a collection of quotes
started c. 1998-10-01
If anyone tells you all is lost or all is fine, just nod and move on and live in the middle where everything matters.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin, Twitter
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
-Antoine de Saint Exupery
The word Lady: Most often used to describe someone you wouldn't want to talk to for five minutes.
-Fran Lebowitz
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
-Philip K Dick
Software Industry, the: unique industry where selling substandard goods is legal and you can charge extra for fixing the problems.
-Duncan Simpson
A university is a collection of mutually repellent individuals held together only by a common interest in parking
-George F. Will
The skill of accurate perception is called cynicism by those who don't possess it.
-Alan Millar
Your body is a temple. It is also your dance hall, your bowling alley, and your pizza parlor.
-Jonathan Katz
Build a little, test a little, learn a lot.
Wayne E. Meyer
No matter how cynical you get, you can never keep up.
-Lily Tomlin
Whatever doesn't kill us makes us stranger.
-Paula O'Keefe
True friends stab you in the front
-Winston Churchill
People learn how to treat you by observing how you treat yourself and others. Be sure to provide positive demonstrations.
Unknown
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
-Dick Brandon
We kill the cows to make jackets out of them, and then we kill each other for the jackets we made out of the cows.
-Denis Leary
There's a fine line between participation and mockery
Scott Adams
There's always something to keep you humble.
Dr. Kenneth M. Johnston (1920 - 1999)
A successful model tells you things you didn't tell it to tell you.
Jerry Brashear
The greatest of our crimes and the worst of our sins is poverty.
George Bernard Shaw
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Samuel Butler
The human capacity to ignore inconvenient facts and avoid unpleasantness is immense
John Walker, from the Hacker's Diet
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Alfred Adler
The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.
Joe Ancis
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool.
Bellamy Brooks
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
Rita Mae Brown
If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
Dorothy Parker
For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
Alice Kahn
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Joseph Heller Catch-22
Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Ever notice that fifteen minutes into a Jerry Lewis telethon you start rooting for the disease?
Jim Sherbert
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Winston Churchill
You can sometimes fool the fans, but you can never fool the players.
Jack Stack
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous
Robert Benchly
A thousand miles of barbed wire begins with a single barb.
Mick Farren
I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end.
Douglas Adams
I have always wanted to be somebody. I guess I should have been more specific.
Lily Tomlin
They that can give up liberty to obtain a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
Some people talk about living every day like it might be their last. Maybe that's good advice. Carpe diem and all that. But perhaps it's better to try to live every day like it might be everyone's last. If there are people in your life who are important to you, let them know...
Mark Bedford (quote taken from posting to fray.com)
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.
Lao Tsu
There are two kinds of people in this world: Those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter a room and turn the television set off.
-"Raymond Shaw", The Manchurian Candidate
If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up, I would be crazier than I've been on this trip. I know very few things I'd take seriously any more. I'd certainly be less hygenic...I would take more chances, I would take more trips, I would scale more mountains, I would swim more rivers, and I would watch more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it all over again, I'd have many more of them, in fact I'd try not to have anything else, just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of my day. If I had it to do all over again, I'd travel lighter, much lighter than I have. I would start barefoot earlier in the spring, and I'd stay that way later in the fall. And I would ride more merry-go-rounds, and catch more gold rings, and greet more people and pick more flowers and dance more often.If I had it to do all over again - but you see, I don't.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
-Benito Mussolini
Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that shit.
-George Carlin
Selfish leaders increase risk by placing themselves first. It's a fundamental mistake to assume that what is good for us personally is mutually exclusive to what is good for everyone. That kind of zero-sum game is for cowards, and in the end, we all pay the price for this type of latent, toxic leadership.
Col. Eric G. Kail
I'm not bitter, I'm tangy
-Brad Yung, 1998
Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you may contract a horrible skin disease
-Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson)
The way you write science fiction is: you sit down at your writing machine and you open your mind to the first thought that comes through. My first thought was always a cigarette.
-Frederik Pohl
I think a more appropriate first exercise for a burgeoning programmer in training would be:
system.out.println ("Goodbye World");
-brrd
"...If you don't understand it, it must be art!"
-Chris Wessling, photoSIG.com
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
-Henry David Thoreau
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
-Henry David Thoreau
Capitalism is Man Exploiting Man; Communism is just the opposite.
-Old East Block Joke
Impermanent are all created things; Strive on with awareness.
