Fifer.Net - Some Quotes I Like

As a result of very positive e-mail from viewers like you, I've finally gotten around to updating this page. Thank you to everyone who wrote to me and encouraged me to keep adding quotes. I especially appreciate the many teachers who told me they post quotes from my page on their bulletin boards. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the quotes.

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This page is maintained by Craig Fifer

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Animals and the Environment

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
-Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

We do not inherit the land; we borrow it from our children.
-Native American saying

Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot about little puppies.
-Gene Hill

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

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you -- that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-Mark Twain

I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better.
-George Bird Evans

Man is a complex thing -- he makes deserts bloom and lakes die.
-Gil Stern

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; and inside a dog, it's too dark to read.
-Groucho Marx

Somebody told me it was frightening how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.
-Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

The chicken probably came before the egg because it is hard to imagine God wanting to sit on an egg.

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Birth and Death

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
-Carl Sandburg

For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off.
-Johnny Carson

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

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
-Winston Churchill

We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
-James E. Day, former U. S. Postmaster General

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
-Mark Twain (1835-1910)

It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
-Woody Allen

Do not go gentle into that good night�
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
-Dylan Thomas

Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.
-Sam Levenson (1911-1980)

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Change, History, and Progress

When men and women think, the first step to progress is taken.
-Elizabeth C. Stanton

The first step is the hardest.
-Marie Marquise du Deffand (Said to Cardinal de Polignac, when the Cardinal told her that St. Denis, after being decapitated, had picked up his head and carried it two leagues.)

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.
-George Bernard Shaw

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
-Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.
-African Proverb

...[L]et us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests and see whether we also in our day and generation may not perform something worthy to be remembered.
-Daniel Webster

I think there are only three things America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music, and baseball.
-Gerald Early

The most damaging phrase in the language is, 'It's always been done that way.'
-Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth.
-Winston Churchill

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
-Cicero

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
-Tom Robbins

If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting.
-Stephen Covey, First Things First

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

Yesterday's the past and tomorrow's the future. Today is a gift -- which is why they call it the present.
-Bill Keane

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

People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.
-former Vice President Dan Quayle

The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them [which] we are missing.
-Gamel Nasser

I couldn't think of another city in the world that lined its streets with stone leviathans honoring failed rebels against the state.
-Tony Horwitz, "Confederates in the Attic", regarding Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue

The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.
-Don Marquis (1878-1937)

History is a set of lies agreed upon.
-Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
-Dan Rather

History repeats itself; that's one of the things that's wrong with history.
-Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
-George Clemenceau (1841-1929) (also attributed to Oscar Wilde)

Progress might have been all right once but it has gone on too long.
-Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

Nostalgia: When you find the present tense and past perfect.
-The Lion

Change is inevitable -- except from a vending machine.
-Robert C. Gallagher

Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
1. Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
2. Advising the President.
3. Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.
-David Letterman

If our founding fathers were alive today, they'd roll over in their graves.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

Things have never been more like they are today in history.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.
-Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

Nothing.
-Louis XVI (entry in his diary for July 14, 1789, the day the mob stormed the Bastille)

History is the short trudge from Adam to atom.
-Leonard Louis Levinson

I think it would be a good idea.
-Mahatma Ghandi (regarding Western Civilization)

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Conviction, Morality, and Sacrifice

A 'No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
-Mahatma Gandhi

It's better to be controversial for the right reasons, than to be popular for the wrong reasons.
-Shimon Peres (Former Prime Minister of Israel, University of Utah, October 29, 1997)

Blessed is the match consumed by kindling flame.
-Hannah Sennesh

Moral principles can never be compromised; they can only be abandoned.

The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.
-Dante Aleghieri (1265-1321)

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
-Henry David Thoreau

Only those who attempt the absurd ... will achieve the impossible.

