Contact Michael at: msr@casbah.acns.nwu.edu
AMERICA
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel,
even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice
as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
H.L. Mencken
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
H. L. Mencken
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
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
Richard M. Nixon
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without
civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
Frank Lloyd Wright
An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.
America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one
dollar, and use it up in two weeks.
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ART
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
Stella Adler
I had always loved beautiful and artistic things, though before leaving
America I had had a very little chance of seeing any.
Emma Albani
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into
his pictures.
Henry Ward Beecher
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things,
and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
Leonardo DaVinci
Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and
have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity then they really are.
Henry Fielding
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe
to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only
art matters, I do belive in Art for Art's sake.
E. M. Forster
Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom
Robert Frost
Art is a collarboration between God an the artist, and the less the artist
does the better.
Andre Gide
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
Paul Guaguin
You're an actor, are you? Well, all that means is: you are irresponsible,
irrational, romantic, and incapable of handling an adult emotion or a
universal concept without first reducing it to something personal, material,
sensational -- and probably sexual!
George Herman, "A Company of Wayward Saints"
The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.
Jawaharial Nehru
But that's what being an artist _is_ -- feeling crummy before everyone else
feels crummy.
The New Yorker
Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.
Kate Reid
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has
experienced.
Leo Tolstoy
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of
immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
Edith Warton
I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always
to be out of step with his time.
Orson Welles, 1966
A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
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CHILDREN/YOUTH (See Marriage/Family)
Childhood: The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of
infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes from the sin of manhood and
three from the remorse of age.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by
our children.
Clarence Darrow
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
You can call her an outdoor girl if she has the bloom of youth on her cheeks
and the cheeks of youth in her bloomers.
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort
to teach them good manners.
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word
what you shouldn't have said.
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COMPUTERS
If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a
Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and
explode once a year killing everyone inside.
Robert Cringely/InfoWorld
To err is human--and to blame it on a computer is even more so.
Orben's Current Comedy
Copmuters are useless. They can only give you answers.
Pablo Picasso
Computers aren't intelligent, they only think they are.
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least
until we've finished building it.
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CONSERVATIVE/LIBERAL
Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
Aristotle
The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with
a liberal.
Peter Brimelow, National Review (2/1/93)
Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are
quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman.
William F. Buckley, Jr. "The Wit and Wisdom of Vlad the Impaler"
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most
luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated
by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents,
and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
Robert Frost
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral
philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for
selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
Elbert Hubbard, "Epigrams"
What is conservativism? Is it not the aherence to the old and tried against
the new and untried?
Abraham Lincoln
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are
conservatives.
John Stuart Mill
A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake, at the moment.
Willis Player
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never learned
to walk.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
Leo C. Rosten
The man for whom law exists -- the man of forms, the Conservative, is a tame
man.
Henry David Thoreau
A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the
first time.
Alfred E. Wiggam
It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without
changing a single idea.
Robert Anton Wilson
A religious conservative is a fanatic about a dead radical.
A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. A conservative is a liberal
who's been mugged.
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DEATH
I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of
underwear.
Woody Allen
Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down. The
difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and
no one is going to make fun of you.
Woody Allen
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
Woody Allen
I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life
fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of
hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
Isaac Asimov
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear
in children is increased by tales, so is the other.
Francis Bacon, "Of Death"
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great
ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Winston Churchill
Death is a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees.
J.J. Furnas
I wouldn't mind dying -- it's the business of having to stay dead that scares
the shit out of me.
R. Geis
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing
whatever to do with it.
W. Somerset Maughm
When the Black Camel comes for me, I'm not going to go kicking and screaming
-- I am, however, going to try to talk my way out of it. "No, no, you want
the other Walter Slovotsky."
Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg
We who are about to die, are going to take one hell of a lot of the bastards
with us.
Karl Cullinane, "The Silver Crown" by Joel Rosenberg
Death: to stop sinning suddenly.
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DECADENCE
It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
Tallulah Bankhead
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring
the deadening effect of a habit.
W. Somerset Maugham
Once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of
robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and
from that to incivility and procrastination.
Thomas De Quincey
I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know
why I'll do it again.
Bart Simpson
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose
from.
Andres S. Tannenbaum
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty
sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
Elizabeth Taylor
When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never
tried before.
Mae West
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
Mae West
I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy.
Bern Williams
If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for tomorrow
morning, sleep late.
Henny Youngman
The good die young - because they see it's no use living if you've got to be
good.
Virtue is its own reward, but then so is sin!
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DESIRE
It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
Walter Bagehot, "Biographical Studies" 1863
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so
regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for
us.
Alexander Graham Bell
Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire
William Blake
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp -- or what's a heaven for?
Robert Browning
You know, sometimes a man just can't satisfy all of a woman's desires. Which
is why God invented dental floss.
Susanne Kollrack
It's not peace I want, not mere contentment. It's boundless joy and ecstasy
for me.
Kugell
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
Charlie McCarthy
Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish.
Michelangelo
Those who flee temptation generally leave a forwarding address.
Lane Olinghouse
I'm a simple man. All I want is enough sleep for two normal men, enough
whiskey for three, and enough women for four.
Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg
Whatever you want too much you can't have, so when you REALLY want something,
try to want it a little less.
