Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? - - Carpe - - hear it? - - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.
Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poet's Society
Myth is generally more powerful than reason.
-C.J. Cherryh
Myths are the flights of the imagination inspired by the energies of the body.
�Joseph Campbell
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
-George Eliot (1819-1880) English Novelist
An important thing is never to stop questioning.
-Albert Einstein
The chances of failure are small, for only the unimaginative can believe that mankind's destiny lies on a small overstrained planet in a Galaxy of plenty. . .The meek shall inherit the Earth, the rest will inherit a Universe.
-A. Bond
Definition of Utopia: No borders and no neighbors.
-Abba Eban
The meek shall inherit the Earth; but having inherited the Earth, shall they continue to be meek?
-Abba Eban
It is not true that nice guys finish last. Nice guys are winners before the game ever starts.
-Addison Walker
Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience.
-Adm. Hyman G. Rickover
Facts are stubborn things.
-Alain Ren� Lesage
There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
-Alfred Korzybski
A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.
-Alistair Cooke
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.
-Allen Ginsberg
Prejudice: A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
-Ambrose Bierce
There's nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know.
-Ambrose Bierce
As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
-Andrew Carnegie
All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.
-Anonymous
Future shock - a sense of bewilderment felt by those who were not paying attention.
-Anonymous
If you want to understand something, try to change it.
-Anonymous
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-Arthur C. Clarke
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
-Arthur Koestler
Every child is a bundle of potential.
-Benjamin Franklin
Success is never final, and failure is never fatal.
-Benjamin Franklin
The joy of the heart colors the face.
-Benjamin Franklin
When you have a fight with your conscience and get licked, you win.
-Benjamin Franklin
When you have been wronged, a poor memory is your best response.
-Benjamin Franklin
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Benjamin Franklin
Visionary people are visionary partly because of the very great many things they don't see.
-Berkeley Rice
Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.
-Bern Williams
Our only hope is corruption. As long as corruption lasts, lenient judgments will continue and even the innocent may get off scot free.
-Bertold Brecht
People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.
-Blaise Pascal
The last function of reason is to recongize that there is an infinity of things which surpass it.
-Blaise Pascal
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
-Charles Dickens
A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.
-Charles M. Schawb
When prosperity comes, do not use all of it.
-Confucius
The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
-David Russell
The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today.
-Dean Rusk
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it.
-Descartes
Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
-Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
-Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
All right, said Deep Thought. 'The Answer to the Great Question...' 'Yes ...!' 'Of Life, the Universe and Everything...' said Deep Thought. 'Yes...!' 'Is...' said Deep Thought and paused. 'Yes...!' 'Is...' 'Yes...!!!...?' 'Fourty-two,' said Deep Thought with infinite majesty and calm.
-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I have a dream...that men will rise up and come to see that they are made to live together as brothers.
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal.
-E. Joseph Cossman
It is a matter of regret that many low, mean suspicions turn out to be well-founded.
-Edgar Watson Howe
No man is smart, except by comparison with others who know less; the smartest man who ever lived has reason to be ashamed of himself.
-Edgar Watson Howe
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its power of acting and reasoning as fear.
-Edmund Burke
A stumble may prevent a fall.
-English proverb
It isn't what people think that's important, but the reason they think what they think.
-Eugene Ionesco
Generally, the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories.
-Felix Cohen
It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.
-Franklin P. Jones
If God had not rested on Sunday, he could have completed the world.
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One good thing about being young is that you are not experienced enough to know you cannot possibly do the things you are doing.
-Gene Brown
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
-George Bernard Shaw
Anything as strange as books would be hard to find in this world! Printed by people who don't understand them; sold by people who don't understand them; bound, corrected, and proofread by people who don't understand them; and now, even written by people who don't understand them!
-George Christoph Lichtenberg
Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.
-George F. Will
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not in quality.
-George Santayana
Faith is perseverance when the situation looks hopeless. If we had to tolerate in others all that we permit in ourselves, life would become completely unbearable.
-Georges Courteline
For a thing to remain undone nothing more is needed than to think it done.
-Gracian
Many would be wise if they did not think themselves wise.
-Gracian
The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know & condemn; (4) those who know & approve; & (5) those who know and distinguish.
-H.W. Fowler
Whoever kindles the flames of intolerance is lighting a fire underneath his own home.
-Harold E. Stassen
Apply your mind in at least one problem which has never been solved, which in general is considered impossible of solution, but which, being solved, would help humanity. Do with your life something that has never been done, but which you feel needs doing.
