Miscellaneous Quotes 

Words of my own

"Women have comfort foods, men have comfort clothes."

"Many people limit their options with their narrow sense of normality."

"When gauging the importance of a reformer, we must look not from the perspective of an unbiased observer, but from that of those who reap the benefits of the change."

"The names have been kept the same to condemn the guilty."

"This mixed message has been brought to you by confusion."

"Little kids have so much fun, why wouldn't you want to be one?"

"Crazy crazy till sleepy sleepy." (Theories on life)

Other people said these things, I've done my best to have references.

"A good story is at its best when the line between truth and fiction remains ambiguous."  (Leicester Hemingway)

"Just try to be angry with someone who fed you something delicious."  (Carmen Cook)

"I have been in this business 36 years. I've learned a lot and most of it doesn't apply anymore."  (Charles Exley)

"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."  (Malcolm S. Forbes)

"I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill."  (Thomas Edison)

"Integrity is doing what you say.  Sincerity is meaning what you say."  (Bradley Havens)

"You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?  For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks."  (Matthew 12:34)

"Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously."  (G. K. Chesterton)

"We spend money we don’t have to buy things we don’t want to impress people we don’t like."

"The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions."  (Mike Krzyzewski)

"The ability to ask good questions is a skill which is often un-tapped.  In our society it is more common to hear people talking about themselves than asking questions of others."  (Alice Fryling, Disciplemakers' Handbook)

"The works of the Lord are great, Studied by all who have pleasure in them."  (Psalm 111:2, Inscribed  above the door of the Cavendish Laboratory, (in Latin) placed by James Clerk Maxwell.)

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."  (Albert Einstein)

"Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians.  All three need supervision."  (Dick Armey)

"Come on, then, and let us spend our time in discoursing of things that are profitable."  (Faithful, in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress)

"You don't even have to be right to be quoted" (Ullica Segerstrale)

"No man, black or white, from North or South, shall drag me down so low as to make me hate him."  (Booker Taliaferro Washington)

"Nothing brings people together quite like enemies."

"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning." (Aristotle Onassis 1906-1975)

"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example." (Mark Twain 1835-1910)

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." (Mark Twain)

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. " (Mark Twain)

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please" (Mark Twain)

"Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate." (Thomas Jones)

"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century." (Perelman)

"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research." (Wilson Mizner 1876-1933)

What do you think of Western civilization?  "I think it would be a good idea." (Mahatma Gandhi)

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house." (George Carlin)

"No guts, no glory, no brain, same story."

"No day in which you learn something is a complete loss" (David Eddings)

"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept" (Ansel Adams)

"Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it."

"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." (Alfred Tennyson)

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the government's purposes are beneficent... the greatest dangers
to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning
but without understanding."  (Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928)

"Eagles may soar but weasels aren't sucked into jet engines!"

"People will pay for what they want, but not for what they need."  (Bill Watterson)

"A good compromise leaves everybody mad."  (Calvin, the character created by Bill Watterson )

"A lazy genius is indistinguishable from an idiot."

"None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science.  In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder."   (Mary Shelley in Frankenstein)

"Follow me if I advance! Kill me if I retreat! Revenge me if I die!"

"Females and finances don't mix."  (Rom, "Ferengi Love Songs")

"When the going gets tough, the tough change the Rules.  (Rules of Netquisition' #3)

"There's a sucker born every minute; be sure you're the first to find each one."  ('Rules of Netquisition' #2)

"Why in the world am I waiting in the pouring rain for the school bus to take me somewhere I don't even want to go?... I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know." (Calvin, in the tenth anniversary book)

"Every person is a fool in somebody's opinion." (Spanish Proverb)

"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability." (Bern Williams)

"If at first you don't succeed, redefine success."

"A city is a large community where people are lonesome together."

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." (Erica Jong)

"A good conscience is a soft pillow."

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has courage to lose sight of the shore."

"Most of our suspicions of others are aroused by our knowledge of ourselves."

"Originality is the art of concealing your source."  (Franklin P. Jones)

"A football game is real life, and less predictable than a mob hearing." (roughly what was said on a ESPN radio add)

"Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms." (Andrew Jackson)

"The wild landscapes and happy endings of fantasy creations can make us see our own world more clearly." (J.R.R. Tolkien)

"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say."

"Imagination is intelligence having fun."

"People used to live lives of quiet desperation - now they go on talk shows."  (Bob Thaves)

"It is appallingly obvious that our technology exceeds our humanity."  (Albert Einstein)

"It requires a very unusual mind to make an analysis of the obvious."  (Alfred North Whitehead)

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows. (Havelock Ellis)

"The reasonable man conforms to society's will.
                  The unreasonable man attempts to conform society to his will.
                  Therefore all progress is owed to the unreasonable man."  (George Bernard Shaw)

"Manners are superficial."  (James Kirk, of Illinois Tech not Star Trek)

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."  (Henry David Thoreau)

"[W]isdom is proved right by all her children"  (Luke 7:35)

"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

"No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."  (John Donne)

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

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."  (Albert Einstein)

"What luck for rulers that men do not think."  (Adolph Hitler)

"I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them."  (Jane Austen)

"A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on."  (William Burroughs)

"We hear about the birth of a child and ask questions like, ‘What did she have? How much did it weigh?' and ‘Does it have any hair?' The Athabaskan Indian hear of a birth and ask, ‘Who came?' From the beginning, there is a respect for the newborn as a full person."  (Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom)

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."  (Aldous Huxley)

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it has to be done, whether you like it or not."  (Aldous Huxley)

"Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards."  (Soren Kierkegaard)

"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past."  (Thomas Jefferson)

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."  (Thomas Paine)

"Afraid lest he be caught up in a net of words, tripped up, bewildered and so defeated -- thrown aside -- a man hesitates to write down his innermost convictions."  (William Carlos Williams)

"You see things and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?'"  (George Bernard Shaw)

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."  (Dr. Suess)

"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."  (Robert J. Oppenheimer, citing from the Bhaghavadgita after witnessing the testing of the first atomic bomb.)