Walter Slovotsky, "The Sleeping Dragon" by Joel Rosenberg
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The
other is to gain it.
George Bernard Shaw
I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for
me do not tempt me.
George Bernard Shaw
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
Mae West
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Oscar Wilde
Help me to resist temptation, Lord, especially when I know no one is looking.
If you haven't all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't
have that you wouldn't want
What is my loftiest ambition? I've always wanted to throw an egg at an
electric fan.
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ECONOMICS/MONEY/BUSINESS
What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
Frank Adams
Isn't it strange? The same people who laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take
economists seriously.
Cincinnati Enquirer
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real
money.
Everett Dirksen
Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers (six if one went
to Harvard).
Edgar R. Fiedler
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
John Kenneth Galbraith
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
J. Paul Getty
I'm proud of paying taxes. The only thing is--I could be just as proud for
half the money.
Arthur Godfrey
The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries.
It is an invention of civilization.
Mikhail Gorbachev (June 8, 1990)
The trick is to stop thinking it as `your' money.
IRS auditor
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do
the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone
Keynes
The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.
Karl Marx
If Karl, instead of writing a lot about capital, had made a lot of it ... it
would have been much better.
Karl Marx's Mother
I am not an economist. I am an honsest man!
Paul McCracken
An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly,
but he always decides.
John H. Patterson
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted
yesterday didn't happen today.
Laurence J. Peter
When better business decisions are made, economists won't make them.
H. V. Prochnow
I'd give $1000 to be a millionaire.
Lewis Timberlake
I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the
position.
Mark Twain
Economists are people who work with numbers but don't have the personality
to be accountants.
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as
afterward.
Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover can in years.
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
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EDUCATION
Learning is finding out what you already know
Richard Bach
Academy: A modern school where football is taught.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish
their lack of understanding.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern
but impossible to enslave.
Baron Henry Peter Brougham
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in
students.
John Ciardi
The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects
on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these
things...
Richard Feynman
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity
of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
Anatole France
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
Ben Franklin
If you have both feet planted on level ground, then the university has failed
you.
Robert F. Goheen
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
Hellen Keller
I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor
or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority
viewpoint--no matter how distasteful to the majority, provided. . .
Richard M. Nixon
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
Laurence J. Peter
Try not to have a good time...this is supposed to be educational.
Charles Schulz
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and
art into pedantry. Hence University education.
George Bernard Shaw
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board
Mark Twain
About all some parents accomplish in life is to send a child to Harvard.
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my educations.
The purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place to
spend one's leisure.
The purpose of a liberal arts education is to learn that a person can like
both cats *and* dogs!
The purpose of a liberal education is to make you philisophical enough to
accept the fact that you will never make much money.
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EGO
Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.
Tallulah Bankhead
An egotist is a person of low taste--more interested in himself than in me.
Ambrose Bierce
Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space
Diana Black
I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.
Cary Grant
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
Henry Kissinger
Don't be so humble, you're not that great.
Golda Meir
I'd probably be famous now if I wasn't such a good waitress
Jane Siberry
I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
Mae West
When science finally locates the center of the universe, some people will be
surprised to learn they're not it.
Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware
of it.
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EXPERIENCE
Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of
youth for those of age.
Ambrose Bierce
Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the
experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it.
Jimmy Connors
Experience is a good school, but the fees are high.
Heinrich Heine
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake
when you make it again.
F.P. Jones
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first and the lessons
afterwards.
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
Trouble brings experience, and experience brings wisdom.
Experience is what you got by not having it when you need it.
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FOOLS
Silence is the virtue of fools.
Francis Bacon
There's no fool like an old fool -- you can't beat experience.
Jacob Braude
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain -- and most fools do.
Dale Carnegie
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask reamins a
fool forever.
Old Chinese saying
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool
may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
Charles Caleb Colton
The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old
fools.
Doug Larson
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenius.
Edsel Murphy
There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
Niven's Law # 16
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill
the world with fools.
Herbert Spencer
As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty
may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Jonathan Swift
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.
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FRIENDS/ENEMIES
Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as any other
fragile and precious thing.
Randolph S. Bourne
True friendship is never serene.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies.
Oscar Wilde
We really don't have enemies. It's just that some of our best friends are
trying to kill us.
Advice from your friends in like the weather, some of it is good, some of it
is bad.
Never speak ill of yourself; your friends will always say enough on that
subject.
With clothes the new are best, with friends the old are best.
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FUTURE
More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to
despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray
that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
Woody Allen
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
Niels Bohr
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.
Benjamin Disraeli
We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to
give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are
like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large
samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set
to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like.
Alfred Hitchcock
The trouble with out times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Paul Valery
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less
time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness
and respecting her seniority.
E.B. White
It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits
of science that it equips the future for its duties.
Alfred North Whitehead
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HAPPINESS
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another
city.
George Burns
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without
action.
Benjamin Disraeli
He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
H.H. Munro
Happiness is just an illusion caused by the temporary absence of reality.
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
another.
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HERO/LEGEND/VALOR
Legend--a lie that has attained the dignity of age.
H. L. Mencken
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and
a courageous person afterward.
Jean Paul Richter
Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.
Will Rogers
I find that we all get more legendary as time goes by. "Legend" means,
basically, "bullshit."
Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg
Slovotsky's Law Number Thirty-One: Get scared right away; avoid the rush.
Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg
Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of
energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the
fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be
creamed?
Solomon Short
...the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is
before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet
it.
Thucydides
Heroes have an infinite capacity for stupidity. Thus are legends born!
They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally they became
heroes.
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HISTORY/PAST
Even God cannot change the past.
Agathon
What is history but a fable agreed upon?
Napolean Bonaparte
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill
If you had your life to live over again--you'd need more money.
Construction Digest
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.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times
like these.
Paul Harvey
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from
age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
Aldous Huxley, "The Devils of Loudun"
Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to
mathematics, in that it involves selective breeding. The principal
difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former
breeds sheep or cows or such, and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The
husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future; the historian uses his to
enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.
Tom Robbins
Any event, once it has occurered, can be made to appear inevitable by a
competent historian.
Lee Simonson
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable
must Man be of learning from experience
George Bernard Shaw
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or
not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot
remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces
like this but we all have to do it.
Mark Twain
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
Voltaire
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells
History is made at night. Character is what you are in the dark.
Lord John Whorfin
We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history.
Living in the past has one thing in its favor - it's cheaper.
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HUMOR
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
Fred Allen
Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
Victor Borge
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer
and die.
Mel Brooks
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.
Jean de La Bruyere
A joke is a very serious thing.
Winston Churchill
Humor is a universal language.
Joel Goodman
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
Heisenberg
If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit
of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
Herodotus
A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then
says them about other people.
Peter McArthur
Humor is our greatest natural resource.
James Thurber
Seven days without laughter makes one weak.
Mort Walker
If you think before you speak the other guy gets its joke in first.
A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part
of his body - the wishbone.
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to
be amused.
The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement.
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IMMORTALITY
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it
through not dying.
Woody Allen
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on
a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.
Stephen King
When we are young
Wandering the face of the Earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we're only immortal --
For a limited time
"Dreamline" -- Rush
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KNOWLEDGE/WISDOM (see Mind/Intelligence)
I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking
up something and finding something else on the way.
Franklin P. Adams
Even a fool knows you can't touch the stars, but it doesn't stop a wise man
from trying.
Harry Anderson, "Night Court"
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can
solve them.
Isaac Asimov
The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.
Richard Cecil
Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.
Confucius
It takes a long time to understand nothing.
Edward Dahlberg
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein
The little I know I owe to my ignorance.
Sacha Guitry
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not
understand.
Frank Herbert
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we
can find information on it.
Samuel Johnson
Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune
Nicholas Ling
A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of
five.
Groucho Marx
It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
William G. McAdoo
A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
Montaigne
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in
it -- and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove
lid. She will never sit on a hot stove lid again -- and that is well; but
also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Mark Twain
Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.
Gene Wolfe
Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome indecision of knowledge.
Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise
at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach,
and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these
practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being
that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of
them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has
killed all the others who have tried it.
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LANGUAGE
Language is a virus from outer space.
William S. Burroughs
>From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which
I will not put.
Winston Churchill
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak
it to?
Clarence Darrow
The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater
the profit.
Felelon
If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!
"Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas
We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave
danger they will be misinterpreted.
H. R. Haldeman, testifying in his own defense.
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard Kipling
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their
children to speak it.
George Bernard Shaw
How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.
Herbert Spencer
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
Lily Tomlin
A witty saying proves nothing
Voltaire
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. Language is
not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.
Benjamin Whorf
Conversation is the slowest form of human communication.
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
*******************************************************************
LAST WORDS
Thomas Jefferson--still surv...
John Adams
Now comes the mystery.
Henry Ward Beecher, March 8, 1887
Friends applaud, the Comedy is over.
Ludwig von Beethoven
I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used.
Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian
Goodbye, Everybody!
Hart Crane, poet, who committed suicide by jumping overboard during a
steamship voyage.
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath
of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across
the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
Crowfoot, Blackfoot warior and orator, 1890
Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.
Georges Danton, to his executioner
...the fog is rising
Emily Dickinson's last words
The nourishment is palatable.
Millard Fillmore
More light!
Goethe
Dieu me pardonnera. C'est son m‚tier.
(God will forgive me. It's his job.)
Heinrich Heine
And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the
latest in blood and guts, in living color, you're about to see another first
-- an attempted suicide.
Chris Hubbock, who shot herself during a broadcast
This is the fourth?
Thomas Jefferson
Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.
Karl Marx to his housekeeper
Drink to me.
Pablo Picasso
Why yes -- a bulletproof vest.
James Rodges, murderer, on his final request before the firing squad
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist---
General John B. Sedgwick, 1864
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?
Socrates
What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?
Gertrude Stein
Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.
Pancho Villa
I still live.
Daniel Webster
Go away...I'm alright.
H. G. Wells
Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
Oscar Wilde
*******************************************************************
LAW
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to
sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Robert Frost
Justice is incidental to law and order.
J. Edgar Hoover
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 illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Henry Kissinger
When I grow up, I want to be an honest lawyer so things like that can't
happen.
Richard Nixon (young) on Teapot Dome scandal
Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.
Erik Pepke
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and
its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every
day who don't know anything and can't read.
Mark Twain
English Law prohibits a man from marrying his mother-in-law. This is our
idea of useless legislation.