-Harvey H. Nininger
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
-Henri Bergson
I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.
-Henry Ford
The Edsel is here to stay.
-Henry Ford II, December 7, 1957
Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
-Henry J. Kaiser
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent . . .
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies: They fall successive, and successive rise.
-Homer, The Iliad, Book 6
There are two kinds of people. Those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.
-Indira Gandhi
Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns.
-J.M. Clark
Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns.
-J.M. Clarke
Life, too, is an epidemic, sons catching it from fathers, daughters from mothers.
-Jacques Prevert
The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose.
-James Baldwin, American author (1924-1987)
Happiness is the result of discovering that you do not have to have what you want.
-James Feibleman
I've learned to admit it when I'm scared because it takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.
-James Michener
People sometimes have the attitude that 'Gaia will look after us.' But that's wrong. If the concept means anything at all, Gaia will look after herself. And the best way for her to do that might well be to get rid of us.
-Jim Lovelock
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
-Jim Ryun
I am a shell of pudding, melting in the agitation of biochemical sludge, churning within the bowels of the pit of glory!
-John E. Salerno, Untitled
Though the familiar use of things about us takes off our wonder, yet it cures not our ignorance.
-John Locke
A Universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good, Where all life dies, death lives.
-John Milton, Paradise Lost
Do they only stand By Ignorance, is that their happy state, The proof of their obedience and their faith?
-John Milton, Paradise Lost
For neither Man nor Angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone.
-John Milton, Paradise Lost
Our Death the Tree of Knowledge grew fast by, Knowledge of Good brought dear by knowing ill.
-John Milton, Paradise Lost
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
-John Milton, Paradise Lost
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
-Jonathan Swift
It is a maxim among lawyers that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again; and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of directing accordingly.
-Jonathan Swift
All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most significant tides of destiny.
-Joseph Conrad
The artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal.
-Joseph Conrad
I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine... If such is the form of ultimate wisdom then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be.
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
My destiny! Droll thing life is-- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself-- that comes too late-- a crop of unextinguishable regrets.
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's either a duck or a good imitation.
-Kelvin Throop
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
-Kurt Lewin
While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.
-Lee DeForest, Father of the Radio, 1926
Lead . . . follow . . . or get out of the way!
-Lee Iaccoca
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
-Lord Alfred Tennyson
There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.
-Lord Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H.
Character is what you are in the dark.
-Lord Whorfin, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
It means something to do right
-Louisana Hines
Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it.
-Margaret Thatcher
A banker: the person who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it rains.
-Mark Twain
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
-Mark Twain
Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
-Mark Twain
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
-Mark Twain
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again--and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
-Mark Twain
You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness, Have lain too long Face down in ignorance. Your mouths spilling words armed for slaughter. The Rock cries out today, you, you may stand on me, But do not hide your face.
-Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of Morning
People could survive their natural trouble all right if it weren't for the trouble they make for themselves.
-Ogden Nash
Discontent is the first step in the progress of man.
-Oscar Wilde
The only things that distinguish us from the rest of the animals, Madam, is our habit of drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time.
-P.A.C. de Beaumarchais
Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.
-Pablo Picasso
Youth is a time when the conventions are rightly misunderstood; they are either blindly obeyed, or blindly challenged.
-Paul Valery
What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.
-Pearl Bailey
Management by objective works if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.
-Peter Drucker
Every sublime conquest contains its own perils; one man encounters what he fears, another what he dare not hope for.
-Pietro Metastasio
I know what I've told you I'm going to say -- and what else I say, well I'll take some to figure out -- figure that all out.
-President George Bush
It is an idle dream to imagine that auto trucks and automobiles will take the place of the long-distance movement of freight and passengers.
-Proceedings of the Third American Road Congress
We do what we can and then make a theory to prove our performance the best.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
For everything you gain, you give up something
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for being.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rhodora
Learning to learn is to know how to navigate in a forest of facts, ideas, and theories, a proliferation of constantly changing items of knowledge. Learning to learn is to know what to ignore but at the same time not rejecting innovation and research.
-Raymond Queneau
Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.
-Robert Benchley
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the road less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Posterity is nothing more than a new public that has succeeded its ancestors.
-S.R.N. Chamfort
Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.
-Sam Ewing
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.
-Sandra Carey
Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing us the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be?
-Schopenhauer
Out; out; brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
-Shakespeare, