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Quotes from famous people - Part 0
Violent zeal for truth hath an hundred-to-one shot to be
either petulance, ambition, or pride.
:: Jonathan Swift (d. 1745) ::
People have no special rights because they belong to one race or another;
the word *human* defines all rights.
:: Jose Marti, My Race (1893) ::
Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what
one is talking about nor whether what is said is true.
Bertrand Russell
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
??Mark Twain
Honorable: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative
bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the
honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes.
Chinese Proverb
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing
because he could only do a little.
:: Edmund Burke
Quarrels would not last so long if the fault were only on one side.
:: Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) ?? Maximes, 1664
You have only three real friends:
Jesus Christ, Sears Roebuck, and Gene Talmadge.
:: Eugene Talmadge (1913- ), US Senate, to the voters of Georgia
They also swear who only stand and wait.
:: Addison Mizner (1872-1933) ::
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea if it's the only one you have.
:: Alain (d. 1951) ::
I only know two tunes;
one of them is "Yankee Doodle,"
and the other isn't.
:: Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-1885) ::
She was only a stableman's daughter,
but all the horsemen knew her.
Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive
away if your car could go straight upwards.
:: Sir Fred Hoyle (1979) ::
If only I had known,
I should have become a watchmaker.
:: Albert Einstein ::
The world is an oyster but you don't crack it open on a mattress.
:: Arthur Miller ::
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world
is also a confession of character.
:: Emerson (1860) ::
It is pure illusion to think that an opinion which passes down
from century to century, from generation to generation,
may not be entirely false.
:: Pierre Bayle (1682) ::
An opportunist counts his fingers
after shaking hands with another opportunist.
Give me librium or give me meth.
Far more crucial than what we know or do not know
is what we do not *want* to know.
:: Eric Hoffer (1954) ::
Work thou for pleasure - paint or sing or carve
The thing thou lovest, though the body starve -
Who works for glory misses oft the goal;
Who works for money coins his very soul.
Work for the work's sake, then, and it may be
That these things shall be added unto thee.
Kenyon Cox (1856-1919)
The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse
of modern times; one sometimes forgets which.
:: James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) ::
The structure of a system reflects the structure
of the organization that built it.
:: Richard Fairley, Wang Institute
My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.
:: George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), You Never Can Tell, 1898
Sometimes I think and other times I am.
:: Paul Valery (1924) ::
Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage,
one is helpless to make oneself understood.
:: Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1950) ::
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph
is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of
the days of Solomon's glory are those from whom the pessimistic
utterances of our Bible come.
:: William James (1897) ::
Murmur at nothing: if our ills are reparable,
it is ungrateful; if remediless, it is vain.
Shakespeare
The best way out is always through.
:: Robert Frost, A Servant to Servants, 1914
No one ever listened himself out of a job.
:: Calvin Coolidge
Advertizing is the art of making whole lies out of half truths.
:: Edgar A. Shoaff ::
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
Q: How do you get a lawyer out of a tree?
A: Cut the rope.
Everybody sets out to do something,
and everybody does something,
but no one does what he sets out to do.
:: George Moore (1852-1933) ::
A woman tries to get all she can out of a man,
and a man tries to get all he can into a woman.
:: Isaac Goldberg (1887-1938) ::
He whose fear of sin takes precedence over his wisdom, his
wisdom will endure; but he whose wisdom takes precedence
over his fear of sin, his wisdom will not endure...He whose
works exceed his wisdom, his wisdom will endure; but he
whose wisdom exceeds his works, his wisdom will not endure.
The Talmud (B.C. 500?-400? A.D.)
Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields.
But experts often think so.
It is common to overlook what is near
by keeping the eye fixed on something remote.
In the same manner present opportunities are neglected
and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in
extensive ranges, and intent upon future advantages.
Life, however short, is made shorter by waste of time.
:: Samuel Johnson ::
It is common to overlook what is near
by keeping the eye fixed on something remote.
In the same manner present opportunities are neglected
and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in
extensive ranges, and intent upon future advantages.
Life, however short, is made shorter by waste of time.
:: Samuel Johnson ::
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision
for the limits of the world.
:: Arthur Shopenhauer ::
The whole world is a tuxedo and you are a pair of brown shoes.
Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect.
:: Keats
Why do we drive on a parkway and park in a driveway?
:: Stephen Wright
Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives,
because the soul abhors a vacuum, and they have not discovered
any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.
