Quotables

In order as we found them (ie, no order at all), these are the fine lines available on the upper right corner of this blog:

No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up. -Lily Tomlin
Money, not morality, is the principle of commercial nations -Thomas Jefferson
Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. Chinese proverb (allegedly)
If you’re bourgeois, money is it. It’s all the questions & all the answers. Ain’t no E-flat or color blue, only $12.98 or $1,000 -John Coltrane
Drinking eight glasses of water a day IS a healthy choice, I would just keep the scotch out of ‘em -Anonymous
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back Till things’re brighter I’m the man in black -Johnny Cash
Never confuse motion with action. -Benjamin Franklin
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. -Lucius Annaeus Seneca
There is no frigate like a book / To take us lands away, / Nor any coursers / like a page / Of prancing poetry -Emily Dickinson
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. -Samuel Johnson / Boswell’s Life of Johnson
It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all. -James Thurber
My greatest skill has been to want but little. -Henry David Thoreau
There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor – George Santayana
Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. -Roger Miller
Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing. -Henry David Thoreau
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers. -Thomas Pynchon / Gravity’s Rainbow
It’s so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem. -Malcom Forbes
What this country needs is more free speech worth listening to. -Hansell B. Duckett
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out -Samuel Johnson
Garlick maketh a man wynke, drynke, and stynke. -Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)
Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.-Robert Heinlein / Time Enough For Love
You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/You call yourself a patriot, well I think you’re full of shit.-Keith Richards and Mick Jagger / Sweet NeoCon
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.-Samuel Johnson
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.-Nikita Khrushchev
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.-Bertrand Russell
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.-Friedrich Nietzsche
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.-Friedrich Nietzsche
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.-Eugene McCarthy
Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself.-Peter da Silva
A poem is no place for an idea.-Edgar Watson Howe
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.-T. S. Eliot
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.-Richard Feynman
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.-Eric Hoffer
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.-Thomas A. Edison
Joe Klein is the only liberal columnist at Time Magazine, which means it has no liberals except those who bash liberals and Democrats. -Eric Alterman
Regarding George Herbert Walker Bush: Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.-Barry Switzer
Poor George [Bush], he can’t help it– he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.-Ann Richards
Without my morning coffee I’m just like a dried-up piece of roast goat.-Johann Sebastian Bach
Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.-Ludwig van Beethoven
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.-Ambrose Bierce
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.-Paul Valery
There must have been a time, in the beginning, when we could have said – no. But somehow we missed it.-Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead / Tom Stoppard
Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn’t mean anything at all.-Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead / Tom Stoppard
Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where’s it going to end?-Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead / Tom Stoppard
Be happy – if you’re not even happy, what’s so good about surviving? We’ll be all right. I suppose we just go on.-Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead / Tom Stoppard
Shameful is not the one who doesn’t know, but the one who doesn’t ask
Azerbaijani proverbs / Bilməmək eyib deyil, soruşmamaq eyibdir
Flattery is monstrous in a true friend.-John Ford (1586 – c. 1640) / The Lover’s Melancholy (1628)-
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.-Euripides (c. 480 BC- 406 BC) / Alexander Frag. 44
To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish.-Euripides (c. 480 BC- 406 BC) / Bacchæ l. 480
I sacrifice to no god save myself — And to my belly, greatest of deities.-Euripides (c. 480 BC- 406 BC)
Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.-Euripides (c. 480 BC- 406 BC)
In this world second thoughts, it seems, are best-Euripides (c. 480 BC- 406 BC)
The variety of all things forms a pleasure.-Euripides (c. 480 BC- 406 BC)
People used to try to hijack quantum mechanics and its inherent mystery to cast a cloud around determinism, in the hope that free will could survive modern physics. But that never worked very well. Since when does random chance equal free will? The only salvation for volition is a soul and faith and you’re not allowed to ask me about that.-Janna Levin / How the Universe Got its Spots
If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won before you have started.-Marcus Garvey
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now – when?-Hillel
Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional-Chili Davis
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children-George Bernard Shaw
Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.-Bob Hope
Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out!-Aleister Crowley
I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?-Aleister Crowley (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) / Aceldama : A Place To Bury Strangers In (1898)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.-Aleister Crowley (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947)
As long as sexual relations are complicated by religious, social and financial considerations, so long will they cause all kinds of cowardly, dishonourable and disgusting behaviour.-Aleister Crowley (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) / The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929)
The customer is usually wrong; but statistics indicate that it doesn’t pay to tell him so.-Aleister Crowley / Magick Without Tears
Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.-Cree Indian proverb, nineteenth century / Lapham’s Quarterly – Money
To stay rich, people must be nearer to the dead than to the living-Stephen Vizinczey / Lapham’s Quarterly – Money
People have declaimed against luxury for two thousand years, in verse and in prose, and people have always delighted in it-Voltaire
What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbor’s, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.-Voltaire
Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.-Voltaire
Use, do not abuse; the wise man arrange things so. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.-Voltaire
May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples?-Voltaire
The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.-Voltaire
Almost everything is imitation. The idea of The Persian Letters was taken from The Turkish Spy. Boiardo imitated Pulci, Ariosto imitated Boiardo. The most original writers borrowed from one another.-Voltaire
We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.-Voltaire
Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.-Voltaire
A witty saying proves nothing.-Voltaire
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.-Voltaire
I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices.-Mark Twain
The funniest things are the forbidden.-Mark Twain
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.-Mark Twain
Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world — and never will.-Mark Twain
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.-Mark Twain
[A] classic – something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.-Mark Twain
[The human race], in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon — laughter.-Mark Twain
Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.-Mark Twain
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.-Mark Twain
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.-Mark Twain
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.-Mark Twain
He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.-Mark Twain
Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and…Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.-Mark Twain
Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite — but they all worship money.-Mark Twain
The true method of knowledge is experiment-William Blake
Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public RECORDS to be True.-William Blake
To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit—General Knowledges are those Knowledges that Idiots possess.-William Blake
Every Harlot was a Virgin once.-William Blake
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.-William Blake
Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.-William Blake
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.-William Blake
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.-William Blake
Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.-William Blake
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.-William Blake
Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.-Ambrose Bierce
Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.-Ambrose Bierce
Christian, n. One who follows the teachings of Christ so long as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.-Ambrose Bierce
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.-Ambrose Bierce
Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.-Ambrose Bierce
There’s an old saying about those who forget history. I don’t remember it, but it’s good.-Stephen Colbert
Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.-Wilson Mizner
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher.-Thomas Paine
Dare to be naïve.-Buckminster Fuller
Don’t fight forces, use them-Buckminster Fuller
Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.-Buckminster Fuller
God is a verb.-Buckminster Fuller
The most important thing to teach your children is that the sun does not rise and set. It is the Earth that revolves around the sun. Then teach them the concepts of North, South, East and West, and that they relate to where they happen to be on the planet’s surface at that time. Everything else will follow.-Buckminster Fuller
You either make sense or you make money.-Buckminster Fuller
The author’s conviction on this day of the New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.-Ezra Pound
Doctor Labyrinth, like most people who read a great deal and who have too much time on their hands, had become convinced that our civilization was going the way of Rome. He saw, I think , the same cracks forming that had sundered the ancient world, the world of Greece and Rome; and it was his conviction that presently our world, our society, would pass away as theirs did, and a period of darkness would follow.-Philip K. Dick
Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.-Philip K. Dick / What The Dead Men Say
In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language [David] Hume made it clear that what we speak of as ‘causality’ is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law – in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. “It is custom which rules,” Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy.-Philip K. Dick
I, for one, bet on science as helping us. I have yet to see how it fundamentally endangers us, even with the H-bomb lurking about. Science has given us more lives than it has taken; we must remember that.-Philip K. Dick
Giving me a new idea is like handing a cretin a loaded gun, but I do thank you anyhow, bang, bang.-Philip K. Dick
Odd that the brain could function on its own, without acquainting him with its purposes, its reasons. But the brain was an organ, like the spleen, heart, kidneys. And they went about their private activities. So why not the brain?-Philip K. Dick
Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small…and you will escape the jealousy of the great.-Philip K. Dick
“Everything is true”, he said. “Everything anybody has ever thought”.-Philip K. Dick
Fear… can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy. If you’re afraid you don’t commit yourself to life completely; fear makes you always, always hold something back-Philip K. Dick
Where there’s dope, there’s hope!-Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.-Philip K. Dick
Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups…So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.-Philip K. Dick
Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.-Philip K. Dick / VALIS
A lot can be said for the infinite mercies of God, but the smarts of a good pharmacist, when you get down to it, is worth more.-Philip K. Dick / VALIS
When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion.-Philip K. Dick / Lies, Inc.