"The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!"  (Calvin and Hobbes)

"Some people are pragmatists, taking things as they come and making the best of the choices available.  Some people are idealists, standing for principle and refusing to compromise. And some people just act on any whim that enters their heads. I pragmatically turn my whims into principles!"  (Calvin)

"Who wouldn't be interested in everything we do?!"  (Calvin)

"I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life ... Procrastinating and rationalizing."  (Calvin)

"Very rarely will any of you come up with an original idea that is worth anything."  (Dr. Lubin)

"We had no use for the policy of the Gospels, 'if someone slaps you, just turn the other cheek.' We had shown that anyone who slapped us on our cheek would get his head kicked off."  (Nikita Khrushchev)

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."  (Joseph Stalin)

"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."  (Jonathan Swift's "Thoughts on Various Subjects.")

"Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide."  (Napoleon I)

"The truth will set you free. But first, it's going to piss you off."

"Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists
on tormenting the generations to come."  (Compte de Montesquieu)

"If you want to test your memory, try to remember what you were worrying about one
year ago today."  (E. Joseph Cossman)

"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity."  (Frank Leahy)

"When you fall on somebody, it's not enough to say you didn't mean to; after all, he
probably didn't mean to be beneath you."  (Pooh's Little Instruction Book)

"When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you
die, the world cries and you rejoice."  (Cherokee prayer)

"Show me a man with both feet on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't put his
pants on."  (Arthur K. Watson)

"When one door closes, another opens. But we often look so long and regretfully upon
the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us."  (Alexander Graham Bell)

"Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures."

"The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love."  (William Wordsworth)

"No hurt heals by itself. So although we do not choose the ways we are hurt, we can choose the ways we will heal."

"I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."  (Lillian Hellman)

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."  (Henry David Thoreau)

"...it's Finals Week, and by definition it's not supposed to be in any way easy for anyone,
so I guess complaining doesn't serve much purpose other than to remind yourself and the others
around you how self-absorbed you are. I suppose that's why I like complaining about it so
much, because I like being all self-consciously ironic about my own self-absorption and my
other faults, because the fact that I admit awareness of my faults and point it out pre-emptively
absolves me of any wrongdoing and disqualifies me from any criticism! That's the credo of our
modern age, yo."  (Scott "Scotch" Herman)

"Sometimes people fill their minds with the stupidest things to keep themselves from thinking about things that are really important."  (My So-Called Life)

"Competition brings out the best in product and the worst in people."  (David Sarnoff)

"I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life."  (George
Burns)

"A lot of people, when they talk to me, I can't wait for them to shut up...like, shut up, you're a moron. I have nothing to say to you, you know? I'm not trying to enhance the conversation, so shut up."  (Billie Joe)

"He who is silent is understood to consent."

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."  (Paul Dirac)

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."  (Martin Luther King Jr.)

"The problem with doing nothing is not knowing when you're finished."  (Benjamin Franklin)

"how do you define a hate crime anyway? isn't murder a pretty hate-filled crime in general?"  (Jess)

"The more enlightened we become, the more we can't be lived up to by anybody anywhere. The more we learn, the more we'd better expect to live by ourselves."  (Richard Bach)

"I used to keep an open mind, but people kept trying to fill it with garbage."

"And although they'll never fathom it behind my sarcasms desperate memories lie."  (Pink Floyd)

"In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back."  (Charlie Brown)

"There is something magical that happens to the human spirit, a sense of calm that comes over you, when you cease needing all the attention directed toward yourself and instead allow others to have the glory."

"Stupidity killed the cat. Curiosity was framed."

"For a woman there is nothing more erotic than being understood."  (Molly Haskell)

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."  (Plato)

"The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."  (Benjamin Franklin)

"The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is
generally interrupted by someone doing it."  (Elbert Hubbard)

"An error is more dangerous the more truth it contains."  (Amiel)

"The battle to keep up appearances unnecessarily, the mask--whatever name you give creeping perfectionism--robs us of our energies."  (Robin Worthington)

"Not all who wander are lost."

"The thing I love most about homepages is that, in a matter of seconds, from thousands and thousands of miles away, someone can determine that someone else is a complete freak."  (Mirsky)

"I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too."  (Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name)

"They say education gets you everything, but it's not like that. So much of what you could do before, if you do now they say you're wasting a good education."  (Audrey Beth Stein)

"Sometimes someone says something really small, and it just fits right into this empty place in your heart."  (Angela on My So-Called Life)

"Smile, it makes people wonder what you've been up to."

"Enemies are so stimulating."  (Katherine Hepburn)

"Humor necessitates the ability to laugh at what one cherishes, including oneself. Persons who are not sure of themselves see nothing funny about jokes directed at them or what they believe."  (B. R. Hergenhahn)

"We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope."

"Physical fitness is the basis for all other forms of excellence."  (John F. Kennedy)

"Your head is SO BIG that small objects are starting to orbit around it. I hope I'm not one of them."  (Lynette Meachum)

"When one is a stranger to oneself, then one is estranged from others too."

"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life experience."

"It's okay to talk to yourself, just don't interrupt."

"When you call someone's name, and they don't hear, you feel so lonely."  (Angela on My So-Called Life)

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."  (Albert Einstein)

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."  (Ernest Hemingway)

"You Radiate Cold Shafts of Broken Glass" (Pink Floyd lyric from Pigs off the Animals disc)

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