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

My strength lies mainly in my tenacity.
-Louis Pasteur

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

There are several good precautions against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
-Mark Twain

As to values, I was taught -- and still believe -- that a sense of honor is necessary to personal self-respect; that duty, recognizing an individual's subordination to community welfare, is as important as rights; that loyalty, which is based on the trustworthiness of honorable men, is still a virtue; and that work and self-discipline are as essential to individual happiness as they are to a viable society. Indeed, I still believe in patriotism -- not if it is limited to parades and flag-waving, but because worthy national goals and aspirations can be realized only through love of country and a desire to be a responsible citizen.
-Lewis F. Powell (Former Supreme Court Justice)

We are here on earth to do good for others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
-W. H. Auden

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Crime and Punishment

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
-Mohandas Gandhi

The big theives hang the little ones.
-Czech Proverb, regarding capital punishment

I believe that people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.
-Nancy Reagan

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.
-J. Edgar Hoover

The prisoners will not be harmed, until they are found guilty.
-Q, Star Trek

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Education and Teaching

Two of the greatest gifts we can give are children are roots and wings.
-Hodding Carter

One purpose of a liberal arts education is to make your head a more interesting place to live inside of for the rest of your life.
-Mary Pat McPherson

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
-William Arthur Ward

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
-Thomas Carruthers

Only the educated are free.
-Epictetus

To educate a man in mind, and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society.
-Theodore Roosevelt

The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if the people are in ignorance.
-Thomas Jefferson

A large part of [the purpose] of education may well be what men have most feared and most desired -- the achievements of moments of ecstasy.
-George Leonard

I am always willing to learn, however I do not always like to be taught.
-Winston Churchill

...our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent overeducation from happening.
-William Troy Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education 1889-1906

The true object of education should be to train one to think clearly and act rightly.

The secret of teaching is to appear to have known all your life what you just learned this morning.

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the ocean searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain any more, so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure.
-Michael Scriven

I've often gotten the feeling that the only people who have learned from computer assisted instruction are the authors.
-Ben Schneiderman

Be careful what you know... you might have to teach it one day.
-Fido Fisher

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Faith and Religion

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-Galileo Galilei

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

Preach the gospel everywhere you go, and, if necessary, use words.
-St. Francis of Assisi

Sin is geographical.
-Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.
-Peter De Vries

Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread: And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
-Book of Matthew

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

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
-H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
-Bishop Desmond Tutu

Even God cannot change the past.
-Agathon (447-401 B.C.E.)

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the impossible.
-H.L. Mencken

The Hero died -- but that isn't the end of the story.
-J. Kornegay (regarding the New Testament)

Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
-William James (1842-1910)

Impiety, noun. Your irreverence toward my deity.
-Ambrose Pierce (1842-1914?)

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
-Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

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

The Jews and Arabs should settle their disputes in the true spirit of Christian charity.
-Alexander Wiley

Why God Will Never Get Tenure At Any University
1. Only published one book.
2. It was in Hebrew.
3. It had no references.
5. Some doubt He even wrote it Himself.
8. He did not get permission from any review board to work with human subjects.
9. When one experiment went awry, He tried to cover it up by drowning all the subjects.
12. It is rumored that He sometimes lets His Son teach the class.
13. Although He only has 10 requirements, His students often fail His tests.
14. He expelled His first two students for learning.
15. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountain top.
-faculty members at Kansas State University
-instructors at Allen County Community College

Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.
-Robert Orben

The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did."
-Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
-Philip K. Dick

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
-Lily Tomlin

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Fame

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.
-Pablo Picasso

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Food and Health

Isn't there any other part of the matzah you can eat?
-Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) on being served matzah ball soup three meals in a row

When we lose, I eat. When we win, I eat. I also eat when we're rained out.
-Tommy Lasorda

One reason I don't drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time.
-Nancy, Lady Astor (1879-1964)

Living is a dangerous business, and simple pleasures should not be denied. I for one plan to enjoy my fettuccine Alfredo.
-Gabe Mejias

The remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served us nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
-Calvin Trillin

A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fumes thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
-King James (c. 1604), on smoking

It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat.
-Robert Fuoss

I hope they never find out that lightening has a lot of vitamins in it, because do you hide from it or not?
-Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

May you never meet a mouse in your cupboard with tears in his eyes!
-J. C. Furnas

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
-Redd Foxx

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Freedom, Liberty, and Patriotism

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
-Wendell Phillips (1811-1844)

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
-Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
-William Safire

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
-Booker T. Washington

I disapprove with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall, paraphrasing Voltaire

Civil liberties are always safe as long as their exercise doesn't bother anyone.
-New York Times editorial, 1-3-41

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.
-George Jean Nathan (1882-1958)

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

[The Equal Rights Amendment] is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.
-Pat Robertson

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
-Rebecca West

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you please unless it causes others harm. With it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
-P.J. O'Rourke

But our culture is in truly bad shape if we have come to define respecting something as the failure to set it on fire.
-Barbara Ehrenreich (regarding flag burning)

