Quotes

[blueeowyn]

This is a longer list than sometimes because I am behind. Enjoy

Death, while historically accurate, is not a desirable outcome.
-- Uncle Atli's Very Thin Book of Wisdom


I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
-- Emily Bronte

It's not about living forever that's important, it's about being able to live with yourself.
-- Jack Sparrow's father in PotC 3

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.
-- George Santayana

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
-- Peter De Vries

I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.
-E.B. White

Underground nuclear testing, defoliation of the rain forests, toxic waste ... Let's put it this way: if the world were a big apartment, we wouldn't get our deposit back.
-- John Ross

Whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious.
-- Letitia E. Landon

Let your tears come. Let them water your soul.
-- Eileen Mayhew

The only person you should ever compete with is yourself. You can't hope for a fairer match.
-- Todd Ruthman

The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
-- Oscar Levant

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

It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid?
-- Richard Bach

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
-- Noel Coward

The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
-- Brooks Atkinson
The worst is the one who makes gut decisions

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.
-- Charles Bukowski

Mea mihi conscientia pluris est quam omnium sermo
My own conscience is more to me than what the world says.
-- Cicero

The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.
-- Doug Larson
Sounds like the mantra of the Cult of Darwin

Even though I don't have all the things that I want, I'm really grateful for the things I don't have that I don't want.
-- Jeremy (Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman)

Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
-- Isaac Asimov

An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart.
-- Robert M. Sapolsky

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
-- Mark Twain

Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind, you have failed.
-- Jan de Hartog

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.
-- Sir Winston Churchill
All standard disclaimers apply

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label 'Liberal?' If by 'Liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of 'Liberal.' But if by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal,' then I'm proud to say I'm a 'Liberal.'
-- John F. Kennedy (thanks to dglenn QotD file)

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
-- John Ciardi
I think that is a world-wide right though some in America take it almost to an art

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
-- Gore Vidal
And the world would be a much better place if everyone did as I said

No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.
-- Thorstein Veblen
I am sure the hotel would notice the lack of income

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
-- Aristotle
but fine for classical ones to do so

The days of the digital watch are numbered.
-- Tom Stoppard

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
-- Joseph Stalin

The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.
-- Kin Hubbard

Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
-- Elbert Hubbard

Never face facts; if you do, you'll never get up in the morning.
-- Marlo Thomas

The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.
-- Fran Lebowitz

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

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
-- Steven Wright
Painting laughter is a bit of a challenge at times

In virtute sunt multi ascensus.
There are many degrees in excellence.
-- Cicero

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
-- Bertolt Brecht

The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.
-- John Wanamaker

I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.
-- Ray Bradbury
why stop at 17?

All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.
-- Joseph Epstein

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
hmm, this explains some things...

Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?
-- Spike Milligan

Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment.
-- Evan Esar

Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
-- computer after simulating war games (WarGames - by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes)

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
-- Bertrand Russell

I've always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position.
-- Pat Conroy
but how can one be sure it is defensible?

Those who cannot remember history are condemned to scare the **** out of those who can.
-- ??? (from a .sig)

God help those who do not help themselves.
-- Wilson Mizner

Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.
-- Erma Bombeck

When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.
-- Albert Einstein

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.
-- Louis Pasteur

Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.
-- Lee Simonson
and often by an incompetent one as well

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-- Mark Twain

Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.
-- Dianne Feinstein

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

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey

Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself.
-- Peter da Silva

The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
-- Nicholas Butler

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.
-- Benjamin Franklin

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
-- Baltasar Gracian
He also knows which is which and acts accordingly

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
-- Ambrose Bierce

An optimist stays up to see the New Year in. A pessimist waits to make sure the old one leaves.
-- Bill Vaughan

If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
-- P. G. Wodehouse

To err is human--and to blame it on a computer is even more so.
-- Robert Orben

the most wasted of all days is one without laughter
-- e e cummings

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal
and this is what leads to a lot of the world's problems

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
-- Bertrand Russell
followed by the ones where there is evidence but it goes against 'teachings'

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

The big thieves hang the little ones.
-- Czech Proverb

A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
-- Gian Vincenzo Gravina

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