Siddhārtha Gautama (The Buddha) - supposed dying words
The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
-Bruce Ediger
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
-Lee Sharp
A good plan now is better than a perfect plan later.
-George Patton
The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
-Chinese proverb
Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan.
-Old proverb
When the world is in accord with the Dao, fast horses are left to fertilize fields. When the world is not in accord with the Dao, war horses are bred in the countryside.
Lao Tsu
There is no greater fault than ambition, no greater curse than discontentment, and no greater sin than greed. The one who is contented with contentment shall always be contented.
Lao Tsu
... I'll let you in on a secret. Big people are exactly the same as little people. They're selfish, squabbling children whose motivations are jealousy and greed. No one becomes big when the hit adulthood. They just become better at hiding how small they are.
Work is about a daily search for meaning as well as daily bread; for recognition as well as cash; for astonishment rather than torpor; in short for a sort of life, rather than a monday-to-friday sort of dying.
Studs Terkel
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
Joseph Addison
The disordered society is full of loyal patriots
Lao Tsu
The race is not always to the swift, nor the fight to the strong, but that's the way to bet.
Damon Runyon
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Groucho Marx
A lot of people lose the spirit of childhood. Every child has a lot of imagination and you lose it little by little. I don't know why, but I kept it.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
I just wish that people would realize that anything's possible if you try. Dreams are made if people try.
Terry Fox
When I was a teenager I was sure I'd be dead before I was thirty. Let's just say that I am well into some serious gravy time now but sometimes I wonder if I am actually dead and this is hell.
anonymous blog comment
Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money can not be eaten
Cree prophecy for North America
"'PowerPoint' is a distraction, people use it when they don't know what to say."
Cristian Arcega, quoted in Wired Magazine
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
George Bernard Shaw
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Robert A. Heinlein
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
Margaret Lee Runbeck
Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.
Clint Eastwood
If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris
I dunno, Google is like a clown, many coloured and jolly, but it still gives me the creeps.
Darkman, Walkin Dude
I think natural selection must have greatly rewarded the ability to reassure oneself in a crisis with complete bullshit.
Bob Harris
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
I like my buddies from west Texas. I liked them when I was young, I liked them when I was middle-age, I liked them before I was president, and I like them during president, and I like them after president.
George W. Bush
It is the ancient wisdom of birds that battles are best fought with song.
Richard Nelson
Cats have nine lives. Which makes them ideal for experimentation.
Jimmy Carr
The right to bear arms is slightly less ludicrous than the right to arm bears.
Chris Addison
Like beauty and honesty, promiscuity is in the eye of the beholder...
Hunter S. Thompson
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
Hunter S. Thompson
There is no honest way to explain [The Edge] because the only people who know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
Hunter S. Thompson
...a man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.
Albert Camus
The way I see life, it's like we're all flying on the Hindenburg, why fight over the window seats?
Richard Jeni
Begin each day as if it were on purpose.
Mary Anne Radmacher
It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Carl Sagan
If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
George Carlin
I'm pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have, in fact, caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers. But, as you see, it's a beautiful day, the beaches are open and people are having a wonderful time.
Mayor Vaughn, Jaws
The true patriot challenges the state when the state embarks on enhancing its power at the expense of the individual.
Ron Paul, May 2007
In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnation without government permission.
Newsweek, Aug 20 2007
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
Michael J Fox
My job has convinced me that life is a stale joke with no punch line.
Scott Adams, Dilbert
I feel fortunate that I enjoyed the blandishments of modernity. I had hip replacement and root canal. I was able to travel on airplanes. I was able to take cheap food for granted. I went to the movies. I enjoyed rock 'n' roll. And now I'm ready to move on.
James Howard Kunstler
One day you will take a fork in the road, and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go one way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go the other way and you can do something [...] for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself.To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you have to make a decision. To be or to do.
John Boyd, US Air Force
Jesus saves. But Gretzky gets the rebound and scores!
G.B. Trudeau
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Mae West
In the wake of 9/11, we [in America] have made the decision as a society that we can never again create something in which we can take pride, for fear that someone will destroy it. Moreover, we must suppress any trace of individualism, lest someone have the desire to rise above the bland sameness that protects us. I have, alas, no idea how to recapture our courage.
Anonymous post to boingboing.net, 2009
When I look back at life I see that I kept the good scotch to myself. I regret that. Pour the good scotch for your guests.
Dr. Kenneth M. Johnston (1920 - 1999)
...and when you try to get some,it surely can be hard.There's always trouble waiting,when you leave your own back yard.