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have ...a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the character and conduct of their rulers.
-John Adams

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

Our Constitution is color-blind. The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race... is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with civil freedom.
-U.S. Justice John Harlan, Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred , ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, 1826

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
-John F. Kennedy

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Friends and Enemies

You have been my friends, that in itself is a tremendous thing...
-E. B. White

Never shall I forget the days I spent with you. Continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours.
-Ludwig van Beethoven

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
-Mark Twain

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
-Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

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

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

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Government and Law

"What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?"
"I'd cut down every law in England to do that."
"Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide...the laws all being flat?"
-Robert Bolt, "A Man for All Seasons"

Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
-Senator Soaper

Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice. -Harry S. Truman, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1949

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
-Lord Acton

...[T]he American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.
-W. E. Gladstone

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
-C.S. Lewis

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
-Frederic Bastiat, The Law

Society is well governed when the people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the laws.
-Solon

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good and difficult for them to do evil.
-Gladstone (paraphrased)

Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.
-Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium CIV, c. 63

Today the nations of the world may be divided into two classes - the nations in which the government fears the people, and the nations in which the people fear the government.
-Amos R. E. Pinochet

...wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, [and] shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits.
-Thomas Jefferson, 1801 Inaugural Address

Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action, not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies�hunger, misery, and despair.
-Harry S. Truman, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1949

Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.
-Henry Clay

Fire, water and government know nothing of mercy.
-Albanian Proverb

In a state-run society, the government promises you security. But it's a false promise predicated on the idea that the opposite of security in risk. Nothing could be further from the truth. The opposite of security is insecurity, and the only way to overcome insecurity is to take risks. The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street refuses to let go on the other side.
Theodore Forstmann

If it's against state law, it's generally considered a breach of etiquette.
-Judith Martin (Miss Manners)

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Knowledge, Thought, and Truth

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
-John F. Kennedy (regarding a dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere, April 29, 1962)

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
-T. S. Eliot

We must fall back on the old axiom that when other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-William James

I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.
-Harry Truman

Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'
-Kahlil Gibran

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
-George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Objectivity means trying to give all sides a hearing. It does not, in my view, mean treating all sides as equal.
-Christiane Amanpour (CNN Correspondent, 1999)

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

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
-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 (1788-1860)

I am not young enough to know everything.
-Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
-Voltaire

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
-Voltaire

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-Albert Einstein

I think, therefore I am.
-Rene Descartes

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.
-Albert Szent-Gyorgi

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
-John VII

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
-Aldous Huxley

You see things and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?'
-George Bernard Shaw

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

Problems that appear small are large problems that are not understood.
-Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1897), Spanish scientist

Truth is not determined by majority vote.
-Doug Gwyn

I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version.
-Lt. Col. Oliver North

The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
-H. L. Mencken

I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.
-Sam Goldwyn

What luck for rulers, that men do not think.
-Adolph Hitler

Well what is the answer? But, what, then, is the question?
-Gertrude Stein (last words)

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

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.
-Niels Bohr

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
-Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

When I was a boy of fourteen my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
-Mark Twain

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.
-Sam Levenson

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
-Plutarch

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

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
-John F. Kennedy

Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
-Virginia Woolf

What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.
-Dan Quayle

The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.
-Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

I know a lot of people without brains who do an awful lot of talking.
-The Scarecrow, Wizard of Oz

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

The trouble with America is that there are far too many wide-open spaces surrounded by teeth.
-Charles Luckman

The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

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

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Language, Literature, and Writing

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
-Jorge Luis Borges

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
-Mark Twain

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
-G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
-Robert Benchley

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs.
-Christopher Hampton

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
-William Safire's Great Rules of Writing

If They Wrote Error Messages in Haiku

Three things are certain:
death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

A file that big?
It might be very useful,
but now it is gone.

Printer not ready.
Could be a fatal error.
Have a pen handy?