:: Henry David Thoreau ::
It is always during a passing state of mind
that we make lasting resolutions.
:: Marcel Proust ::
Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future misfortunes,
but present misfortunes triumph over philosophy.
:: Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) ::
Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.
A penny saved is ridiculous.
When it comes to generosity, some people stop at nothing.
Any government that's strong enough to give the people everything they want
is a government that's strong enough to take it away.
Now when I bore people at a party,
they think its their fault.
:: Henry Kissinger ::
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake,
one of them keeps paying for it.
?? Peggy Joyce
Single people live singular lives, married people live plural lives.
In every language singular is easier to learn.
Until hard evidence is obtained and corroborated, the American people should
not be frightened into believing that babies are being bred and eaten, that
50,000 missing children are being murdered in human sacrifices, or that
satanists are taking over America's day care centers... An unjustified
crusade against those perceived as satanists could result in wasted resources,
unwarranted damage to reputations, and disruption of civil liberties.
- Kenneth Lanning,
head of the FBI's special unit in charge of investigating claims
about satanic-cult crimes, in a report of his findings, June, 1989
Through clever and constant propaganda, people can be made
to see paradise as hell and vice versa, to consider the most
wretched sort of life as heaven itself.
:: Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf (1933) ::
Earnest people are often people who habitually look
on the serious side of things that have no serious side.
:: Van Wyck Brooks (1958) ::
Don't worry about people stealing an idea.
If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
:: Howard Aiken
There are two kinds of people in this world:
those who long to be understood,
and those who long to be misunderstood.
It is the irony of life that neither is gratified.
:: Carl Van Vechten, The Blind Bow-Boy (1923) ::
There is no such thing as absolute truth. People are less deceived
by failing to see the truth than by failing to see its limits.
:: Senac de Meilhan (d. 1803) ::
Auditors Are the People Who Go in
After the War is Lost
and Bayonet the Wounded.
:: P. Rubin ::
If you have to keep reminding yourself of a thing, perhaps it isn't so.
:: Christopher Morley (b. 1890) ::
If dogs could talk, perhaps we'd find it
just as hard to get along with them as we do with people.
:: Karel Capek (1890-1938) ::
Intellect is invisible to the person who hasn't any.
:: Arthur Schopenhauer ::
A criminal is a person with predatory instincts
who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.
:: Howard Scott ::
Since the generality of persons act from impulse
much more than from principle, men are neither so good
no so bad as we are apt to think them.
Hare
Ads push the principle of noise all the way to the plateau of persuasion.
They are quite in accord with the procedures for brainwashing.
:: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence
for the superior taste of those who put him down.
:: Pauline Kael, I Lost It at the Movies (1965) ::
A married philosopher belongs to comedy.
:: Nietzsche (1887) ::
Psychiatry's chief contribution to philosophy is the discovery
that the toilet is the seat of the soul.
:: Alexander Chase, Perspectives (1966) ::
You will be able to utilize the special words and phrases you have learned
in therapy. Your mate will find these particularly grating. For example:
1. "Will you stop ACTING OUT and start RELATING?"
2. "You know what this is about? TRANSFERENCE."
3. "What's the psychological PAYOFF in all this for you?"
4. "Boy, do you have a lot of REPRESSED RAGE."
5. "You're a classic example of ANAL-RETENTIVE behavior."
:: Dan Greenburg & Susan O'Malley, How to Avoid Love and Marriage (1983) ::
That's like fluffing the pillows on the Titanic....
He who is afraid of every nettle should not piss in the grass.
:: Thomas Fuller (1732) ::
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
and the population is growing.
If you feel that you have both feet planted on level ground,
then the university has failed you.
:: Robert Goheen, Time, June 23, 1961 ::
He who occupies the first place seldom plays the principle role.
:: Goethe (1774) ::
Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind,
but certainty is absurd.
:: Voltaire to Frederick the Great (1767) ::
Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence.
Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two make four.
If that is granted, all else follows.
:: George Orwell ("1984") ::
With money in your pocket, you are wise,
you are handsome, and you sing well, too.
:: Jewish Proverb ::
When you get to the point where you cheat
for the sake of beauty, you are an artist.
The difference between a politician and a snail
is that the snail leaves its slime behind.
Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.
:: Groucho Marx
God has decreed that there be sick and poor in this world,
but in the next it will be the other way around.