Motorhead, Lost Johnny (lyrics by Mick Farren)
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Winston Churchill
Success is a journey, not a destination.
Ben Sweetland
For a long time I was very bitter that the people who controlled the means of anybody ever hearing my songs were never gonna play them. They only favored music that I specifically and particularly hated, and I wanted them dead. Suddenly, there was another avenue. I started hearing my stuff coming out of bars and then it started to happen little by little — a movie song here or a TV ad there.
Iggy Pop
A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.
Somerset Maugham
All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
Henry Ellis
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Siddhārtha Gautama (The Buddha)
My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.
Indira Gandhi
A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
Ernest Hemingway
Better to be judged by 12 than carried by six.
anon
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
Lenny Bruce
In times like these it is difficult not to write satire
Juvenal
Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.
C. S. Lewis
If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.
Voltaire
Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden
Karl Kraus
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see,
Henry David Thoreau
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo Da Vinci
You can easily judge the character of a man by the way he treats those who can do nothing for him.
Malcolm Forbes
This country will not be a good place for any of us to live unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.
Theodore Roosevelt
You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Steve Jobs
Well, someone once told me that life is divided in three parts: at first, you have time and inclination but lack money. Then, you have money and inclination but lack time. Finally, you have money and time but lack inclination. :-)
A creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored. This is the dilemma for every creative soul: he or she would prefer to starve and be heard than to eat well and be ignored.
Pete Townshend
In dwelling, be close to the land.In meditation, delve deep into the heart.In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.In speech, be true.In work, be competent.In action, be careful of your timing.
Lao Tsu
Listen, smile, agree, and then do whatever the fuck you were gonna do anyway.
Robert Downey Junior
Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.
Sigmund Freud
Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounding yourself with assholes.
William Gibson
Accept constraints and focus on essentials. (Speaking on photography, but with wide implication.)
Mahesh Venkitachalam
If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.
Thomas Paine
Everything that can be said can be said clearly.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
Henry Ford
Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.
Albert Einstein
Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
Albert Einstein
Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.
T.S. Eliot
Market matters most; neither a stellar team nor fantastic product will redeem a bad market. Markets that don't exist don't care how smart you are.
Marc Andreesen
[Time to study?] I chase three little ones around my place. I only have time to read medicine labels.
Chris McNamara, private correspondance
You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.
George Bernard Shaw
The secret to being boring is to tell everything.
Voltaire
I tell you, Satan's gonna have no trouble taking over here 'cause all the women are gonna say: 'What a cute butt.' 'He's Satan!' 'You don't know him like I do.' 'He's the Prince of Darkness!' 'I can change him.'
Bill Hicks
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
George Santayana
Though defensive violence will always be a sad necessity in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.
St. Augustine
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
Leon Trotsky
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to man.
Leon Trotsky
Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.
Norman Mailer
For many people, twenty years of experience is just one year of experience repeated twenty times.
Andy Hargadon
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
Ernest Hemingway
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King Jr
An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
Orlando Battista
The point isn't revenge. It is justice. Revenge is like a wave that washes up on shore - it always washes back out again. Justice is like the shore - it's still there after the wave comes and goes.
commenter "JP" on a Rolling Stone article about the crooks running Wall Street
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark Twain
Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.
Oscar Wilde
A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
Charles F. Keating
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
Lao Tzu
On the endless saga of Rob Ford, mayor of Toronto; "It shouldn't have had to come to this. I'm so tired of getting up every morning and wondering, 'What will it be today?' I'm so tired of giving the benefit of the doubt again and again, only to be let down again and again.... Somewhere a responsible adult has to appear, draw a bright moral line, tell the truth and say unequivocally what won't be tolerated. Somebody has to do the right thing."
Denzil Minnan-Wong
Theory without practice is pointless, practice without theory is mindless.
(often attributed to Vladimir Lenin)
There is little success where there is little laughter.
Andrew Carnegie
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great people are almost always bad people.
Lord Acton, 1834-1902
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Siddhārtha Gautama (The Buddha)
I had always imagined paradise as a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges
You have to be straight with people and your word has got to be your bond.
John Mudd
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
Colin Powell
There are some things you can't learn from others. You have to pass through the fire.
Norman Douglas
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.
John Gardner
Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list.
Denis Leary
Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
Abraham Lincoln
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
Over the long term the only alternative to Risk Management is Crisis Management. Crisis Management is much more embarrassing, expensive, and time consuming.
James Lam
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
There is no security upon this earth. There is only opportunity.
