. - Larry Hardiman

The State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too. - John Kenneth Galbraith

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. - Will Rogers

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty. - Eugene McCarthy

To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent. - Robert Copeland

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm. - John F. Kennedy

Washington is the only place where sound travels faster than light. - C. V. R. Thompson

He who praises you for what you lack wishes to take from you what you have. - Don Juan Manuel

One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity. - Andrew Carnegie [perhaps the most famous American philanthropist – KKL]

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. - Herbert Spencer

A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbors. - William Ralph Inge

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. - Voltaire

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. - Will Rogers

Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

ON MONEY

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. - Dorothy Parker


14


All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind. - Aristotle

Behind every great fortune there is a crime. - Honore de Balzac

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

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

As long as people accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it. - Dick Cavett

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward. - John Maynard Keynes

Spare no expense to save money. - Samuel Goldwyn

There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income. - Edmund Wilson

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

Finance is the art of passing money from hand to hand until it finally disappears. - Robert W. Sarnoff

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain. - Mark Twain

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. - Henry David Thoreau

A man's respect for law and order exists in precise relationship to the size of his paycheck. - Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

ON ATTITUDES

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. - Herm Albright

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. - Oscar Wilde

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance. - Sam Brown

Never answer a critic, unless he's right. - Bernard M. Baruch

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing. - Oscar Wilde

If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody. - Agatha Christie

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities. - Sophocles

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

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

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us. - Quentin Crisp


15


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

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people. - James Russell Lowell

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. - Leo Tolstoy

No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other. - Jascha Heifetz

Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously. - Henry Kissinger

Adventure is just bad planning. - Roald Amundsen

Reality is something you rise above. - Liza Minnelli

The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible. - Jean Kerr

Start every day off with a smile and get it over with. - W. C. Fields

Blame someone else and get on with your life. - Alan Woods

Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was. - Margaret Mitchell

When you encounter seemingly good advice that contradicts other seemingly good advice, ignore them both. - Al Franken

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be. - Walter Bagehot

Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death. - Harold Wilson

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. - Walter Bagehot

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. - Walt Disney

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves. - Carl Sagan

Fervor is the weapon of choice for the impotent. - Frantz Fanon

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. - Soren Kierkegaard

Men who never get carried away should be. - Malcolm Forbes

To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough. - Mario Andretti [an Italian race car driver. – KKL]


16


ON OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM

Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else. - Tom Stoppard

Only fools are positive. - Moe Howard

The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum. - Havelock Ellis

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup. - H. L. Mencken

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. - Alexander Pope

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised. - George F. Will

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - George Bernard Shaw

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

No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up. - Lily Tomlin

Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows. - David T. Wolf

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct. - Benjamin Disraeli

You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light. - Vicomte de Chateaubriand

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do. - Dale Carnegie

ON WORK AND LEISURE

I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. - Jerome K. Jerome

Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us. - Jerry Garcia

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. - Robert Frost

We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by. - Will Rogers

You don't get anything clean without getting something else dirty. - Cecil Baxter

You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play. - Warren Beatty

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. - Bertrand Russell

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. - Oscar Wilde

We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys. - Eric Hoffer


17


No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one. - Elbert Hubbard

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. - George Bernard Shaw

ON HAPPINESS AND ITS PUSUIT

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. - Thomas Szasz

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. - Anatole France

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost. - Gustave Flaubert

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. - Ernest Hemingway

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. - Jane Austen

Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars. - Hobart Brown

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. - George Bernard Shaw

Stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time. - Edith Wharton

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness. - Aldous Huxley

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it. - C. P. Snow

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. - Lily Tomlin

It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin

ON LOVE, MARRIGE, AND FAMILY

There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters. - Alice Thomas Ellis

The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children. - Clarence Darrow

Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life. - Robert Byrne

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your own children have teenagers of their own. - Doug Larson

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met. - Rodney Dangerfield

A husband is like a fire, he goes out when unattended. - Evan Esar

What's the difference between a boyfriend and a husband? About 30 pounds. - Cindy Gardner

When love is gone, there's always justice.


18


And when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi, Mom! - Laurie Anderson

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. - George Burns

ON FAME AND GLORY, GOOD AND BAD

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. - Fred Allen

Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything. - Herb Caen

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld [In his War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy went a step further: “There is no glory without simplicity, goodness, and truth”. – KKL]

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. - Samuel Johnson

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

Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability. - George Bernard Shaw

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness. - Franz Kafka

Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with. - Bob Wells

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

Everyone is as God has made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse. - Miguel de Cervantes

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it. - Denis Diderot

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

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. - Abraham Lincoln

A hypocrite is a person who - but who isn't? - Don Marquis

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. - Mark Twain

Virtue is its own punishment. - Aneurin Bevan

No good deed goes unpunished. - Clare Booth Luce

ON LIFE AND DEATH

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. - Tom Stoppard

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life. - Robertson Davies


19


Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men. - Kin Hubbard

The secret of eternal youth is arrested development. - Alice Roosevelt Longworth

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature. - Dave Barry

The purpose of life is to fight maturity. - Dick Werthimer

No wise man ever wished to be younger. - Jonathan Swift

What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen? - Evelyn Waugh

We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society. - Judith Martin

The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young. - Willa Cather

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

When you're through changing, you're through. - Bruce Barton

It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living. - Eric Hoffer

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. - Kurt Vonnegut

The world's as ugly as sin, and almost as delightful. - Frederick Locker-Lampson

The whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. - Umberto Eco

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious. - Brendan Gill

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think. - Horace Walpole

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. - Steven Weinberg

The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them. - Jean Cocteau

I have seen the future and it doesn't work. - Robert Fulford

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past. - Robertson Davies

The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past. - William Faulkner

Man always gets less than he demands from life. - Jack London [Here Leo Tolstoy was more specific again: “We get less than we want, but more than we deserve.” – KKL]

What is life but a series of inspired follies? - George Bernard Shaw

Life is pain, anyone who says differently is selling something. - William Goldman


20


Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. - Woody Allen

Life is an unbroken succession of false situations. - Thornton Wilder

Life is a long lesson in humility. - James M. Barrie

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. - Samuel Butler

Life is a zoo in a jungle. - Peter De Vries

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim. - Bertrand Russell

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. - John Lennon [A modern (anon. ?) version is: “Life is what passes by while you are texting.” – KKL]

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. - Oscar Wilde

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

Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Life is a sexually transmitted disease. - R. D. Laing

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. - Truman Capote

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all. - William Goldman

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon. - Woody Allen

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed. - Sir Winston Churchill

Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives. - Maurice Chevalier

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed. - Blaise Pascal

Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up. - Wilson Mizner

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

I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward. - Stanislaw J. Lec

After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one. - Cato the Elder

* * *

A poem is never finished, only abandoned. - Paul Valery

A book of quotations can never be complete. - Robert M. Hamilton

Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored. - George Saunders [His hero’s last words. - KKL]

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