:: Napoleon I (August 13, 1800) ::
I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy.
They told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy, I was deprived.
Then they told me underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged.
I still don't have a dime, but I have a great vocabulary.
:: Jules Feiffer (1978) ::
The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.
:: Woody Allen
Be not concerned if thou findest thyself in possession of unexpected wealth;
Allah will provide an unexpected use for it.
:: James Jeffrey Roche (1847-1908) ::
Anything is possible, unless it's not.
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate how.
?? Frederick Winsor
Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss.
Byron ?? Epigram
He gave her a look that you could have poured on a waffle.
:: Ring Lardner (1885-1933) ::
Let not thy Will roar, when thy Power can but whisper.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)
Divinity consists in use and practice, not in speculation.
:: Martin Luther ::
A true test of one's commitment to constitutional principals is the extent
to which recognition is given to the rights of those in our midst who are
the least affluent, least powerful, and least welcome.
*
US District Court (Manhattan) Judge Leonard B. Sands, in ruling that
panhandling is a constitutionally-protected form of free speech.
January 26, 1990
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
:: Dwight David Eisenhower ::
In my experience, the worst thing you can do to an important problem
is discuss it.
:: Simon Gray (1936- ), Otherwised Engaged, 1975
When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus,
it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV
has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.
:: Edward R. Murrow ::
The peace of society is not endangered by the profane or lewd word
which is not directed at a particular audience.
*
:: Chief Justice Harold G. Clarke, of the Georgia
Supreme Court, on striking down a Georgia law
banning lewd or offensive bumper stickers (1991) ::
Professionals built the Titanic ??
amateurs the Ark.
Economic growth without social progress lets the great
majority of the people remain in poverty while a privileged
few reap the benefits of rising abundance.
:: John F. Kennedy, Message to Congress (March 14, 1961) ::
I was promised on a time,
To have reason for my rhyme;
From that time until this season,
I received nor rhyme nor reason.
Spencer
Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity,
never the correctness, of a belief.
:: Arthur Schweitzer (1932) ::
Men reject the prophets and slay them,
but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.
:: Fyodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) ::
Prototype designs always work.
God will provide ?? if only God would provide until He provides.
:: Yiddish proverb ::
If you pursue good with labor,
the labor passes away but the good remains;
if you pursue evil with pleasure,
the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.
Cicero (B.C. 106-43)
Protect your bagels ?? put lox on them.
For thee the wonder working earth puts forth sweet flowers.
Not every question deserves an answer.
:: Publilius Syrus, Senentiae
It's better to debate a question without settling it
than to settle a question without debating it.
:: Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) ::
Unix soit qui mal y pense.
Quid, me anxius sum?
It wasn't until quite late in life
that I discovered how easy it is
to say, "I don't know."
:: William Somerset Maugham ::
Every opportunity we have to run our R&D scientists and engineers
against our customers, we do it.
:: George Heilmeier, Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas
The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.
:: Edgar Allen Poe (1849) ::
Q: Why won't a rattlesnake bite a lawyer?
A: Professional courtesy.
If you are what you eat, does that mean Euelle Gibbons really was a nut?
Glory be to God, who determined, for reasons we know not,
that wickedness and stupidity should rule the world.
:: Arthur de Gobineau (1876) ::
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune;
to lose both looks like carelessness.
:: Oscar Wilde
Everywhere in the world the industrial regime tends to make
the unorganized or unorganizable individual, the pauper,
into the victim of a kind and human sacrifice
offered to the gods of civilization.
:: Jacques Maritain ::
There is not even enough religion in the world
to destroy the world's religions.
Nietzsche (1844-1900)
All religions are founded on
the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
:: Stendhal (Marie Henri Beyle) 1783-1842 ::
If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
:: Solzhenitsyn
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
guarantee of eventual success.
How many programmers does it take to replace a light bulb?
None, that's obviously a hardware problem.
The more I see the representatives of the people,
the more I admire my dogs.
:: Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) ::
The more I see of men,
the more I like dogs.
::Madame de Stael (1766-1817) ::
From an operating system research point of view,
Unix is ?? if not dead ?? certainly old stuff,
and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it.
:: Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of Unix, Usenix keynote speech from Summer 1990
It's amazing how much mature wisdom resembles being too tired.
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances
and ends by blocking his retreat.
:: Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) ::
Good resolutions are simply checks
that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
:: Oscar Wilde ::
They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute,
adamant for drift, all-powerful for impotence.
:: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) ::
Adventure is the result of poor planning.
:: Colonel Blatchford Snell ::
I have an intense desire to return to the womb.
Anybody's.
:: Woody Allen ::
Things To Do Today:
1. Get Out Of Bed
2. Survive
3. Go To Bed.
:: Frank ("Frank And Ernest") ::
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented,
it wasn't worth doing.
One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame
we have killed off so much of real shame as well.
:: Louis Kronenberger (1954) ::
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
:: Mark Twain (1835-1910), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889
Bureaucratic organization is like a septic tank: the big chunks rise to the top
Metaphysics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the mind.
Carlyle (1795-1881)
Routine is not organization,
any more than paralysis is order.
:: Sir Arthur Helps ::
Pray to God but keep on rowing the boat ashore.
:: Russian proverb ::
If you would rule the world quietly,
you must keep it amused.
:: Ralph Waldo Emerson ::
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
:: Joseph Campbell
There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.
:: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) ::
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
:: Mark Twain
The equal toleration of all religions is the same thing as atheism.
:: Pope Leo XIII (1885) ::
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
Pope (1688-1744)
In San Francisco, driving through
I came upon a street named Gough;
Allergic to a name like Gough,
I there began to sneeze and cough;
I parked my car beneath a bough
That overhung the street sigh "Gough,"
And rested there awhile, although
I did not like the street named Gough.
No, I did not like the street named Gough
About which this is quite enough.
:: Minnie Elmer ::
The famous politician was trying to save both his faces.
By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man
has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged class
in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.
:: Lewis Mumford (1951) ::
The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
:: Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) ::
I am not sincere even when I say I'm not sincere.
:: Jules Renard (d. 1910) ::
Advertizing may be described as the science of arresting the
human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
:: Stephen Leacock ::
We must scrunch or be scrunched.
:: Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Our Mutual Friend, 1864-1865
An Englishman thinks seated; a Frenchman, standing;
an American, pacing; an Irishman, afterward.
:: Austin O'Malley (1858-1932) ::
Commoner's Second Law of Ecology:
Nothing ever goes away.
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity.
They seem more afraid of life than death.
:: James F. Byrnes (US Supreme Court) ::
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
?? Stanislaw Slem
These days, our children seem all too often
to be here today and here tomorrow.
Oh, don't the days seem lank and long,
When all goes right and nothing goes wrong;
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at!
:: W. S. Gilbert, Princess Ida (1884) ::
A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is
too busy speculating about what he does not see.
:: Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757) ::
One must raise the self by the self
And not let the self sink down
For the self's only friend is the self
And the self is the self's one enemy.
:: Bhagavad Gita (c. 1050 BC) ::
This sentance has threee errors.
All higher motives, ideals, conceptions, sentiments in a man
are of no account if they do not come forward to strengthen him
for the better discharge of the duties which devolve upon him
in the ordinary affairs of life.
:: Henry Ward Beecher ::
If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a
better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house
in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
:: Ralph Waldo Emerson ::
Thou canst not serve cod and salmon.
:: Ada Leverson ::
Debt is a trap which a man sets and baits himself,
and then deliberately gets into.
:: Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) 1818-1885 ::
If it weren't for pickpockets I'd have no sex life at all.
:: Rodney Dangerfield ::
An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down.
:: George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) 1819-1880 ::
He mocks the people who proposes that the Government shall protect the rich
and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.
:: Grover Cleveland (1888) ::
Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.
You can't kiss a girl unexpectedly ?? only sooner than she thought you would.
In this world, truth can wait; she's used to it.
:: Douglas Jerrold (1803-1857) ::
The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people
still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.
:: Eric Hoffer (1954) ::
Even a small star shines in the darkness.
:: Danish Proverb
Due to a shortage of devoted followers,
the production of great leaders has been discontinued.
Train your child in the way you now know you should have gone yourself.
:: Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) ::
If you aren't rich, you should always look useful.
:: Louis-Ferdinand Celine ::
You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.
:: Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) ::
A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for
the first time.
?? Alfred E. Wiggam
As a rule, what is out of sight disturbs men's minds
more seriously than what they see.
:: Julius Caesar ::
What signifies knowing the Names,
if you know not the Natures of things.
:: Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanack (1733-1758) ::
The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination.
