Quotable Quotes

“Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.”
- George Bernard Shaw

“Public speaking is very easy.”
- Dan Quayle, to reporters (10/88)

“People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”
- Abraham Lincoln, in a book review

“In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.”
- Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

“All marriages are mixed marriages.”
- Chantal Saperstein

“She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
- W. Somerset Maugham

“When ideas fail, words come in very handy.”
- Goethe

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
- Bertrand Russell

“What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?”
- Irv Kupcinet

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is.”
- Chuck Reid

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.”
- Isaac Asimov

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.”
- Richard P. Feynman

“The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime television.”
- Unknown

“I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.”
- E. M. Forster, as a small child

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

“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.”
- George Bernard Shaw

“Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.”
- Albert Camus

“Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life.”
- Robert Byrne

“If it weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we’d still be eating frozen radio dinners.”
- Johnny Carson

“It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.”
- Jerome K. Jerome

“You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?”
- Steven Wright

“Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.”
- Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary

“I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.”
- Bill Hoest

“Any great truth can—and eventually will—be expressed as a cliche—a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance, my grandmother used to say, ‘The black cat is always the last one off the fence.’ I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was undoubtedly true.”
- Solomon Short

“I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on.”
- Oscar Levant

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
- Voltaire (1694-1778)

“It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.”
- George Bernard Shaw

“No problem is so formidable that you can’t walk away from it.”
- Charles Schulz

“Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “The Little Prince”

“Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?”
- Woody Allen

“Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought—particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.”
- Woody Allen

“An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for months or years. A competent attornety can delay one even longer.”
- Evelle J. Younger

“The big thieves hang the little ones.”
- Czech proverb

“Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chcats pleasantly while he’s overcharging you.”
- Kin Hubbard

“You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”
- Douglas Adams

“If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.”
- Quentin Crisp

“It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.”
- Jerome K Jerome

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
- George Orwell

“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.”
- George Santayana

“Learn not only to find what you like, learn to like what you find.”
- Anthony J. D’Angelo, The College Blue Book

“They’re funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you’re having them.”
- Eeyore, Pooh’s Little Instruction Book

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
- Helen Keller

“When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody.”
- W. S. Gilbert

“Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.”
- Howard Scott

“I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father’s religion, if they can find out what it is.”
- Charles Lamb

“Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?”
- Clarence Darrow

“The only thing that’s been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence.”
- Joan Baez

“Never knock on Death’s door: ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that!”
- Matt Frewer as Dr. Mike Stratford in “Doctor, Doctor”
“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”
- Nelson Henderson

“People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.”
- Gilbert K. Chesterton

“The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
- Oscar Wilde
“Some people make things happen, some watch while things happen, and some wonder ‘What happened?’”
- Unknown

“Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.”
- Christian Furchtegott Gellert

“The cat could very well be man’s best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.”
- Doug Larson


“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”
- J.D. Salinger

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
- Voltaire

“A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.”
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”
- Charles Lamb

“I don’t have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.”
- Ashleigh Brilliant

“Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.”
- Tom Robbins

“Americans detest all lies except lies spoken in public or printed lies.”
- Ed Howe:

“Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.”
- Gordon R. Dickson

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten”
- B.F. Skinner
“Wisdom begins in wonder.”
- Socrates

“It’s the constant and determined effort that breaks down resistance, sweeps away all obstacles.”
- Claude M. Bristol
“A crash is when your competitor’s program dies. When your program dies, it is an ‘idiosyncrasy’. Frequently, crashes are followed with a message like ‘ID 02’. ‘ID’ is an abbreviation for idiosyncrasy and the number that follows indicates how many more months of testing the product should have had.”
- Guy Kawasaki

“Only the good die young. Note the average age in Congress.”
- Anon.

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
- Goethe

“May you live every day of your life.”
- Jonathan Swift
“One that would have the fruit must climb the tree.”
- Thomas Fuller

“He who angers you conquers you.”
- Elizabeth Kenny

“Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.”
- Fletcher Knebel

“History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.”
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“There is no virtue in being uncritical; nor is it a habit to which the young are given. But criticism is only the burying beetle that gets rid of what is dead, and, since the world lives by creative and constructive forces, and not by negation and destruction, it is better to grow up in the company of prophets than of critics.”
- Richard Livingstone

“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt.”

- William Shakespeare

“Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.”
- Samuel Johnson

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
- Marcus Aurelius

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”
- Albert Einstein
“Friends are treasures.”
- Horace Bruns

“An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.”
- Buddha

“When I find myself fading, I close my eyes and realize my friends are my energy.”
- Anon.
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or
even touched - they must be felt with the heart.”
- Hellen Keller
“Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.” N.B.: This famous aphorism is often misquoted, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
- Plato, Symposium

“The definition of a beautiful woman is one who loves me.”
- Sloan Wilson

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

“Every man ought to be inquisitive through every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the sun. For if he dies without a question in his heart, what excuse is there for his continuance?”
- Frank Moore Colby, The Colby Essays

“There are two sorts of curiosity—the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things.”
- Robert Lynd, Solomon in All His Glory

“There is an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job.”
- Peter Drucker

“Sooner or later I’m going to die, but I’m not going to retire.”
- Margaret Mead

“Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.”
- George Burns

“The whole business of marshaling one’s energies becomes more and more important as one grows older.”
- Hume Cronyn

“I find that a man is as old as his work. If his work keeps him from moving forward, he will look forward with the work.”
- William Ernest Hocking, Wisdom for Our Time

“Years and sins are always more than owned.”
- Italian Proverb
“It takes a great man to be a good listener.”
- Calvin Coolidge

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”
- Ernest Hemingway
“A good listener tries to understand thoroughly what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but before he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with.”
- Kenneth A. Wells, Guide to Good Leadership

“He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.”
- Aesop

“There is someone willing to argue about any point.”
I don’t know, but I’ll argue any attribution

“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”
- Jeseph Joubert

“Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood.”
- Louise Beal

“The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.”
- Will Rogers

“Fools rush in where fools have been before.”
- Unknown
“It is bad luck to be superstitious.”
- Andrew W. Mathis

“A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.”
- P. J. O’Rourke

“Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks.”
- Eric Sevareid

“A musicologist is a man who can read music but can’t hear it.”
- Sir Thomas Beecham

“The best defense against the atom bomb is not to be there when it goes off.”
- Anonymous

“Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.”
- Gandhi
“Everything starts as somebody’s daydream.”
- Larry Niven

“We’re more popular than Jesus now; I dont know which will go first; rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.”
- John Lennon

“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

NEW PROVERBS

If you’re too open minded, your brains will fall out.
Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he’ll be a mile away - and barefoot.
Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a mechanic.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
A closed mouth gathers no feet.
If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.
My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
I have found at my age going bra-less pulls all the wrinkles out of my face.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
Always yield to temptation, because it may not pass your way again.
Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
No husband has ever been shot while doing the dishes.