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
You are better off not knowing how sausages and laws are made.
Council for the defence was prepared to prove: 1) He shot in self defence,
2) The police did it and stuck the gun in his hand, and 3) He was 100 miles
away when it happened.
*******************************************************************
LIFE
A life without cause is a life without effect
Barbarella
My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive.
Bugs Bunny
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem
more afraid of life than death.
James F. Byrnes
If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a
shortage of fishing pole.
Doug Larson
Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
Fran Lebowitz
People find life entirely too time-consuming.
Stanislaw J. Lec
Life is too serious to be taken seriously.
Mike Leonard
If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of
myself.
Mickey Mantle
In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.
Kathy Norris
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have
rushed through life trying to save.
Will Rogers
Am I lightheaded because I'm not dead or because I'm still alive?
Heidi Sandige
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner,
you have learned how to live.
Lin Yutang
What is life, except excuse for death, or death but an escape from life.
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
Live every day as if it were your last and then some day you'll be right.
Like most endeavors, life is seriously over-advertised and under-funded
All of the animals except man know that the principal business of life is to
enjoy it.
There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing.
The living are getting rarer.
*******************************************************************
LOGIC/REASON
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with
the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
"Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if it
were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
Lewis Carroll
Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it,
she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.
Goya
Only a brave person is willing to honestly admit, and fearlessly to face,
what a sincere and logical mind discovers.
Rodan of Alexandria
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on
the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon
to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde
The decision doesn't have to be logical, it was unanimous.
*******************************************************************
LOVE (See Sex)
To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one
suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to
suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then,
is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one
must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.
Woody Allen
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but
among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W. H. Auden
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
Charlie Brown
Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it
enkindles the great.
Comte DeBussy-Rabutin
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
Albert Einstein
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when
they no longer love each other.
Francois, Duc de La Rouchefoucald
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of
his personality
Victor Frankel
Love is an irresistable desire to be irresistably desired.
Robert Frost
A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he's finished.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Love is a hole in the heart.
Ben Hecht
Love is like pi -- natural, irrational, and VERY important.
Lisa Hoffman
People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
Ken Kesey
Love is only the dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the
species.
W. Somerset Maugham, "A Writer's Notebook" 1949
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
H. L. Mencken
Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the
recognition.
Alexander Smith
Many a young lady does not realize just how strong her love for a young man
is until he fails to pass the approval test with her parents.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.
*******************************************************************
MARRIAGE/FAMILY (See Children/Youth)
A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing.
Joey Adams
Marriage is give and take. You'd better give it to her or she'll take it
anyway.
Joey Adams
I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you.
Edward Albee
It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is
more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to
time.
Honor‚ de Balzac, "The Physiology of Marriage" 1829
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything:
familiarity.
Honor‚ de Balzac, "The Physiology of Marriage" 1829
Marriage is the result of the longing for the deep, deep peace of the double
bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue.
Mrs. Patrick Campbell
My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we ahd to stop or our marriage
would have been wrecked.
Winston Churchill
Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests, since
they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
Marriage is a lottery, but you can't tear up your ticket if you lose.
F. M. Knowles
There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic
banking. It's called marriage.
James Holt McGavran
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be
married too.
H. L. Mencken
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and
those inside equally desperate to get out.
Michel de Montaigne
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not
hereditary.
Thomas Paine
Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
Mark Twain
By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has
a son who thinks he's wrong.
Charles Wadsworth
Never try to guess your wife's size. Just buy her anything marked `petite'
and hold on to the receipt.
There may be some doubt as to who are the best people to have children, but
there can be no doubt that parents are the worst.
Marriage is like the army. Everybody complains, but you'd be surprised at
how many re-enlist.
Do you think your mother and I should have lived comfortably so long together
if ever we had been married?
There is one thing more exasperating than a spouse who can cook and won't,
and that's a spouse who can't cook and will.
In marriage, as in war, it is permitted to take every advantage of the enemy.
My notion of a wife at forty is that a man should be able to change her, like
a bank note, for two twenties.
*******************************************************************
MATH
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and
as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine
are still greater.
Albert Einstein
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate
into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
Goethe
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
M.C. Reed
Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty -- a
beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
Bertrand Russell
. . . it is certain that the real function of art is to increase our
self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of
what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics, in its
own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming
but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art.
John W.N. Sullivan
The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not
early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles
blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.
James Joseph Sylvester
Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery
of the finger of God.
Herbert Westren Turnbull
Perhaps the purpose of categorical algebra is to show that which is trivial,
is trivially trivial.
This makes sense. This over here, this does not make sense. That's why I
called it algebra.
Trying to solve differential equations is a yourful aberration that you will
soon grow out of.
Nature abhors secord order differential equations.
Sometimes it's useful to know how large your zero is.
*******************************************************************
MIND/INTELLIGENCE (see Knowledge/wisdom)
95% of this game is half mental.
Yogi Berra
Since when was genius found respectable?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
Arthur C. Clarke
It is no longer my moral duty as a human being to achieve an integrated and
unitary set of explanations for my thoughts and feelings.
Bronwyn Davies
Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.
Thomas Dewar
There are only two truly infinite things, the universe and stupidity. And
I am unsure about the universe.
Albert Einstein
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Intellectual brilliance is no guarentee against being dead wrong.