-From the Internet via Vicky Reinke

A writer is like a bag lady going through life with a sack and a pointed stick collecting stuff.
-Tony Hillerman

If you can't answer a man's argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.
-Elbert Hubbard

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Leadership and Politics

The most important political office is that of private citizen.
-Louis Brandeis

Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.
-P. J. O'Rourke

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
-Desiderius Erasmus

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
-Leonard Bernstein , The New York Times, Oct. 30, 1988

If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
-Graham Summer

Leaders are people who never doubt that they are winners, and people will follow a winner anywhere.
-Gina Sullivan

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
-Robert Frost

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
-John Kenneth Galbraith

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
-Ralph Nader

Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the only place in the Middle East that has no oil!
-Golda Meir

If in my high moments, I have done some good, offered some service, shed some light, healed some wounds, rekindled some hope, or stirred someone from apathy and indifference, or in any way along the way helped somebody, then this campaign has not been in vain. ... If, in my low moments, in word, deed, or attitude, through some error of temper, taste, or tone, I have caused anyone discomfort, created pain, or revived someone's fears, that was not my truest self. If there were occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart. ... I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant, doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet. ... This campaign has taught me much; that leaders must be tough enough to fight, tender enough to cry, human enough to make mistakes, humble enough to admit them, strong enough to absorb the pain and resilient enough to bounce back and keep on moving. For leaders, the pain is often intense. But you must smile through your tears and keep moving with the faith that there is a brighter side somewhere.
-The Rev. Jesse Jackson, July 17, 1984, Democratic National Convention, San Francisco, CA

I must acknowledge, once and for all, that the purpose of diplomacy is to prolong a crisis.
-Mr. Spock, Star Trek

I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny - fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.
-Margaret Chase Smith

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
-Mark Twain

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
-Benjamin Disraeli

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
-Albert Schweitzer

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, and are right.
-H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956

When I face an issue of great import that cleaves both constituents and colleagues, I always take the same approach. I engage in deep deliberation and quiet contemplation. I wait to the last available minute and then I always vote with the losers. Because, my friend, the winners never remember and the losers never forget.
-Thomas H. Kean

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
-Plato

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

Who's in or out, who moves the grand machine,
Nor stirs my curiosity, or spleen;
Secrets of state no more I wish to know
Than secret movements of a puppet-show;
Let but the puppets move, I've my desire,
Unseen the hand which guides the master wire.
-Sir Winston Churchill

The people of Nebraska are for free silver. Therefore, I am for free silver. I'll look up the reasons later.
-U.S. Representative William Jennings Bryan

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

It's an old story; it's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak, are left behind by the side of the trail. The strong, the strong they tell us, will inherit the land. We Democrats believe in something else. We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once.
-Former NY Gov. Mario Cuomo, 1984 Democratic National Convention, San Francisco, CA

The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.
-Sheridan

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

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
-John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.
-John Quinton

It's important to remember that just because there are crooks, zealots and morons supporting a position, it does not automatically follow that the position is wrong.
-Jan D. Wolter

The mockingbird can change its tune eighty-seven times in seven minutes. Politicians regard this interesting fact with envy.

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.
-Lily Tomlin

Washington is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm.
-John F. Kennedy

Sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox.
-Earl of Sandwich
That will depend, my lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.
-John Wilkes

One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared.'
-Dan Quayle

Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren't for the goddamned people.
-Richard M. Nixon

It might be more worthwhile if we stopped wringing our hands and started ringing our congressmen.

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

How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over two hundred varieties of cheese?
-Charles deGalle

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Life

I wanted a perfect ending ... Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
-Gilda Radner

The unexamined life is not worth living.
-Socrates (470-399 B.C.E.)

There are more stars known to exist right now than the total number of all the grains of sand on every beach in the entire world. With those kinds of odds, it would seem downright naive for someone to go to a beach in, say, some out-of-the-way inlet in Baffin Bay, stoop to pick up only one tiny grain of sand, and declare that that grain alone was the only place where life could exist.
-Hugh Downs

There's always a bigger fish.
-Qui-Gon Jinn, Star Wars Episode I

Life's journey is like a walk down a long hallway with a cup of coffee in your hand. You can spill some and make a mess and still have a cup that's plenty full.
-Merry Wheaton

There is no free lunch.
-Milton Friedman

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

For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong.
-H.L. Mencken

A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are for.
-John A. Shedd

Everything I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten
1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don't hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. Clean up your own mess.
6. Don't take things that aren't yours.
7. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life--learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
15. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup--they all die. So do we.
16. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned--the biggest word of all--LOOK.
-Robert Fulghum

There are some things that are so serious that you have to laugh at them.
-Niels Bohr

The map is not the territory.
-Alfred Korzbyski

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

Don't ever get your speedometer confused with your clock, like I did once, because the faster you go, the later you think you are.
-Jack Handey