I got a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind, I lived long enough and I ain’t scared of dying.-Bo Diddley / Who Do You Love?
We hypostasize information into objects. Rearrangement of objects is change in the content of the information; the message has changed. This is a language which we have lost the ability to read. We ourselves are a part of this language; changes in us are changes in the content of the information. We ourselves are information-rich; information enters us, is processed and is then projected outwards once more, now in an altered form. We are not aware that we are doing this, that in fact this is all we are doing.-Philip K. Dick / VALIS
Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.-Anthony Burgess
Most conversations (blog posts?) are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses.-Margaret Millar
Only a thoughtless observer can deny that correspondences come into play between the world of modern technology and the archaic symbol-world of mythology.-Walter Benjamin
There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism-Walter Benjamin
Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary.-Evan Esar
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.-Claud Cockburn
If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.-Ludwig Wittgenstein
You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.-Dave Barry
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.-Arthur Schopenhauer
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.-Benjamin Franklin
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.-Robert Louis Stevenson
You don’t win friends with salad-Homer Simpson
The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.-Will Rogers
Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.-Will Rogers
There ought to be one day– just one– when there is open season on senators.-Will Rogers
Civilisation is hooped together, brought Under a rule, under the semblance of peace By manifold illusion, but Man’s life is thought, And he, despite his terror, cannot cease, Ravening through century after century Ravening, raging and uprooting, that he may come Into the desolation of reality.-W.B. Yeats
Poverty, of course, is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.-William Pitt
To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave the way the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.-L.P. Smith / Lapham’s Quarterly – Money
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire.-Epistle of James 5:2-3
I like money on the wall. Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you, the first thing they would see is the money on the wall.-Andy Warhol
I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of “work” because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don’t always want to do. Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.-Andy Warhol
They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.-Andy Warhol
Chaos is a friend of mine.-Bob Dylan
Sometimes you say things in songs even if there’s a small chance of them being true. And sometimes you say things that have nothing to do with the truth of what you want to say and sometimes you say things that everyone knows to be true. Then again, at the same time, you’re thinking that the only truth on earth is that there is no truth on it. Whatever you are saying, you’re saying in a ricky-tick way. There’s never time to reflect. You stitched and pressed and packed and drove, is what you did.-Bob Dylan
Morality has nothing in common with politics.-Bob Dylan
Don’t criticize what you can’t understand. Obscenity, who really cares? Propaganda all is phoney.-Bob Dylan / It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.-Bob Dylan / My Back Pages
There’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.-Bob Dylan
She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist, she don’t look back.-Bob Dylan
Money doesn’t talk, it swears.-Bob Dylan
I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You’d know what a drag it is to see you.-Bob Dylan / Positively 4th Street
Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you King.-Bob Dylan / Sweetheart like You
The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.-Fyodor Dostoevsky
To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.-Fyodor Dostoevsky
I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased.-Fyodor Dostoevsky / Notes from the Underground
To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.-Fyodor Dostoevsky / Notes from the Underground
To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.-Fyodor Dostoevsky / Notes from the Underground
Two plus two equals five is not without its attractions.-Fyodor Dostoevsky
Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?-Fyodor Dostoevsky / Notes from the Underground
Talking nonsense is man’s only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.-Fyodor Dostoevsky / Crime and Punishment
Ethics are so annoying. I avoid them on principle.-Darby Conley
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.-Oscar Wilde
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal, — that is they have ceased to be self-centered, have given up their individuality….