:: Louis Kronenberg (1954) ::
I have learned silence from the talkative,
toleration from the intolerant,
and kindness from the unkind;
yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
:: Kahlil Gibran (1926) ::
If, for silver or for gold,
You could melt ten thousand pimples
Into half a dozen dimples,
Then your face we might behold,
Looking, doubtless, much more snugly;
Yet even then 'twould be damned ugly.
Byron ?? Epigram ?? August 12, 1819
If the human mind were simple enough to understand,
we'd be too simple to understand it.
:: Pat Bahn
Never praise a sister to a sister
in the hope of your compliments reaching the proper ear.
:: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) ::
Gardens are not made by singing "Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade.
:: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) ::
We tend to meet any new situation by re-organizing,
and a wonderful method it can be for creating
the illusion of progress while producing confusion,
inefficiency, and demoralization.
:: Petronius Arbiter ::
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail;
if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
:: H. L. Mencken (b. 1880) ::
He who slings mud loses ground.
He who comes from the kitchen, smells of its smoke;
and he who adheres to a sect, has something of its cant;
the college air pursues the student;
and dry inhumanity him who herds with literary pedants.
Lavater
An epigram is a half-truth so stated as to
irritate the person who believes the other half.
:: Shailer Mathews (1863-1941) ::
Saint Peter was having a slow day at the Pearly Gates so he took a
little stroll. He noticed that the fence between heaven and hell was in
disrepair, so he hollered over the fence to Lucifer:
*
Saint Peter: "This fence needs some repair. I'll see to it that it
gets fixed if you will help pay for it."
*
Lucifer: "If you want it fixed, you pay for it."
*
Saint Peter: "The fence is partly your responsibility and you will help
pay for it or I will sue you for that amount."
*
Lucifer: "Ha!! Where do you think *you* are going to get a lawyer?!"
One has to be able to count if only so that, at fifty,
one doesn't marry a girl of twenty.
:: Maxim Gorky (1914) ::
Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles,
with sniffles predominating.
:: O. Henry ::
A nation . . . is just a society for hating foreigners.
:: Olaf Stapledon
You must find the ideas that have some promise in them...
It is not enough to just have ideas.
:: George E. Woodberry
I am wondering what would have happened to me if some fluent talker had
converted me to the theory of the eight-hour day and convinced me that it
was not fair to my fellow workers to put forth my best efforts in my work.
I am glad that the eight-hour day had not been invented when I was a young
man. If my life had been made up of eight-hour days, I don't believe I
could have accomplished a great deal.
:: Thomas Alva Edison ::
There should be some schools called deformatories
to which people are sent if they are too good to be practical.
:: Samuel Butler (1835-1902) ::
Some die too young, and some die too old;
the precept sounds strange, but die at the right time.
:: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) ::
Some make Conscience of
wearing a Hat in the Church,
who make none of
robbing the Altar.
:: Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanack (1733-1758) ::
Some are born great,
some achieve greatness,
and some hire public relations officers.
:: Daniel Boorstin (1962) ::
There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence
and more sense than we have.
:: Don Herold ::
The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.
:: Kahlil Gibran ::
Good advice is something a man gives
when he is too old to set a bad example.
?? La Rouchefoucauld
Never tell a young person that something cannot be done.
God may have been waiting for centuries for somebody
ignorant enough of the impossible to do that thing.
Dr. J. A. Holmes (clergyman)
Opportunity is sometimes hard to recognize
if you're only looking for a lucky break.
:: Monta Crane ::
Established technology tends to persist in spite of new technology.
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
:: H. L. Mencken ::
Youth is like spring, an overpraised season.
:: Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh (1903) ::
Applause is the spur of noble minds,
the end and aim of weak ones.
Colton
Anxiety in life is what squeaking and grinding are
in machinery that is not oiled. In life, trust is the oil.
:: Henry Ward Beecher ::
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.
All life is an experiment.
:: Emerson (1842) ::
It is only people of small stature who have to stand on their dignity.
:: Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) ::
Life itself is a race, marked by a start, and a finish.
It is what we learn during the race, and how we apply it,
that determines whether our participation has had particular value.
:: Dr. Porsche
The goal of yesterday will be the starting point of tomorrow.
Carlyle
Statisticians probably do it.
You can't very well fold up a piece of fax paper and stick it in your
floppy drive. The solution is a scanner with OCR software. When you
receive faxed pages from a client, you scan the data, OCR it, and check
for errors. THen you can massage the data to your heart's content.
When you're done, you print your version and fax it back to your client,
who uses, who uses a scanner to get it back onto their disk.
:: Lincoln Spector (Computer Currents, 4/8/91) ::
There is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.
Seneca
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
:: Anatole France (Jacques Anatole Thibault) 1844-1924 ::
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot.
In your soul are infinitely precious things that
cannot be taken from you.
:: Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891) ::
Not only is the Universe stranger than we think,
it is stranger than we *can* think.
:: Werner Heisenberg
Our strength is often composed
of the weakness we're damned if we're going to show.
:: Mignon McLaughlin ::
Now bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible
?? yea, and get the better of them.
:: Shakespeare, JULIUS CAESAR
There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law.
No artist ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.
- Jean Giradoux
Diplomacy and defense are not substitutes for one another.
Either alone would fail.
:: John F. Kennedy, campaign speech (1960) ::
A shortcut to riches is to subtract from one's desires.
:: Plutarch (fl. 100 AD) ::
It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent.
:: Joseph Roux (1886) ::
If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again.
Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it.
:: W. C. Fields
The successful man has enthusiasm.
Good work is never done in cold blood; heat is needed to forge anything.
Every great achievement is the story of a flaming heart.
:: Harry S. Truman ::
In America, only the successful writer is important,
in France all writers are important,
in England no writer is important,
and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.
:: Geofrey Cottrell (1961) ::
The human race consists of the dangerously insane and such as are not.
:: Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) 1835-1910 ::
There is no such thing as talent.
There is pressure.
:: Alfred Adler ::
The individual serves the industrial system not by supplying it with savings
and the resulting capital; he serves it by consuming its products.
:: John Kenneth Galbraith (1908- ), The New Industrial State, 1967
The long span of the bridge of your life is supported by countless cables
called habits, attitudes, and desires. What you do in life depends upon
what you are and what you want. What you get from life depends upon
how much you want it ?? how much you are willing to work and plan and
cooperate and use your resources. The long span of the bridge of your life
is supported by countless cables that you are spinning now, and that is why
today is such an important day. Make the cables strong!
:: L. G. Elliott ::
The greatest discoveries of surgery are anesthesia, asepsis,
and roentgenology ?? and none was discovered by a surgeon.
:: Martin Henry Fischer (b. 1879) ::
Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
:: John Arbuthnot (1667-1735) ::
But Captain ?? the engines can't take this much longer!
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember
that there is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
Life is easier to take than you'd think;
all that is necessary is to
accept the impossible,
do without the indispensable,
and bear the intolerable.
:: Kathleen Norris (b. 1880) ::
Little by little, the pimps have taken over the world.
They don't do anything, they don't make anything ??
they just stand there and demand their cut.
:: Jean Giraudoux ::
There is a tide in the affairs of women which, taken at the flood,
leads ?? God knows where!
:: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) ::
"This defeat has taught me a lesson,
but I'm not sure what it is."
:: John McEnroe, NY Times (February 9, 1987) ::
My father taught me to work;
he did not teach me to love it.
:: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) ::
People are more than fun than anybody.
:: Dorothy Parker
I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did.
Most men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.
:: Montesquieu (d. 1755) ::
I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
:: Michelangelo ::
A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.
:: Napoleon I, Maxims (1815) ::
An intelligent Hell would be better than a stupid Paradise.
:: Victor Hugo (1874) ::
I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
:: Abraham Lincoln ::
There is one quality more important than "know-how" and
we cannot accuse the United States of any undue amount
of it. This is "know-what" by which we determine not only
how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be.
:: Norbert Wiener (1954) ::
There are far fewer ungrateful people than we might think,
because there are far fewer generous people than we believe.
:: Saint-Evermond (1705) ::
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.
:: Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), Adventures of Ideas, 1933
I'd love to, but I never go out on days that end in "Y".
It is when I struggle to be brief that I became obscure.
:: Horace, Epistles (Ars Poetica)
The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.
:: Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) ::
It is not always for virtue's sake that women are virtuous.
:: Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) ::
Every man has seen the wall that limits his mind.
:: Alfred de Vigny (1864) ::
When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal.
*
:: Richard M. Nixon, interview with David Frost, May 19, 1977 ::
An idea that is not dangerous
is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
:: Oscar Wilde ::
The trouble with marriage is that, while every woman
is at heart a mother, every man is at heart a bachelor.