If you're right 98% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.
-Vernon Howard

One of the oldest human needs is having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.
-Margaret Meade

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-Robert Frost

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is.
-Erma Brombeck

The wise individual doesn't get too attached to any of life's pleasures, knowing that wonderful science is hard at work proving it's bad for him.
-Bill Vaughan

The supreme irony of life is hardly anyone ever gets out of it alive.
-Robert Heinlein

I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of people waiting to abuse me.
-Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"

Before you criticize people, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you've got a mile-long head start. And you have their shoes.
-The Lion

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
-Mary Ellen Kelly

"The point I have been patiently trying to make," Godwin said impatiently, "is that you expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two."
-Godwin to Danny Deck, Some Can Whistle

Do not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to many.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
-Mark Twain

When in a hole, stop digging.
-Dennis Healy (Former British Politician)

My uncle ordered popovers
from the restaurant's bill of fare.
And, when they were served,
he regarded them with a penetrating stare.
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
"To eat these things," said my uncle,
"You must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what's solid,
BUT...you must spit out the air!"
And as you partake of the world's bill of fare,
that's darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow.
-Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), From a commencement address

It is better to place a fence at the edge of a cliff than to have an ambulance waiting at the bottom.

A Fence or an Ambulance

'Twas a dangerous cliff, and it fair scared folks stiff,
But the view from the top was so pleasant,
That they swallowed their fear, and there crashed down each year
Full many a squire and peasant.
"Something's got to be done.", said the people as one,
But answers did not at all tally.
Some said, "Put a fence 'round the edge of the cliff."
Some, "An ambulance down in the valley!"

Debate raged and stormed, and a Study was formed,
And they might have been arguing yet,
But a solution was found: "Let's pass the hat 'round,
And see how much money we get."
A collection was made to accumulate aid,
And dwellers in byway and alley
Gave pounds, shillings and pence - not to furnish a fence
But an ambulance down in the valley.

"For the cliff is all right if you're careful," they said;
"And if folks ever slip and are dropping,
It isn't the slipping that hurts them so much
As the shock down below - when they're stopping."
So for years (you'll have heard) as these mishaps occurred
Quick forth would the rescuers sally,
To pick up the victims who fell from the cliff,
With the ambulance down in the valley.

Then an old sage remarked: "It's a marvel to me
That people give far more attention
To repairing results than to stopping the cause,
When they'd much better aim at prevention.
Let us stop at its source all this mischief," cried he,
"Come, neighbors and friends let us rally,
If the cliff we will fence we might almost dispense
With the ambulance down in the valley."
"He is wrong in his head," the majority said;
"He would end all our earnest endeavor.
"He's a man who would shirk this responsible work
But we will support it forever.
Aren't we picking up all, just as fast as they fall,
In giving them care we don't dally?
It's plain that a fence is of no consequence,
If the ambulance works in the valley."

-Joseph Malins

One ship drives east and the other drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails and not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Winds of Fate

Excerpts from Life's Little Instruction Book, Volumes I and II
35. Plant a tree on your birthday.
47. Don't waste time learning the "tricks of the trade." Instead, learn the trade.
53. Vote.
68. Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
100. Read the Bill of Rights.
198. Feed a stranger's expired parking meter.
209. Observe the speed limit.
267. Lie on your back and look at the stars.
271. When facing a difficult task, act as though it is impossible to fail. If you're going after Moby Dick, take along the tartar sauce.
322. Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
393. Learn how to operate a Macintosh computer.
513. Never laugh at anyone's dreams. 558. Never betray a confidence. 595. Be the first to fight for a just cause. 817. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality. 939. Never be ashamed of your patriotism. -H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

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

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

Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.
-Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
-Mark Twain

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

There are two rules for success: 1) Never tell everything you know.
-Roger H. Lincoln

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unearned applause.
-Jose Narosky

Even moderation ought not to be practiced to excess.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid; you must also be well-mannered.
-Voltaire (1694-1778)

Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.
-Dave Barry

EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN CORPORATE AMERICA
2. You can't tell which way the train went by looking at the track.
17. All things being equal, fat people use more soap.
21. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
23. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
25. Never wrestle a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.
26. The trouble with life is, you're halfway through it before you realize it's a do-it-yourself thing.
28. No amount of advance planning will ever replace dumb luck.
29. Anything you do can get you fired; this includes doing nothing.
31. Never pass a snow plow on the right.
-Gregory Singleton

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
-Calvin

"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'"
-Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
-Galbraith's Law

The clinching proof of my reasoning is that I will cut anyone who argues further into dogmeat.
-Sir Geoffery de Tourneville (ca. 1350)

Perfection is our goal. Excellence will be tolerated.
-TQM Motto from the International Association of Business Communication

The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.
-Casey Stengel

Confidence is the feeling you sometimes have before you fully understand the situation.

