(famous quotes, witty quotes,
and funny quotations collected by Hoa Van over the years)
"Moral indignation is
jealousy with a halo."
- H.
G. Wells (1866-1946)
"Glory is fleeting, but
obscurity is forever."
-
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"Victory goes to the
player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
-
Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)
"Don't be so humble -
you are not that great."
-
Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat
"His ignorance is
encyclopedic"
-
Abba Eban (1915-2002)
"If a man does his best,
what else is there?"
-
General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
"I can write better than
anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write
better."
- A.
J. Liebling (1904-1963)
"People demand freedom
of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
-
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
"Give me chastity and
continence, but not yet."
-
Saint Augustine (354-430)
"Not everything that can
be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Only two things are
infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the
former."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"A lie gets halfway around
the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
-
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I do not feel obliged
to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and
intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
-
Galileo Galilei
"The artist is nothing
without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
-
Emile Zola (1840-1902)
"This book fills a
much-needed gap."
-
Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review
"The full use of your
powers along lines of excellence."
- definition
of"happiness" by John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
"I'm living so far
beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
- e
e cummings (1894-1962)
"Give me a museum and
I'll fill it."
-
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
"Assassins!"
-
Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) to his orchestra
"I'll moider da
bum."
-
Heavyweight boxer Tony Galento, when asked what he thought of William
Shakespeare
"In theory, there is no
difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
-
Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
"I find that the harder
I work, the more luck I seem to have."
-
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"Each problem that I
solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."
-
Rene Descartes (1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"
"In the End, we will
remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
-
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
"Whether you think that
you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
-
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"Do, or do not. There is
no 'try'."
-
Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')
"The only way to get rid
of a temptation is to yield to it."
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Don't stay in bed,
unless you can make money in bed."
-
George Burns (1896-1996)
"I don't know why we are
here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."
-
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
"The use of COBOL
cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal
offense."
-
Edsgar Dijkstra
"C makes it easy to shoot
yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your
whole leg."
-
Bjarne Stroustrup
"A mathematician is a
device for turning coffee into theorems."
-
Paul Erdos (1913-1996)
"Problems worthy of
attack prove their worth by fighting back."
-
Paul Erdos (1913-1996)
"Dancing is silent
poetry."
-
Simonides (556-468bc)
"The only difference
between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."
-
Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
"If you can't get rid of
the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
-
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"But at my back I always
hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near."
-
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
"Good people do not need
laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around
the laws."
-
Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"The power of accurate
observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
-
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Whenever I climb I am
followed by a dog called 'Ego'."
-
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"We have art to save
ourselves from the truth."
-
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Never interrupt your
enemy when he is making a mistake."
-
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"I think 'Hail to the
Chief' has a nice ring to it."
-
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) when asked what is his favorite song
"Human history becomes
more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
- H.
G. Wells (1866-1946)
"Talent does what it
can; genius does what it must."
-
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
"The difference between
'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken
was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."
-
unknown
"Women might be able to
fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship."
-
Sharon Stone
"If you are going
through hell, keep going."
-
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"He who has a 'why' to
live, can bear with almost any 'how'."
-
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"I'm all in favor of
keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with
typewriters."
-
Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"Some cause happiness
wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"God is a comedian
playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
-
Voltaire (1694-1778)
"He is one of those
people who would be enormously improved by death."
- H.
H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
"I am ready to meet my
Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is
another matter."
-
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I shall not waste my
days in trying to prolong them."
-
Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"If you can count your
money, you don't have a billion dollars."
- J.
Paul Getty (1892-1976)
"Facts are the enemy of
truth."
-
Don Quixote - "Man of La Mancha"
"When you do the common
things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the
world."
-
George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
"How wrong it is for a
woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it
herself."
-
Anais Nin (1903-1977)
"I have not failed. I've
just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
-
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
"I begin by taking. I
shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right."
-
Frederick (II) the Great
"Maybe this world is
another planet's Hell."
-
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
"Blessed is the man, who
having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."
-
George Eliot (1819-1880)
"Once you eliminate the
impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the
truth."
-
Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)
"Black holes are where
God divided by zero."
-
Steven Wright
"I've had a wonderful
time, but this wasn't it."
-
Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
"It's kind of fun to do
the impossible."
-
Walt Disney (1901-1966)
"We didn't lose the
game; we just ran out of time."
-
Vince Lombardi
"The optimist proclaims
that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this
is true."
-
James Branch Cabell
"A friendship founded on
business is better than a business founded on friendship."