David Fasold
George was a great dunce, but no matter for that: all men do not thrive in
the world according to their learning.
Henry Fielding
Don't play dumb. You're not as good at it as I am.
Colonel Flagg, MASH
That we can comprehend the little we know already is mindboggling in itself.
Tom Gates
Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity.
Remy De Gourmant
Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
Robert Graves
Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original
dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine
on it, the more it will contract.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Elbert Hubbard
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or
becomes true.
John Lilly
Like most intellectuals, he is imensely stupid.
Marquise de Merteuil
The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many
accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more.
Ed Parker
If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to
understand it.
Emerson Pugh
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an
international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
George Bernard Shaw
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
George Bernard Shaw
The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions
-- which time and mediocrity can solve.
Hugh Trevor-Roper, "Men and Events"
The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the
world, but to change it.
Colin Wilson
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means
that only left handed people are in their right mind.
The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its
limits.
Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in
the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of
thinking.
If we increase the size of the penguin until it is the same height as a man
and then compare the relative brain size, we know find that the penguin's
brain is still smaller. But, and this is the point, it is larger than it WAS!
Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.
When a stupid person is doing something it is ashamed of, it always declares
that it is his job.
*******************************************************************
MISC
Miscellaneous is always the largest category.
Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg
That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life
forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid
meeting.
Marvin, "Life, the Universe, and Everything" by Douglas Adams
I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating
a dead horse.
Woody Allen
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotle
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Walter Bagehot
The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the
woman.
Honor‚ de Balzac, "The Physiology of Marriage" 1829
A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.
Barbarella
...once can imagine the government's problem. This is all pretty magical
stuff to them. If I were trying to terminate the operations of a witch
coven, I'd probably seize everything in sight. How would I tell the ordinary
household brooms from the getaway vehicles?
John Perry Barlow
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
Paul Beatty
We have deep depth.
Yogi Berra
We made too many wrong mistakes.
Yogi Berra
You can observe a lot by just watching.
Yogi Berra
A kiss is a rosy dot over the 'i' of loving.
Cyrano de Bergerac
There are 4 kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and
praiseworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
Belladonna: In Italian, a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you
do not entertain.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state
religion.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from
you.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is.
Ashleigh Brilliant
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong
direction.
Ashleigh Brilliant
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the
target.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
Ashleigh Brilliant
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Winston Churchill
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as
equals.
Winston Churchill
There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
Winston Churchill
Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
Winston Churchill
It's a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
Winston Churchill
I'll play with it first and tell you what it is later.
Miles Davis
Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.
Charles G. Dawes
Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead
of using it
Gordon R. Dickson
Get your cut throat off my knife
Diane Diprima, "Nightmare Gallery"
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppresiion. It is in such
twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight-
-lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
W. O. Douglas
Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's
useless.
Thomas Alva Edison
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason
for existing.
Albert Einstein
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The
latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to
hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and science.
Albert Einstein
A signature always reveals a man's character--and sometimes even his name.
Evan Esar
Only those who attempt the absurd...will achieve the impossible. I think
...I think it's in my basement...Let me go upstairs and check.
Escher
Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to
be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.
Millicent Fenwick
There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the
tail and face the situation
W. C. Fields
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
J. K. Galbraith
Expressing anger is a form of public littering.
Willard Gaylin
A kiss: the anatomical juxtaposition of 2 orbicularis oris muslces in a
state of contraction.
Dr. Henry Gibbons
Lif is too short
Bart Gold
The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does
not admit of -- the last he does not concern himself about.
William Hazlitt
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything.
Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Robert Heinlein
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
D. J. Hicks
There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not
very incriminating.
Alfred Hitchcock
The paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace the
hardcover book--it makes a very poor doorstop.
Alfred Hitchcock
I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as
in what direction we are moving; To reach the port of heaven, we must sail
sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it--but we must sail, and not
drift, nor lie at anchor.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Hypocrisy is the lubricant of society.
David Hull
A lady came up to me on the street and pointed to my suede jacket. "You know
a cow was murdered for that jacket?" she sneered. I replied in a psychotic
tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you
too."
Jake Johanson
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
Brian W. Kernighan
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Disclaimer: If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared to
not only retract it, but also to deny under oath I ever said it.
T. Lehrer
Nearly all men can stand adveristy, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln
It takes less time to do a thing right than explain why you did it wrong.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct,
or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction
of a new order to things.
N. Machiavelli
Every once in a while a film comes along. This is such a film.
Mad Magazine
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
H. L. Mencken
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov
Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet
reminds you of someone else.
Ogden Nash
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
Nietzsche
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Nietzsche
Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest
enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!
Nietzsche
Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be acheinved
only through persistent exercise of real love.
M. Scott Peck, M.D.
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where
you heard it.
Laurence J. Peter
It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will not
be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves and
because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like mature
human beings...
Playboy, January 1983
A woman is like a tea bag--you can't tell how strong she is until you put her
in hot water.
Nancy Reagan
Plato had slaves...George Washington had slaves...So, do I feel intrinsically
better than these two men? Of course I do! They're dead!
Todd Andrew Reid
We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
L. Rochefoucauld
Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am
the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.
Karl Cullinane "The Silver Crown" by Joel Rosenberg
There just isn't any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.
Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg
Man tends to root for the underdog, because he fears that he will find
himself in that same position far too often.
Michael S. Rosenberg
If you are going to do something wrong at least enjoy it.
Leo Rosten
However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
manner...sulking and nausea.
Tom K. Ryan
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
George Santayana
I often quote myself, it adds spice to my conversation.
George Bernard Shaw
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing
George Bernard Shaw
Finally, in conclusion, let me say just this.
Peter Sellers
A kiss: To a young girl, faith; to a married woman, hope; to an old maid,
charity.
V.P. Skipper
All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height.
Casey Stengel
We are in such a slump that even the ones that aren't drinkin' aren't
hittin'.
Casey Stengel
I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
Lily Tomlin
When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
Mark Twain
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Mark Twain
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to
read.
Mark Twain
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Mark Twain
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits:
freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
Mark Twain
Since the mind is specific biocomputer it needs specific instruction and
directions. The reason most people never reach their goals is that they
don't define them, learn about them, or even seriously consider them as
believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what
they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with
them.
Denis Waitley
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist
in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
Alan Watts
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions,
their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that
is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to
oneself.
Oscar Wilde
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely
fatal.
Oscar Wilde
In any closet, you can find it, if it is too small, or out of style, or there
is just one of it where there should be two.
People can travel faster than sound, yes, but not nearly so fast as rumor!
A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes
a fool of him in twenty minutes.
...If I seem to give a damn, please tell me. I would hate to be giving the
wrong impression.
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith.
About the only thing we have left that actually discriminates in favor of the
plain people is the stork.
Some men are discovered; others are found out.
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
In place of infinity we usually put some really big number, like 15.
Anonymous Computer Science professor
The most difficult part of attaining perfection is finding something to do
for an encore.
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
A guy has to get fresh once in a while so the girl doesn't lose her
confidence.
It's a useless but absolutely vital precaution.
If you want to commit suicide you can use my razor; it's electric, but you
can hang yourself with the cord.
...an eternity with Beelzebub and all his hellish instruments of death shall
be a picnic compared to five minutes with me...and this pencil.
Never send a monster to do the work of an evil genius.
All the sex and twice the violence... HARSH realm.
I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading one, so
I woke up from sheer boredom.
Eat a live frog, every morning, and nothing worse will happen to you all day.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
*******************************************************************
MUSIC
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys
at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
Johann Sebastian Bach
In the first movement alone, I took note of six pregnancies and at least four
miscarriages.
Sir Thomas Beecham -- on Bruckner's 7th symphony
A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
Sir Thomas Beecham
I see music as the augmentation of a split second of time.
Erin Cleary
These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired
when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm.
Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound
achieved by the pig.
Alfred Hitchcock
Without music life would be a mistake
Friedrich Nietzsche
Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
Gioacchino Rossini
Wagner's music is better than it sounds
Mark Twain
Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
*******************************************************************
OPTIMISM/PESSIMISM
What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.
Raymond Aron, "The Opium of the Intellectuals" 1957
Optimism: The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly,
everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. ...
It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.
Ambrose Bierce
I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want,
forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will.
Clint Eastwood
The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
Havelock Ellis
Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an
optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of
events.
Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist
fears it is true.
Robert Oppenheimer
A pessimist is someone who has had to listen to too many optimists
*******************************************************************
POLITICS
The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to
burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
William H. Borah
I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection
with income tax policies.
William F. Buckley
Diplomacy --- the art of saying "Nice doggie" 'til you can find a stick.
Wynn Catlin
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of givernment except all
the others that have been tried.
Winston Churchill
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. Clarke
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the
disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that
would be clearly understood.
Alexander Haig
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex--but
Congress can.
Cullen Hightower
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
Abbie Hoffman
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the
headline that afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM
Lyndon B. Johnson
In political discussion heat is in inverse proportion to knowledge.
J.G.C. Minchin
In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
Napoleon
Nothing would please the Kremlin more than to have the people of this country
choose a second rate president.
Richard M. Nixon
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men
in national government too.
Richard M. Nixon
If Communism goes, I've still got the U.S. House of Representatives.
Robert Novak
No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making
other bastards die for their country.
George Smith Patton
Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will
get the blame.
Laurence J. Peter
I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
Will Rogers
I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will Rogers
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
working for you.
Will Rogers
Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
Will Rogers
I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we've
been voting for boobs long enough.
Clarie Sargent, Arizona senatorial candidate
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
Our elections are free--it's in the results where eventually we pay.
Bill Stern
A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a
leader.
Harry Truman
No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in
session.
Judge Gideon J. Tucker
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly
American criminal class except Congress.
Mark Twain
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted
for President. One hopes it is the same half.
Gore Vidal
I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen
more of them who were paralyzed in the head.
George Wallace
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a congressperson can.
A radical is a person with both feet firmly planted in the air.
Lighthouse: A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains
a lamp and the friend of a politician.
With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law; and every time they
make a law it's a joke.
This last Presidential election was something like the sex life of many
people. They had to settle for what they could get.
There is a certain inevitability to a couple of things. Death and taxes come
to mind. However, death doesn't get worse every time the legislators come
together.
Republicans employ exterminators. Democrats step on bugs.
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
Don't vote, it only encourages them.