:: Edward Verrall Lucas (1868-1938) ::
Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win,
Socialism, that you can break even,
and Mysticism, that you can quit the game.
:: Freeman
Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
?? Ogden Nash
'Tis too much prov'd ?? that, with devotion's visage
And pious action, we do sugar o'er
The devil himself.
Shakespeare
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man
is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians
take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be
even more stupid than nature made them.
:: Bertrand Russell (1951) ::
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
otherwise require harder thinking.
??Jerome Lettvin
The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong
is to let him have his own way.
:: Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) 1818-1885 ::
When a man tells you that he got rich
through hard work, ask him whose?
:: Donald Robert Perry Marquis ::
A hermit is a deserter from the army of humanity
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
Do the joke. Get the laugh. Move on.
:: Michael O'Donoughue
I'd love to, but the grunion are running.
When one doesn't know how to dance, he says the ground is wet.
:: Malaysian Proverb
The years teach us much the days never knew.
:: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground... and missing!
Indecision is the key to flexibility.
Too often the American dream is interrupted by the Japanese alarm clock.
The cost of liberty is less than the price of oppression.
I'd love to, but It wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
When money speaks the truth is silent.
:: Russian proverb
Don't wrestle a pig in a mud hole. You both get all dirty, and the pig enjoys it.
All men know the utility of useful things, but not know the utility of futility
Opportunity always knocks at the most inopportune moment.
Urban sprawl is the forest's prime evil.
Never underestimate the power of fear.
The percentage of error will multiply the longer you deliberate.
We have confused the free with the free and easy.
:: Adlai Stevenson (1960) ::
Be sure that religion cannot be right that a man is the worse for having.
:: William Penn ::
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.
:: Addison Mizner (1872-1933) ::
The learned bastard takes precedence over the ignorant high priest.
:: The Talmud (5th Century) ::
Riches are the savings of many in the hands of one.
:: Eugene Debs ::
I have seen the future and it is very much like the present ?? only longer.
:: Kehlog Albran ::
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
:: Frank Leahy, Look (January 10, 1955) ::
Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.
:: Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) ::
Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.
:: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1897) ::
God made everything out of the void, but the void shows through.
:: Paul Valery (1941) ::
Solemnity is the shield of idiots.
:: Montesquieu (d. 1755) ::
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
:: Dorothy Parker ::
By the time men are fit for company, they see the objections to it.
:: George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695) ::
When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.
:: Jean-Paul Sarte ::
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America
before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours."
:: Vine Deloria ::
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence:
*
Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb;
Education will not;
the world is full of educated derelicts.
*
Persistence and determination alone will succeed.
Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself.
It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention.
:: Maurice Maeterlinck (1898) ::
Since wars begin in the minds of men,
it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.
:: UNESCO charter
Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the
remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
Sivananda (born 1887)
The inspirations of today are the shams of tomorrow ??
the purpose has departed.
:: Elbert Hubbard ::
Remember, the German people are the chosen of God.
On me, the German Emperor, the spirit of God has descended.
I am His sword, His weapon, and His vice-regent.
:: Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany, addressing the soldiers, 1914 ::
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure
and the intelligent full of doubt.
:: Bertrand Russell (b. 1872) ::
Give the clergy your sympathy;
don't give them anything else.
:: Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893) ::
Marriage is like the army. Everybody complains
but you'd be surprised how many re-enlist.
Don't talk to me about appealing to the public. I am done with the public,
for the present anyway. The public reads the headlines and that is all.
The story itself is fair and shows the facts. That would be all right if
the public read the facts. But it does not. It reads the headlines and
listens to the demagogues and that's the stuff public opinion is made of.
:: J.P. Morgan (1837-1913)
When we're out of the eighties, the nineties
are gonna make the sixties look like the fifties!
:: Dennis Hopper, in "Flashback" (1989) ::
Finagle's Laws ?? Recently re-confirmed at BYU and the University of Utah
(Special thanks to Profs. Pons and Fleischmann)
*
Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
*
Finagle's Second Law:
No matter what the experiment's result, there will always be
someone eager to:
a) misinterpret it,
b) fake it, or
c) believe it supports his own pet theory.
*
Finagle's Third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously
correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
(Corollaries:
1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
don't want to hear, will see it immediately.)
*
Finagle's Fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to
improve it only makes it worse.
Want of control over the senses is called the road to ruin;
victory over them, the path to fortune.