Douglas MacArthur
Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
Mark Twain
Between the idea and the reality. Between the motion and the act. Falls the Shadow.
T.S. Eliot
Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee, and do not try to make the universe a blind alley.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.
David Graeber
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
W. Edwards Deming
Before you act, listen. Before you react, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try.
Ernest Hemingway
I asked my doctor to give me something to stop me from aging, and he gave me a gun.
Rodney Dangerfield
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson
Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability.
Roy L. Smith
If you want your wife to listen to you, then talk to another woman: she will be all ears.
Sigmund Freud
I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
Rita Rudner
Marriage is like a game of chess, except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.
Jerry Seinfeld
By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates
Marriage is a wonderful invention: then again, so is the bicycle repair kit.
Billy Connolly
When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.
Prince Philip
The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they're too old to do it.
Ann Bancroft
Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.
Albert Einstein
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he'snot the same man.
Heraclitus
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
Vincent Van Gogh
Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.
J. Michael Straczynski
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
Abraham Lincoln
Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.
Anton Chekhov
If it doesn't work, it isn't a failure. It's data.
Dorrie Clark
There's nothing more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success and more dangerous to carry through than initiating change.
Niccolo Machiavelli
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
I'd see the publicity guy come on the set and I'd go hide in the rafters. The crew would be like, ‘I haven't seen him.' And then they'd leave and I'd go back to work.Because that's what's fun: the doing, not the talking.
Kurt Russell
It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
Obi Wan Kenobi
There is no intimacy without consequence.
Elan Mastai, "All Our Wrong Todays"
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Henry David Thoreau
An era may be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.
Arthur Miller
Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things.
George Carlin
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
When destiny comes to a man from outside, it lays him low, just as an arrow lays a deer low. When destiny comes to a man from within, from his innermost being, it makes him strong, it makes him into a god…
Hermann Hesse
A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to finally feel its warmth.
African proverb
If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.
Roald Dahl
It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
Anne Frank
I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.
Terry Pratchett (as Lord Vetinari)
You have brains in your head.You have feet in your shoes.You can steer yourselfany direction you choose.You're on your own. And you know what you know.And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.
Dr. Seuss
Society is indeed a contract... [the state] is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Edmund Burke
Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.
Valery Legasov
If you are going to tell people the truth, you have to make them laugh, or they'll kill you.
Oscar Wilde
Scratch the surface of any cynic, and you will find a wounded idealist underneath.
John Ortberg
[We will be] rich in proportion to the number of things which we can afford to let alone.
Thoreau
It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
Wendell Berry
It's better to be king of your silence than slave of your words.
Shakespeare
Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Ambition is the enemy of man. It stunts his ability to simplify the day. It is in simplicity we find peace.
Allan Watts
The problem is not people being uneducated. The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, and not educated enough to question anything from what they have been taught.
Richard Feynman
No wind favors the ship that has no charted course.
anon
Death comes quickly to those with a cause.
Sir Frances Jamieson (fictional, short story 'Catalyst' by Michael Werneburg)
I'm constantly amazed at how difficult it is to break free of the straitjacket of the immediately urgent.
michael werneburg
life's too short to use shitty pens
Ken Werneburg, slack chat 2021
Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.
Frank Herbert
There's something kind of horrific about milk. Think about it! Think about what we're doing. Milk is kind of gross.
Jordan Peele
Specialization is for insects - you've got one life, do everything you want to do.
Naval Ravikant
Future generations will look back on TV as the lead in the water pipes that slowly drove the Romans mad.
Kurt Vonnegut
The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
Brennan Manning
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
Steven J. Gould
Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.
Karl Marx
When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.
Isaac Asimov
In an unequal society, those who land on top want to believe their success is morally justified.
Michael Sandel
It's weird, man. People can watch a movie where thousands of people die in a war and not a tear. Yet one collie dies .. and the entire nation collapses with grief.
Dr. Johnny Fever
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.
Steve Martin
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
Michael Crichton
A true loyalist isn't someone who is blindly loyal but, rather, someone who is ride or die for as long as you give them that same loyalty.
user
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Frank Wilhoit
Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Writing is a lonely job, unless you're a drinker, in which case you always have a friend within reach.
Emilio Estevez
I have found that evil usually triumphs, unless good is very, very careful.
"Bones" McCoy
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.
Matsuo Basho
The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.
Carl Sagan
Nobody belongs anywhere, nobody exists on purpose, everybody's going to die.
"Morty", of Rick and Morty