Quotes

[blueeowyn]

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
-- Anatole France

I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator and name it after the IRS.
-- Robert Bakker

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
-- Peter Ustinov

The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.
-- Joan Baez

The idea of all-out nuclear war is unsettling.
-- Walter Goodman
And the winner of the understatement award... Personally, I would call it terrifying, disgusting, and many other things.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
-- Mark Twain

We do what we must, and call it by the best names
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
-- Paul Fix
And they didn't think to bring a map

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.
-- Bertrand Russell

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Exhibit A - Creationists

Victory breeds enmity; the defeated live in pain. The peaceful live happily, avoiding both victory and defeat.
-- Buddha

Adventure is just bad planning.
-- Roald Amundsen

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
-- James Thurber
Ah, the true creed of the Phelps church and similar people

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.
-- Ogden Nash

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
-- Douglas Adams

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

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.
-- Dan Quayle
Sound bites are so much fun

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
-- George Orwell
I prefer the never start it approach. The 'to end it we must lose' sounds like propoganda ... which considering who wrote the quote, it probably is.

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

We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.
-- Sir Arthur Eddington

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

When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
-- Brendan Behan

I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.
-- Wernher von Braun

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
-- Paul Valery

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
-- Ralph W. Sockman
And the test of integrity comes to both

Everything is in a state of flux, including the status quo.
-- Robert Byrne

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

Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
-- Elbert Hubbard

Orthodox medicine has not found an answer to your complaint. However, luckily for you, I happen to be a quack.
-- Richter cartoon caption

Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain

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

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

The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky
-- Solomon Short

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
-- Sir Francis Bacon

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
-- Albert Einstein

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
-- Stephen King
I would disagree on the lack of exceptions...

Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does.
-- Bill Nye

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
-- Jean-Paul Sartre

There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
And people with this set of traits seem to dominate the fashion industryThis trait is exacerbated by situations where he is avoiding fault

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

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
-- Thomas Mann

A joke's a very serious thing.
-- Charles Churchill

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
-- Ray Bradbury
As true in life as it is in literature

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
-- Joseph Baretti

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
Government figures is right down there

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'
-- Ronald Reagan
I wonder if he said that before or after he became a politician

Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.
-- Ken Hakuta
Lack of $ is a minor obstacle, lack of an idea is an insurmountable one

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
-- Mark Twain
The ones that others don't understand are the ones that bother ME the most

If God had really intended men to fly, he'd make it easier to get to the airport.
-- George Winters

Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
-- Ambrose Bierce

To be amused by what you read--that is the great spring of happy quotations.
-- C. E. Montague
Unfortunately, the ones I collect are a mixture of amusement and thought provoking ... or at least that is what I am striving for

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

What luck for rulers that men do not think.
-- Adolf Hitler
Rulers of secular and sacred both, yes?

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

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.
-- George Eliot
Which is fortunate since perfection among humans doesn't exist

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.
-- Clare Booth Luce
Control your own speech (and maybe that of your children

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
-- Billy Wilder
Even with my eyesight ... though how they know the originator of this quote is beyond me

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
-- Thomas H. Huxley

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
-- Edward R. Murrow
Fame does not intelligence bestow

No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
-- Sir Frederick G. Banting
Unless the idea is 'Get Me OUT of this'