This is the full archive of all quotes I have used since I began this feature in March of 2004.
Archive from 2004
Archive from 2005
Archive from 2006
Archive from 2007
Archive from 2008
Hey, Jaye! How you doin' man?..........Can I have some pizza?
"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and patriotism, will offer up all of their rights to the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done."
-Julius Caesar
February 19th, 2005
"My one regret in life is that I am not someone else."
-Woody Allen
February 20th, 2005
"I'm thinking about all the bad things I've done in the past.....And thinking about all the bad things I'll do in the future"
-"Beetle Bailey" comic strip, 1/31/05
March 6th, 2005
"You can observe a lot just by watching."
-Yogi Berra
March 14th, 2005
"I may disagree with what you have to say...but I will defend [to the death] your right to say it"
-Voltaire, on free speech.
March 15th, 2005
"If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns."
(On legal prohibition of popular items)
April 2nd, 2005
"Buy land! They've stopped making it!"
-Mark Twain
April 5th, 2005
"Good things may come to those who wait...but only the things left by those who hustle."
-Abe Lincoln
April 6th, 2005
"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."
-Dave Barry
In recognition of the recent end of the Star Wars saga, today's quotes are some great Star Wars lines.
"And so this is how liberty dies. To thunderous applause."-Senator Amidala, Episode III
"Luke, I AM your father!"- Vader, Episode V
"Size matters not. Judge me by my size, do you?"Yoda, Episode V
"Look, sir. Droids."- Imperial soldier, Episode IV
"[I suggest] an 'alternative form of persuasion'...demonstrating the full power of this battle station...Set course for Alderaan."-Grand Moff Tarkin, Episode IV
Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows - but to have an opinion on how the Universe began, about who created the Universe ... no, that's holy? ... We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how much of a furor Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say those things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow that they shouldn't be."
-Douglas Adams
August 8th, 2007
[If you read the Bible literally], The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
-Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
August 9th, 2007
"
You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud...
"
-Bob Dylan, Masters of War
August 9th, 2007
"
And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul.
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold.
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last.
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll.
"
-Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven (lyrics written & sung by Robert Plant)
August 20th, 2007
"
The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put inside boxes.
"
-Dave Barry
August 22nd, 2007
"
Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.
"
-The Humanity of Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan (from Dune, by Frank Herbert)
September 14th, 2007
"There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare."
-Sun-Tzu, The Art of War
trans. Giles
November 26th, 2007
"It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children - those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own - being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty..."
-Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839)
January 7th, 2008
"Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts."
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Part I, Chapter V (1835)
February 6th, 2008
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."
-Winston Churchill
February 8th, 2008
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the [Last Day], nor prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth [i.e. Islam], out of those who have been given the Book [Qur'an], until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection."
-The Qur'an, sura 9, verse 29 (trans. Shakir)
February 22nd, 2008
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
-Thomas Jefferson, "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776
March 9th, 2008
"I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes... But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end."
-Douglas MacArthur
March 19th, 2008
"Turn on" meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. "Tune in" meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. "Drop out" suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. "Drop Out" meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean "Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity."
-Timothy Leary, Flashbacks (1983)
March 20th, 2008
"[In 2006], Israel pulled out of Gaza, raising the peace hopes of amnesiacs everywhere."
-Dave Barry, Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So far!)
April 17th, 2008
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
-Charles Darwin
April 18th, 2008
"There is no god, and [Richard] Dawkins is his prophet."
-mcsporran, Slashdot commenter, in apparent parody of the Shahadah
June 11th, 2008
"People lost their virginity to this music, got high for the first time to this music. I've had people say kids died in Vietnam listening to this music, other people say they know someone who didn't commit suicide, because of this music. On stage, when we played these songs, they felt mysterious and magic. That's not for rent."
-John Densmore, drummer for The Doors, on his refusal to license the band's music
June 18th, 2008
"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of [even] the most honest man, I would [could still be able to] find something in them [as justification] to have him hanged."
-Cardinal Richelieu
June 23rd, 2008
"There are some people that aren't into all the words. There are some people who would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That's what they told us they were, remember? 'That's a bad word.' 'Awwww.' There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad Intentions."
-George Carlin
June 24th, 2008
"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death."
-George Carlin
June 27th, 2008
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires."
-Susan B. Anthony
July 1st, 2008
"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."
-Carl Sagan
July 2nd, 2008
"Which is it, is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's?"
-Friedrich Nietsche
September 6th, 2008
"God gave men both a penis and a brain, but, unfortunately, not enough blood supply to run both at the same time."
-Robin Williams
September 9th, 2008
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
- Bertrand Russel
September 10th, 2008
"Too many people spend money they don't have, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like."