The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.-W.B. Yeats
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities-Aldous Huxley
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it. [So is blogging!]-Laurence J. Peter
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.-Kurt Vonnegut
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.-Thomas Jones
I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory says that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.-Kurt Vonnegut
1. Find a subject you care about. 2. Do not ramble, though. 3. Keep it simple. 4. Have the guts to cut. 5. Sound like yourself. 6. Say what you mean to say. 7. Pity the readers.-Kurt Vonnegut
The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.-Kurt Vonnegut
One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war. It’s been possible for politicians and movie-makers to encourage us we’re always good guys. The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of-Kurt Vonnegut
I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”-Kurt Vonnegut
We’re terrible animals. I think that the Earth’s immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.-Kurt Vonnegut
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC-Kurt Vonnegut
I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy — because we’re experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that’s what’s going on now.-Kurt Vonnegut / interviewed by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
[When Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope] Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.-Kurt Vonnegut
The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.-Kurt Vonnegut
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved-Kurt Vonnegut
The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.-Kurt Vonnegut
We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.-Kurt Vonnegut
If you can do no good, at least do no harm.-Kurt Vonnegut
I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.-Pablo Picasso
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.-Jean Cocteau
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?-Jean Cocteau
What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end.-Jean Cocteau
I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a man nailed to two pieces of wood.-George Carlin
Hansel and Gretel discovered the ginger bread house about 45 minutes after they discovered the mushrooms-George Carlin
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.-Ralph Waldo Emerson
A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.-Kurt Vonnegut
There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.-Eric Hoffer
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little.-Sydney Smith
The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.-James Thurber
The time to stop talking [blogging?] is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.-Henry S. Haskins
Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts.-Jim Morrison
Things are more like they are now than they have ever been-Gerald R. Ford
When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.-Anatole France
Books to the ceiling,/ Books to the sky,/ My pile of books is a mile high./ How I love them! How I need them!/ I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them-Arnold Lobel
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.-Mae West
I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.-Mae West
My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.-Errol Flynn
Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.-Blaise Pascal
Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.-George F. Will
I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.-JRR Tolkien
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.-Walter Lippmann
There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.-Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
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.-WH Auden
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.-Paul Valery
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Benjamin Franklin
People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news-A.J. Liebling
Nothing is said that has not been said before.-Terence
That is true wisdom, to know how to alter one’s mind when occasion demands it.-Terence
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.-H. L. Mencken
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.-Billy Wilder
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.-Jeremy Bentham
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.-George Santayana
My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.-Oscar Wilde
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.-George Bernard Shaw
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.-George Best
A cult is a religion with no political power.-Tom Wolfe
Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.-Samuel Johnson
Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?-George Carlin
Every thing is what it is, and not another thing.-Bishop Joseph Butler
I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.-Henny Youngman
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met. – Abraham Lincoln
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
– e e cummings
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time. – George Bernard Shaw
I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it. – Rita Mae Brown
Television is the first truly democratic culture – the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
– Clive Barnes
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. – Herm Albright
Everything you’ve learned in school as “obvious” becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. – R. Buckminster Fuller
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.- Soren Kierkegaard
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
– Dorothy Parker
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.
– Voltaire
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
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
– Jules Renard
We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
– Tom Stoppard
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
– Kurt Vonnegut
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
– Pablo Picasso
Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off. – Phil Larkin
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. – H.L. Mencken

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