*******************************************************************
PROBLEM/SOLUTION
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
Ashleigh Brilliant
When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how
to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not
beautiful, I know it is wrong.
Richard Buckminster Fuller
For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.
Alan Saporta
*******************************************************************
PROCRASTINATION
By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely
overwhelm me.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
Don Marquis
Procrastination is the thief of time.
John Dos Pasos
The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up.
Nothing is really work unless you'd rather be doing something else.
*******************************************************************
RELIGION
To *you* I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
Woody Allen
Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired
book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who
follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with
a life of sin.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side
of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler
It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create
him.
Arthur C. Clarke
I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure
of.
Clarence Darrow
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with
our frail and feeble mind.
Albert Einstein
I want to know all Gods thoughts...all the rest are just details.
Albert Einstein
I could prove God statistically.
George Gallup
Who says I am not under the special protection of God?
Adolf Hitler
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
Alfred Jarry
In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him.
"Aqualung" - Jethro Tull
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world
ugly and bad.
Nietzsche
If a person wants to be atheistic it's his God-given right to be an atheist
Michael Patton
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Alan J. Perlis, "Epigrams of Programming"
My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and
denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their
human interests.
George Santayana
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
George Bernard Shaw
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar Wilde
I believe in god, I just don't like him.
Religions revolve madly around sexual questions.
The churches must learn humility as well as teach it.
*******************************************************************
SANITY
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Aristotle
Mad, adj: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
It's good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full
responsibility for me.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
Heinrich Heine
It's great to be young and insane.
Michael Keaton, "Dream Team"
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
Ursula K. LeGuin
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond resonable doubt.
Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always
worked for me.
Hunter S. Thompson
Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.
Henrik Tikkanen
*******************************************************************
SCIENCE
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the
study of carbon compounds that crawl.
Mike Adams
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but "That's funny..."
Isaac Asimov
When the lay public rallies round to an idea that is denounced by
distinguished by elderly scientists and supports the idea with great fervour
and emotion, the distinguished but elderly scientests are then, after all,
right.
Isaac Asimov
The chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane
impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons
and poverty, yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly, that may
I die if I would change places with the Persian King.
Johann Becher
Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and
springs, and believes it civilization.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
May every young scientist remember... and not fail to keep his eyes open for
the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give
consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important
discovery.
Patrick Blackett
God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and
Saturday.
Sir William Bragg
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
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
mihgt as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the
mathematics of probability.
Vannevar Bush
As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise,
human science is at a loss.
Noam Chomsky
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
Robert R. Coveyou
It has been a bitter moritification for me to digest the conclusion that the
'race is for the strong' and that I shall probably do little more but be
content to admire the strides others made in science.
Charles Darwin
The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one
graveyard to another.
J. Frank Dobie, "A Texan in England" 1945
Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it.
Aubrey Eben
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
Thomas Edison
....I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas Edison
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
Robert Heinlein
Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the
later only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods
differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and
thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
Thomas Henry Huxley
The great tragedy of Science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an
ugly fact.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Scientists are the easiest to fool. They think in straight, predictable,
directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is
the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they
appear to be. Children and conjurors -- they terrify me. Scientists are no
problem; against them I feel quite confident.
Zambendorf, "Code of the Lifemaker" by James P. Hogan
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
Immanuel Kant
Science when well digested is nothing but good sense and reason.
Stanislaw I Leszczynski
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise
require harder thinking.
Jerome Lettvin
If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
Lazarus Long
Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open
the way to the next better one.
Konrad Lorenz
I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh
my commitment to science.
Heinz Pagels, "The Dreams of Reason"
There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.
Louis Pasteur
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
E. Rutherford
Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.
Carrie P. Snow
Science is organized knowledge.
Herbert Spencer
Discovery consits in seeing what everone else has seen and thinking what no
one else has thought.
Albert Szent-Gyorgi
No doubt, a scientist isn't necessarily penalized for being a complex,
versatile, eccentric individual with lots of extra-scientific interests. But
it certainly doesn't help him a bit.
Stephen Toulmin
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Mark Twain
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a
torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an
oracle, is inborn in us.
Paul Vale'ry, 1895
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
Wernher von Braun
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast
to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists,
a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also
just stupid.
James Watson
Gyroscope, n.:
A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to
rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each other and the axis
of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpendicular axes
results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning
and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on
the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the
axis of spin.
Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and
longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a
physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems
that he is already too old to solve them.
Eugene Wigner
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature,
humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
*******************************************************************
SELF
Argue for your limitations and sure enough they're yours
Richard Bach
Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of
lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
Montaigne
Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut
Do, or do not. There is no try.
Yoda
*******************************************************************
SEX (see Love)
Don't knock masturbation -- it's sex with someone I love.
Woody Allen
Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.
Woody Allen
I don't mind where people make love, so long as they don't do it in the
street and frighten the horses.
Mrs. Patrick Campbell
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you wont either.
Joseph Fischer
I know nothing about sex because I was always married.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
There's nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and
jelly sandwich is better than bad sex.
Billy Joel
When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.
Samuel Johnson
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. . . the other eight are
unimportant.
Herny Miller
A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you.
Francoise Sagan
Slovotsky's Law number Twenty-Three: Trouble with you Jewish girls is that
your desire to DO is in inverse proportion to your willingness to TALK about
it.