-
John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)
"All are lunatics, but
he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."
-
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"You can only find truth
with logic if you have already found truth without it."
-
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"An inconvenience is
only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly
considered."
-
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"I have come to believe
that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by
our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
-
Umberto Eco
"Be nice to people on
your way up because you meet them on your way down."
-
Jimmy Durante
"The true measure of a
man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
-
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"A people that values
its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
-
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
"The significant
problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when
we created them."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Basically, I no longer
work for anything but the sensation I have while working."
-
Albert Giacometti (sculptor)
"All truth passes
through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
-
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"Many a man's reputation
would not know his character if they met on the street."
-
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"There is more stupidity
than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
-
Frank Zappa
"Perfection is achieved,
not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take
away."
-
Antoine de Saint Exupery
"Life is pleasant. Death
is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
-
Isaac Asimov
"If you want to make an
apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
-
Carl Sagan
"It is much more
comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."
- G.
B. Burgin
"Once is happenstance.
Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
-
Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger" by Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"To love oneself is the
beginning of a lifelong romance"
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Knowledge speaks, but
wisdom listens."
-
Jimi Hendrix
"A clever man commits no
minor blunders."
-
Goethe (1749-1832)
"Argue for your
limitations, and sure enough they're yours."
- Richard
Bach
"A witty saying proves
nothing."
-
Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Sleep is an excellent
way of listening to an opera."
-
James Stephens (1882-1950)
"The nice thing about
being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault."
-
Henry Kissinger (1923-)
"Education is a
progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
-
Will Durant
"I have often regretted
my speech, never my silence."
-
Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
"It was the experience
of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"If everything seems
under control, you're just not going fast enough."
-
Mario Andretti
"I do not consider it an
insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to
know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism
means."
-
Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.
"Obstacles are those
frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
-
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"I'll sleep when I'm
dead."
- Warren
Zevon (1947-2003)
"There are people in the
world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of
bread."
-
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"When you gaze long into
the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
-
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"The instinct of nearly
all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by
trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails
too, the finish by loading honors on your head."
-
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
"Everyone is a genius at
least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together."
-
Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
"Success usually comes
to those who are too busy to be looking for it"
-
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"While we are
postponing, life speeds by."
-
Seneca (3BC - 65AD)
"Where are we going, and
why am I in this handbasket?"
-
Bumper Sticker
"God, please save me
from your followers!"
-
Bumper Sticker
"Fill what's empty,
empty what's full, and scratch where it itches."
-
the Duchess of Windsor, when asked what is the secret of a long and happy life
"First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
-
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"Luck is the residue of
design."
-
Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team
"Tragedy is when I cut
my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
-
Mel Brooks
"Most people would
sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
-
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"Wit is educated
insolence."
-
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"My advice to you is get
married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a
philosopher."
-
Socrates (470-399 B.C.)
"Egotist: a person more
interested in himself than in me."
-
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"A narcissist is someone
better looking than you are."
-
Gore Vidal
"Wise men make proverbs,
but fools repeat them."
-
Samuel Palmer (1805-80)
"It has become
appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"The secret of success
is to know something nobody else knows."
-
Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
"Sometimes when reading
Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny."
-
Guy Davenport
"When you have to kill a
man, it costs nothing to be polite."
-
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Any man who is under
30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not
a conservative, has no brains."
-
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"The opposite of a
correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may
well be another profound truth."
-
Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
"We all agree that your
theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
-
Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
"When I am working on a
problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the
problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it
is wrong."
-
Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
"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 (1902-1984)
"I would have made a
good Pope."
-
Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
"In any contest between
power and patience, bet on patience."
-
W.B. Prescott
"Anyone who considers
arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of
sin."
-
John von Neumann (1903-1957)
"The mistakes are all
waiting to be made."
-
chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game's opening
position
"It is unbecoming for
young men to utter maxims."
-
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Grove giveth and Gates
taketh away."
-
Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being
able to keep up with software demands
"Reality is merely an
illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"One of the symptoms of
an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly
important."
-
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"A little inaccuracy
sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
- H.
H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
"There are two ways of
constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are
obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that
there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more
difficult."
- C.
A. R. Hoare
"Make everything as
simple as possible, but not simpler."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"What do you take me
for, an idiot?"
-
General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was
happy
"I heard someone tried
the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all
they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon."
-
Bill Hirst
"Three o'clock is always
too late or too early for anything you want to do."
-
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"A doctor can bury his
mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."
-
Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"It is dangerous to be
sincere unless you are also stupid."