Go then by which you please.
The Hitopadesa (600?-1100? A.D.)
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries:
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Shakespeare
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
?? Jules de Gaultier
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm
as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
When man has come to the Turnstiles of Night,
all the creeds in the world seem to him
wonderfully alike and colorless.
:: Rudyard Kipling ::
Look at the John Birch Society.
Look at Hitler.
The reactionaries are always better organizers.
:: Cesar Chavez ::
How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!
:: Isaac Watts (1706) ::
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
:: Lewis Carroll (1865) ::
Fear not Death; for the sooner we die,
the longer we shall be immortal.
:: Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanack (1733-1758) ::
Such is the blindness, nay the insanity of mankind,
that some men are driven to death by the fear of it.
:: Seneca (d. 65 AD) to Lucullus ::
Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night,
I can see paradise by the dashboard light.
:: Meatloaf
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those
who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
:: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address (1937) ::
If hard work is the key to success,
most people would rather pick the lock.
:: Claude McDonald ::
Venus, a beautiful good-natured lady, was the goddess of love;
Juno, a terrible shrew, the goddess of marriage;
and they were always mortal enemies.
:: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) ::
Even when the experts all agree,
they may well be mistaken.
:: Bertrand Russell (b. 1872) ::
Power is a drug on which the politicians are hooked.
They buy it from the voters, using the voters' own money.
:: Richard J. Needham ::
To think twice in every matter and follow the lead of others
is no way to make money.
:: Ihara Saikuku ::
All echelons of the staff will coordinate the configuration of the plans
with the requisite tailoring of the overview in order to expedite the
functional objective.
:: Capt. Scarrett Adams, USN
Satellite photography in the 1970's gave rise to the long-range weather
forecast, a month at a time. This in turn gave rise to the observation
that the long-range weather forecast was wrong most of the time. In
turn, this gave rise to the dropping of the long-range weather forecast
and to the admission that really accurate forecasting could only cover
the next day or two, and not always then.
:: Miles Kington, Nature Made Ridiculously Simple (1983) ::
Seek not the law in your scriptures, for the law is life,
whereas the scripture is dead...The law is living word of
living God to living prophets for living men. In everything
that is life is the law written. You find it in the grass,
in the tree, in the river, in the mountain, in the birds of
heaven, in the fishes of the sea; but seek it chiefly in yourselves.
Jesus (B.C. 6?-30? A.D.)
For three days after death the hair and fingernails
continue to grow but the phone calls taper off.
:: Johnny Carson ::
If you are ready to give up everything else ?? to study the whole history and
background of the market and all the principal companies whose stocks are on
the board as carefully as a medical student studies anatomy ?? if you can do
all that, and, in addition, you have the cool nerves of a great gambler, the
sixth sense of a clairvoyant, and the courage of a lion,
you have a ghost of a chance.
:: Bernard Baruch ::
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay
for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
:: Adlai Stevenson (1952) ::
What is wanted is not the will to believe,
but the wish to find out,
which is the exact opposite.
:: Bertrand Russell ::
Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which
the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers
is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.
:: Richard M. Nixon (May 12, 1973) ::
If horse racing is the sport of kings
is drag racing the sport of queens?
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
?? Mark Twain
He that will live in this world must be endowed with the three rare qualities
of dissimulation, equivocation, and mental reservation.
:: Aphra Behn (1640-1689) ::
The poor are the only consistent altruists;
they sell all that they have and give to the rich.
:: Holbrook Jackson (b. 1874) ::
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that
more than half of the people are right
more than half of the time.
:: Elwyn Brooks White ::
Politicians are the same all over.
They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
:: Nikita Khrushchev ::
We are in the world to laugh.
In purgatory or in hell we shall no longer be able to do so.
And in heaven it would not be proper.
:: Jules Renard (June 1907) ::
Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues;
always insist on it in your subordinates.
:: Donald Robert Perry Marquis ::
We are content to place a statue of Francis of Assisi in the middle of a
birdbath and let the whole business of the Saints go at that.
:: Bishop C. Kilmer Myers, NY Times (March 19, 1962) ::
Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.
We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the
difficulties we have to encounter.
:: William Hazlitt (1823) ::
Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
and remember what value there may be in owning a piece thereof.
When you make the mistake of adding the date to the right side of
an accounting statement, you must add it to the left side, too.
:: Accountant's Maxim ::
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