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-Mark Twain

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In business, however, it seems that we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
17. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

A sweater is a garment worn by a child when his mother feels chilly.

I can't say I've ever been lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
-Daniel Boone

There comes a time in every man's life, and I've had many of them.
-Casey Stengel

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
-Roy Baty, "Blade Runner"

It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
-John Andrew Holmes

If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.
-Clint Eastwood

If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure.
-Dan Quayle

I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex.
-Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

Don't approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.
-Yiddish proverb

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

This taught me a lesson, but I'm not quite sure what it is.
-John MacEnroe

Don't swap horses in the middle of the stream.
-1864 Abraham Lincoln Re-Election Slogan

Age is something that doesn't matter unless you are a cheese.
-Billie Burke

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Love and Beauty

It is the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance.
It is the dream afraid of waking
that never takes a chance.
It is the one who won't be taken
who cannot seem to give.
And the soul afraid of dying
that never learns to live.
-Bette Midler, The Rose

Was she so loved because her eyes were so beautiful or were her eyes so beautiful because she was loved?
-Anzia Yezierska

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and love.
-William Wordsworth

A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.
-Arthur Miller, The Crucible

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?
-Jean Kerr

While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.

"You, sir, are drunk."
-Woman
"Yes. But you, madam, are ugly, and I shall be sober in the morning."
-Winston Churchill

It was not until I attended a few postmortems that I realized that even the ugliest exteriors may contain the most beautiful viscera, and was able to console myself for the facial drabness of my neighbors in omnibuses by dissecting them in my imagination.
-J. B. S. Haldane

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

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Mathematics, Science, and Technology

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.
-Winston Churchill

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
-John Dewey

To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
-Carl Sagan

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

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

In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
-Gerald Holton

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
-Hal Abelson

In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
-Brian K. Reid

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
-Max Planck, 1949

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
-Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.

I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20 years ago. When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, "Where are they all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!" Years later, I went back to the same hotel. I noticed the room keys had been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors. There was a computer in every doorknob.
-Danny Hillis

Mathematicians are the least expensive researchers to support. All they need are pencils, paper, and a wastebasket -- and when they turn philosopher, they don't even need the wastebasket!
-Adapted from the Henry Cate III Life Collection

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
-John Kenneth Galbraith

Not even computers will replace committees, because committees buy computers.
-Marshall McCluhan

Several errant electrons jumped when they shouldn't have at a place they shouldn't have, resulting in what shouldn't have. In short, a short.
-Bloom County

A layman knows he has to kick it.; An amateur knows where to kick it.; A professional knows how hard.

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.
-Alan Shepherd

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-Pablo Picasso

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
-Carl Zwanzig

Philosophical habits of mind do not come quicker through fiber optics. Clear thinking is not aided by better dot resolution. Understanding ourselves and feeling for others does not come with a software upgrade.
-Linda Ray Pratt, Academe, Nov/Dec 1994

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
-Donald Knuth

Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it.
-Seymore Cray, on virtual memory

Jolt is for Windows programmers. It's typical IBM PC: it goes in brown and comes out yellow. Mountain Dew is for Macintosh programmers: it goes in yellow and comes out yellow. It's WYSIWYP.
-Guy Kawasaki

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
-Mitch Ratliffe, _Technology Review_ April, 1992

Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
-Leonard Brandwein

At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
-The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985

Television: chewing gum for the eyes.
-Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)

We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
-Wernher von Braun, commenting on bureaucracy

The cable TV sex channels don't expand our horizons, don't make us better people, and don't come in clearly enough.
-Bill Maher

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press 3.
-Alice Kahn

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.
-John Von Neumann, 1949

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-Arthur C. Clarke

A day without fusion is like a day without sunshine.
-T-Shirt Saying from the Henry Cate, III Life Collection

There are three kinds of researchers: Those who can do math and those who cannot.
-Tom Rusk Vickery

Linux IS user friendly. It's just not very promiscuous about whom it's user friendly WITH.
-Button at Science Fiction Convention

If builders built buildings the way that programmers write programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
-Reede Stockton

Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don't let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.
-Clifford Stoll

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
-Andrew Tannenbaum

A one question geek test. If you think it's funny, you're a geek. Seen on a California liscense plate on a VW Beetle: "Feature"
-Joshua D. Wachs

Out the 10Base-T, through the router, down the T1, over the leased line, off the bridge, past the firewall...nothing but Net.