Walter Slovotsky, "The Sleeping Dragon" by Joel Rosenberg
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
Swami X
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
Voltaire
If you are ever in an S&M relationship, make damn sure you are the S.
Someone's mother to them
There is no remedy for sex but more sex.
Sex is like snow... You never know how many inches you're going to get or
how long it will last.
What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick.
Love is a matter of chemistry, but Sex is a matter of physics.
The thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount
of trouble is sex.
Pizza is a lot like sex. When it's good, it's really good. When it's bad,
it's still pretty good.
Just because a dress is red satin doesn't mean it will come off easily.
*******************************************************************
SEXIST
How is it . . . that some feminists still feel able to draw on biological
determinist arguments . . . to claim that women are naturally, biologically,
innately superior to men? . . . There is no uniquely feminine essence,
existing above and beyond social conditioning, that makes us creative,
empathetic, intuitive, nurturant, non-violent, and at one with Mother Earth.
Celia Kitzinger
Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no
one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't
have what it takes."
Clare Boothe Luce
Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing, they marry
later; for another thing they die earlier.
H. L. Mencken
I expect Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.
George Meredith
I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.
Marilyn Monroe
If a woman seeks education it is probably because her sexaul apparatus is
malfunctioning.
Nietzsche
If you go to see the woman, do not forget the whip.
Nietzsche
Women's virtue is man's greatest invention.
Cornelia Otis Skinner
If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a
woman.
Margaret Thatcher
Leave it to a girl to take the fun out of sex discrimination.
Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson
For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
Virginia Woolf
*******************************************************************
STATISTICS
I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first
lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of
infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was
Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political
statistic.
Winston Churchill
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli
If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of
ten it will.
Paul Harvey News, 1979
Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they
conceal is vital.
Aaron Levenstein
50% of this country's schoolchildren have IQ's below average. Under our
education policy, we can turn that around!
New Zealand National Pary candidate's campaign statement
49% of all statistics . . . are wrong.
Statistics Canada 1985
Numbers are like people; torture them enough and they'll tell you anything.
50% of the high school graduates in this country graduated in the bottom half
of their class.
50% of the citizens of this country have a below average understanding of
statistics.
49% of the U.S. population belongs to some minority group.
82.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
*******************************************************************
SUCCESS/FAILURE
My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be.
Charles Brower
If A equals success, then the formula is:
A= X + Y + Z
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it
made.
Jean Gieraudoux
If you wish to be a sucess in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.
Napoleon
It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Gore Vidal
Nothing succeeds like -- failure.
*******************************************************************
TIME
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
Woody Allen
Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women
pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
Wernher von Braun
Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.
Jon Lithgow
There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want
Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
*******************************************************************
TRUTH
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
Matthew Arnold
Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to
allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.
Peter Bechmann
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite
of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr
Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure I'll never find out the
truth.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill
It is always good policy to tell the truth unless of course you are an
exceptionally good liar.
Jerome K. Jerome
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
Stephen King
It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away,
I'm looking for the truth.' and so it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert M. Pirsig
I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.
Harry Truman
Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an
honest man.
Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin
Telling the truth to people who misunderstand you is generally promoting a
falsehood, isn't it?
Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is done by
children.
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a person of some sense to know
how to lie well.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
My way of joking is to tell the truth; it's the funniest joke in the world.
Liar: One who tells an unpleasant truth.
*******************************************************************
UNIVERSE/NATURE
There is a theory that state: "If anyone finds out what the universe is for
it will disappear and be replaced by something more bizzarly inexplicable."
There is another theory that states: "This has already happened..."
Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether
I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
Chang-tzu
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
Albert Einstein
God does not play dice with the universe.
Albert Einstein
It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who
want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to
do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no
matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
Galileo Galilei
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
Jules de Gaultier
It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine,
is queerer than we CAN imagine.
J.B.S. Haldane
My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it as
it is and why it exists as all.
Stephen Hawking
The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it unfriendly. It is simply
indifferent.
Rev. John H. Holmes
The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe,
the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the
other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and
patient. But we also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake,
or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
Thomas Henry Huxley
The farther it gets from the bench it was worked on, the more real the real
world becomes.
Todd Johnson
The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind
to correlate all its contents.
H. P. Lovecraft
You don't fuck around with the infinite
Mean Streets
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything
else in the universe.
John Muir (1838-1914)
For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all
in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and
infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their
beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He
is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and
the infinite in which he is engulfed.
Blaise Pascal
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
Reality is good for you...in small doses.
The universe is laughing behind your back.
*******************************************************************
WORDS
Aischbedellazouchecastleabbe
-title of song (Ash forest by the bridge next to the Castle Abbe)
Artiformologicalintactitudinarianisminist
-one who studies 4-5 letter latin prefixes and suffixes
Humuhumunukunukuapua'a
-the state fish of Hawaii (Reef Trigger Fish)
Kardivilliwarrakurrakurrieapparlandoo
-name of a lake in Northern Australia
Regnant populi. (The people rule.)
Pregnant ropuli. (The snake will soon lay eggs.)
*******************************************************************
WRITING
The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested
solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that
writing didn't require any.
Russell Baker
The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which
the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost
all sense and meaning.
Winston S. Churchill
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a
lamppost how it feels about dogs.
Christopher Hampton
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.