- Will Rogers
September 12th, 2008
"We should not judge legislation by the good it will do if properly enforced, rather we should judge legislation by the harm it will do if improperly enforced."
- Lyndon B. Johnson
September 13th, 2008
"A doctrine of black supremacy is every bit as evil as one of white supremacy"
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
September 19th, 2008
"I am a Marxist--of the Groucho tendency."
-Anonymous, French slogan
October 25th, 2008
"Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems."
-Attributed to Linus Torvalds
October 29th, 2008
"In America, conscription is unknown; men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law."
-Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America, Part I, Chapter V)
November 9th, 2008
"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
December 4th, 2008
"Columbus had all the spirit of a crusader, and, at the same time, the investigating nature of a modern man of science. "
-Edmund Arthur Helps
December 16th, 2008
"Pretty women make us buy beer, ugly women make us drink beer"
-Al Bundy (TV's Married...With Children)
December 17th, 2008
"Those exalted [upper-class] stations may, no doubt, be completely degraded by vice and folly. But the vice and folly must be very great, before they can operate this complete degradation. The profligacy of a man of fashion [an upper-class man] is looked upon with much less contempt and aversion, than that of a man of
meaner [poorer] condition. In the latter, a single transgression of the rules of temperance and propriety, is commonly more resented, than the constant and avowed contempt of them ever is in the former."
-Adam Smith (Theory of Moral Sentiments, Book II, Chapter III)
December 26th, 2008
"The ultimate expression of business without government control is the Mafia."
-Source unknown
January 19th, 2009
"If you think that technology can solve your security problems, then you don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology. "
-Bruce Schneier
January 20th, 2009
"Now, a very great man once said
That some people rob you with a fountain pen.
It didn't take too long to find out
Just what he was talkin' about."
-Bob Dylan, "Talking New York"
January 31st, 2009
"Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid."
-Signature of "Dystopian Rebel", Slashdot commenter
March 5th, 2009
"Start with the basics. Don't be self-taught if you can possibly help it. I'm largely self-taught, which means my teacher was an idiot. Education is the first line of assault. People think that art is entirely instinctive; it is, but only after years of concentrated study and observation. Art is as much 'left-brain' as it is 'right-brain'."
-Todd Lockwood, Fantasy/SF artist, FAQ page
March 24th, 2009
"Morality represents the way we want the world to work. Economics represents the way it actually does work." [Editor's note: and science in general]
-Steven Levitt, Freakonomics
March 27th, 2009
"Zealous men often confuse purity with intolerance."
-R. Scott Bakker
April 1st, 2009
"Windows 7 licences will be handed out for free. After all, we don't normally charge for service packs."
-Steve Ballmer
April 4th, 2009
"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth."
-P.B. Medawar
April 16th, 2009
"It is true of every action that doing it is in itself neither noble. For example, nothing that we are doing now, whether drinking, singing or conversing, is noble and beautiful in and of itself. In actions, it's the manner of doing that determines the quality. When an action is done, nobly and correctly, it becomes normal and beautiful, but if not done correctly, it becomes shameful. So, loving and Love are not in every case noble and deserving of praise, but the loving that points us in a noble direction is."
-Plato, The Symposium (Line 181a, trans. Cobb)
April 23rd, 2009
"[A]ny lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no statement to the police under any circumstances."
-Justice Robert Jackson, Watts v. Indiana
April 30th, 2009
"If the First Amendment will protect [even] a scumbag like me, then it will protect all of you. Because I'm the worst."
-Larry Flynt
May 6th, 2009
"If you give people freedom but don't teach them to value it, they won't hold on to it for long."
-Richard M. Stallman
May 27th, 2009
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
-Robert Heinlein (1939)
June 20th, 2009
"I have been following and participating in Classic Rules (6th Edition) development and have been happy with the trimming of needless complication from the rules that distract from the strategy of the game. The rules are getting closer to my original concept of simple, clear rules with strategic play depth introduced through cards."
- Richard Garfield, game designer noted as the creator of Magic the Gathering
July 7th, 2009
"You've got a million-dollar voice, kid, but a ten-cent brain."
-Roy Acuff, to Hank Williams, on Hank's drinking problem
August 2nd, 2009
"The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late
and owns the worm farm."
August 3rd, 2009
"The worst things I've ever seen people say about me on the internet are practically love letters compared to the things a number of my various editors and agents have said to me over the years."
-Laura Resnick, fantasy author
August 22nd, 2009
"Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion."
-Scott Adams
To put up a link to this archive on your webpage, The URL is http://www.geocities.com/alangilfoy/quoteoftheday.html.
The link would be coded as follows:
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/alangilfoy/quoteoftheday.html">Alan Gilfoy's Quote of the Day Archive</a>
Admittedly, I sure don't put up a new quote every day. So it's really a "Quote of Whatever Time Increment I Feel Like" page.