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
-Dick Cavett

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
-Charles Babbage

Commander, have you been able to determine the cause of the warp breach?
-Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek
No, sir. Everything was normal, and then, suddenly, it's like the laws of physics went right out the window.
-Lt. Cmdr. Geordi LaForge, Star Trek
And why shouldn't they? They're so inconvenient.
-Q, Star Trek

When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it's only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it's two hours. That's relativity.
-Albert Einstein

I could never make out what those damned dots meant.
-Lord Randolph Churchill, former Chancellor of the Exchequer (regarding decimal points)

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Media

Treat the media as you would any other watchdog. Stay calm, be friendly, let them sniff your hand, and never turn your back.
-Amy Sprinkles, Public Information Officer, City of Grand Prairie, Texas

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Money

How come there's only one Monopolies Commission?
-Nigel Rees

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
-Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged.) Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.
-Jules Feiffer (1965)

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.
-Everett Dirksen (Former Speaker of the House)

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People

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

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
-Henry David Thoreau

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

You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them.
-Malcolm Forbes

Character is defined by what we are willing to do when the spotlight has been turned off, when the applause has died down, and no one is around to give us credit.
-Penny Pennington

A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.
-Ambrose Bierce

There are three ways a man can be ruined: women, gambling, and farming. My father chose the most boring.
-Pope John XXIII (1881-1963)

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

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
-Edward O. Wilson

Men have become the tools of their tools.
-Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

You think the only people who are people,
Are the ones who look and think the way you do,
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger,
You'll learn the things you never knew you never knew...
You can own the Earth and still,
All you'll own is earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind.
-Stephen Schwartz, Colors of the Wind

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.
-Theodore Roosevelt

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world.
-Socrates

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.
-Arnold Bennett

Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.
-Barry Switzer

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
-P.T. Barnum

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.
-Indira Gandhi

You can't make one thin dime giving people what they need. You've got to give 'em what they want.
-Angel Martin

P.S. It is my observation that too many of us are spending money we haven't earned to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like.
-H. Jackson Brown's mom (from P. S. I Love You)

I do not care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
-Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
-August Strindberg

I never repeat gossip...so I'll say this only once.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
-Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better press than people who are just funny and smart.
-Howard Simons, The Washington Post

Some folks never exaggerate- they just remember big.
-Audrey Snead

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
-Douglas Adams

The things we fear most in organization - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances - are the primary sources of creativity.
-Margaret J. Wheatley

I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.
-Lily Tomlin

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself. Mankind. Basically, it's made up of two separate words-- "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.
-Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

If you don't like someone, the way he holds his spoon makes you furious; if you like him, he can turn his plate over into your lap and you won't mind.
-Irving Becker

The people to worry about are not those who openly disagree with you, but those who disagree with you who are too cowardly to let you know.
-Zingers

If we're going to be damned, let's be damned for who we really are.
-Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek

I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent.
-Q, Star Trek

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
-Henry Kissinger

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Personal Action

Be the change you want to see in the world.
-Mahatma Ghandi

When men speak ill of thee, so live that nobody will believe them.
-Plato

Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words; they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character for it will become your destiny.
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
-Hillel

If you've got a hammer, find a nail.
-President George Bush, 1991 State of the Union Address

Many of those engaged in a lemming-like march to the sea are proud of their individualism.
-Neal A. Maxwell

He that leaveth nothing to chance will do very few things ill, but he will do very few things.
-Lord Halifax

You may be whatever you resolve to be.
-General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson

The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved;' the pig was 'committed.'
I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Never before has man had such capacity to control his own destiny, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world--or make it the last.
-John F. Kennedy (Address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 20, 1963)

I'm tired of sailing my little boat,
far inside the harbor bar.
I want to go out where the big ships float,
out on the deep where the great ones are.
And should my frail craft prove too slight
for waves that sweep those billows o'er,
I'd rather go down in the stirring fight
than drowse to death at the sheltered shore.
-Author Unknown, quoted by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, July 19, 1988, Democratic National Convention, Atlanta, GA