-
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"If you haven't got
anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
-
Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)
"A man can't be too
careful in the choice of his enemies."
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Forgive your enemies,
but never forget their names."
-
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
"Logic is in the eye of
the logician."
-
Gloria Steinem
"No one can earn a
million dollars honestly."
-
William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
"Everything has been
figured out, except how to live."
-
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"Well-timed silence hath
more eloquence than speech."
-
Martin Fraquhar Tupper
"Thank you for sending
me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it."
-
Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
"From the moment I
picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some
day I intend reading it."
-
Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
"It is better to have a
permanent income than to be fascinating."
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"When ideas fail, words
come in very handy."
-
Goethe (1749-1832)
"In the end, everything
is a gag."
-
Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
"The nice thing about
egotists is that they don't talk about other people."
-
Lucille S. Harper
"You got to be careful
if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
-
Yogi Berra
"I love Mickey Mouse
more than any woman I have ever known."
-
Walt Disney (1901-1966)
"He who hesitates is a
damned fool."
-
Mae West (1892-1980)
"Good teaching is
one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater."
-
Gail Godwin
"University politics are
vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
-
Henry Kissinger (1923-)
"The graveyards are full
of indispensable men."
- Charles
de Gaulle (1890-1970)
"You can pretend to be
serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
-
Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
"Behind every great
fortune there is a crime."
-
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
"If women didn't exist,
all the money in the world would have no meaning."
-
Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
"I am not young enough
to know everything."
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Bigamy is having one
wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"The object of war is
not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
-
General George Patton (1885-1945)
"Sometimes a scream is
better than a thesis."
-
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"There is no sincerer
love than the love of food."
-
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"I don't even butter my
bread; I consider that cooking."
-
Katherine Cebrian
"I have an existential
map; it has 'you are here' written all over it."
-
Steven Wright
"Mr. Wagner has
beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."
-
Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
"Manuscript: something
submitted in haste and returned at leisure."
-
Oliver Herford (1863-1935)
"I have read your book
and much like it."
-
Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
"The covers of this book
are too far apart."
-
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"Everywhere I go I'm
asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't
stifle enough of them."
-
Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
"Too many pieces of
music finish too long after the end."
-
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
"Anything that is too
stupid to be spoken is sung."
-
Voltaire (1694-1778)
"When choosing between
two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
-
Mae West (1892-1980)
"I don't know anything
about music. In my line you don't have to."
-
Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
"No Sane man will
dance."
-
Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
"Hell is a half-filled
auditorium."
-
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
"Show me a sane man and
I will cure him for you."
-
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
"Vote early and vote
often."
- Al
Capone (1899-1947)
"If I were two-faced,
would I be wearing this one?"
-
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"Few things are harder
to put up with than a good example."
-
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Hell is other
people."
-
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"I am become death,
shatterer of worlds."
-
Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (citing from the Bhagavad Gita, after
witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion)
"Happiness is good
health and a bad memory."
-
Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)
"Friends may come and
go, but enemies accumulate."
-
Thomas Jones
"You can get more with a
kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
- Al
Capone (1899-1947)
"The gods too are fond
of a joke."
-
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Distrust any enterprise
that requires new clothes."
-
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"The difference between
pornography and erotica is lighting."
-
Gloria Leonard
"It is time I stepped
aside for a less experienced and less able man."
-
Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell
"Every day I get up and
look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not
there, I go to work."
-
Robert Orben
"The cynics are right
nine times out of ten."
-
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"There are some experiences
in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is
listening to the Brahms Requiem."
-
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"And I looked, and
behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed
with him."
-
Revelations 6:8
"Attention
to health is life's greatest hindrance."
-
Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"Plato
was a bore."
-
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Nietzsche
was stupid and abnormal."
-
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
"I'm
not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy."
-
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"Hemingway
was a jerk."
-
Harold Robbins
"Men are not disturbed
by things, but the view they take of things."
-
Epictetus (55-135 A.D.)
"What about things like
bullets?"
-
Herb Kimmel, Behavioralist, Professor of Psychology, upon hearing the above
quote (1981)
"How
can I lose to such an idiot?"
- A
shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)
"Not
only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."
-
Woody Allen (1935-)
"I
don't feel good."
-
The last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)
"Nothing
is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure."
-
Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)
"Men
have become the tools of their tools."
-
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"I
have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
-
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"It
is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant."
-
Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines
"I
never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
-
Gore Vidal
"I
don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve
immortality through not dying."
-
Woody Allen (1935-)
"Men
and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other
alternatives."
-
Abba Eban (1915-2002)
"To
sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me."
-
Charles William Stubbs
"Sanity
is a madness put to good uses."
-
George Santayana (1863-1952)
"Imitation
is the sincerest form of television."
-
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
"Always
do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
-
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"In
America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
-
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
"Copy
from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
-
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
"Why
don't you write books people can read?"
-
Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)
"Some
editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
- T.
S. Eliot (1888-1965)
"Criticism
is prejudice made plausible."
-
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"It
is better to be quotable than to be honest."
-
Tom Stoppard
"Being
on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting."
-
Karl Wallenda
"Opportunities
multiply as they are seized."
-
Sun Tzu
"A
scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a
scholar."
-
Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)
"
The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
-
Alan Kay
"Never
mistake motion for action."
-
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"Hell
is paved with good samaritans."
-
William M. Holden
"The
longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all
the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my
time."
-
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Silence
is argument carried out by other means."
-
Ernesto"Che"Guevara (1928-1967)
"Well
done is better than well said."
-
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"The
average person thinks he isn't."
-
Father Larry Lorenzoni
"Heav'n
hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman
scorn'd."
-
William Congreve (1670-1729)
"A
husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted."
-
Helen Rowland (1876-1950)
"Learning
is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
- Lewis
Perelman
"Dogma
is the sacrifice of wisdom to consistency."
-
Lewis Perelman
"Sometimes
it is not enough to our best; we must do what is required."
-
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"The
man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait
till that other is ready."
-
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"There
is a country in Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal."
-
Sigfried Hulzer
"Ask
her to wait a moment - I am almost done."
-
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), while working, when informed that his wife is
dying
"A
pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the
opportunity in every difficulty."
-
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I
think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-
Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943
"I
think it would be a good idea."
-
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization
"The
only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
-
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"I'm
not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
-
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"If
stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" "
-
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"The
backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."
-
Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
"Democracy
does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of
opportunity."
-
Irving Kristol
"There
is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"The
concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C',
the idea must be feasible."
- A
Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper
proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal
Express Corp.)
"Who
the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- H.
M. Warner (1881-1958), founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927
"We
don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
-
Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962
"Everything
that can be invented has been invented."
-
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
"Denial
ain't just a river in Egypt."
-
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"A
pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood."
-
General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
"After
I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have
one."
-
Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)
"He
can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
-
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"Don't
let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
-
last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)
"The
right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)
"The
difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
-
Tom Clancy
"It's
not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the
dog."
-
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"It
is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
-
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"
"Whatever
is begun in anger ends in shame."
-
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"The
President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
-
Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live
"We're
going to turn this team around 360 degrees."
-
Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks
"Half
this game is ninety percent mental."
-
Yogi Berra
"There
is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human
imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it
reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole."
-
Bill Wulf
"There's
many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
-
Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
"He
has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
-
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I
criticize by creation - not by finding fault."
-
Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
"Love
is friendship set on fire."
- Jeremy
Taylor
"God
gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to
run both at the same time."
-
Robin Williams, commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair
"My
occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate."
-
Unibomber Theodore Kaczynski, when asked in court what his current profession
was
"Woman
was God's second mistake."
-
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"This
isn't right, this isn't even wrong."
-
Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist's paper
"For
centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of
the-not-worth-knowing."
-
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"Pray,
v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single
petitioner confessedly unworthy."
-
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"Every
normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black
flag, and begin slitting throats."
-
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"Now,
now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
-
Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he
renounce Satan.
"Fill
the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run."
-
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
"He
would make a lovely corpse."
-
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
"I've
just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
-
Irvin S. Cobb
"I
worship the quicksand he walks in."
-
Art Buchwald
"Wagner's
music is better than it sounds."
-
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"A
poem is never finished, only abandoned."
-
Paul Valery (1871-1945)
"We
are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction."
-
General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
"If
you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024
chickens?"
-
Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of supercomputing
"#3
pencils and quadrille pads."
-
Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray
I supercomputer; he also recommended using the back side of the pages so that
the grid lines were not so dominant.
"Interesting
- I use a Mac to help me design the next Cray."
-
Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when he was told that Apple Inc. had recently bought
a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.
"Your
Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
-
Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics
make no mention of God.
"I
choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need."
-
Francois-Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make his
remarkable statues
"The
man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read
them."
-
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"The
truth is more important than the facts."
-
Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"Research
is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
-
Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)
"There
are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the
other is getting it."
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"There
are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The
other is as though everything is a miracle."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)