'Do' or 'do not;' there is no 'try.'
-Yoda, Star Wars

You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.
-Dale Carnegie

Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.
-Arthur Freed

If you have to swallow a frog, try not to think about it. If you have to swallow two frogs, don't swallow the smaller one first.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
-Henry David Thoreau

Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.
-Hubert Humphrey

First they went after the Communists,
and I did not stand up, because I was not a Communist.
Then they went after the homosexuals and infirm,
and I did not stand up, because I was neither.
Then they went after the Jews,
and I did not stand up, because I was not a Jew.
Then they went after the Catholics,
and I did not stand up, because I was Protestant.
Finally, they went after me,
and there was no one left to stand up for me.
-Pastor Martin Neimoller

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and follow where they lead.
-Louisa May Alcott

Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough. I can single-handed move the world. / Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth.
-Archimedes (287-212 B.C.E.)

To err is human, to forgive divine.
-Alexander Pope

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

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I ... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost

If there is no wind, row.
-Latin Proverb

Avoid suspicion: when you're walking through your neighbor's melon patch, don't tie your shoe.
-Chinese Proverb

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.
-Henry David Thoreau

This is my chosen fast: to loosen all the bonds that bind men unfairly, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke. Share your bread with the hungry, take the homeless into your home. Clothe the naked when you see him, do not turn away from people in need. . . . If you remove from your midst the yoke of oppression, the finger of scorn and the tongue of malice, if you put yourself out for the hungry and relieve the wretched, then shall your light shine in darkness, and your gloom shall be as noonday. . . . And you shall be like a watered garden, like a never-failing spring. And you shall rebuild ancient ruins, restoring old foundations. You shall be known as the rebuilder of broken walls, the restorer of dwelling places.
-Isaiah

Use what talents you possess: The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
-Henry Van Dyke

Know yourself. Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
-Ann Landers

The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent.
-Charles Eliot Norton, True Patriotism, 1898

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

You should emulate your heroes, but don't carry it too far. Especially if they're dead.

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Psychology

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
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Sports

If you want to take long walks, take long walks. If you want to hit things with a stick, hit things with a stick. But there's no excuse for combining the two and putting the results on TV. Golf is not so much a sport as an insult to lawns.
-National Lampoon

That's Tom Glavine's sixth strikeout, for those of you scoring at home; or even if you're alone.
-Keith Olbermann

Ronald Reagan has held the two most demeaning jobs in the country -- President of the United States and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs.
-George Will

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.
-H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Golf is a good walk spoiled.
-Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Football is a mistake. It combines two of the worst things about American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
-George Will

Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
-Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc.

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War and Peace

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
-Oscar Wilde

One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
-Joseph Stalin

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction.
-General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)

After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
-Brooks Atkinson

War is a profanity because, let's face it, you've got two opposing sidestrying to settle their differences by killing as many of each other as they can.
-Norman Schwartzkopf

Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need, not as a call to battle, though embattled we are, but as a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle - a struggle against the common enemies of man - tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
-John F. Kennedy

Do not needlessly endanger your lives until I give you the signal.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

What a beautiful fix we are in now; peace has been declared.
-Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) after the Treaty of Amiens, 1802

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

Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for.
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

EXCERPTS FROM MURPHY'S LAWS OF COMBAT
1. If the enemy is in range, so are you.
2. Incoming fire has the right of way.
3. Don't look conspicuous, it draws fire.
8. The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions: a) when you're ready for them and b) when you're not ready for them.
9. Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at.
12. A "sucking chest wound" is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
14. Never draw fire, it irritates everyone around you.
19. When you have secured an area, don't forget to tell the enemy.
20. Never forget that your weapon is made by the lowest bidder.
27. Remember, a retreating enemy is probably just falling back and regrouping.
71. When both sides are convinced they are about to lose, they're both right.

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

There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
-Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

How come the dove gets to be the peace symbol? How about the pillow? It has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have that dangerous beak.
-Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
-Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

When you have shot and killed a man, you have in some measure clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem. For better or for worse, you have acted decisively. In a way the next move is up to him!
-Robert Heinlein

No matter what happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping.
-Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, December 5, 1941 (day before the bombing of Pearl Harbor)

I hate quotations. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)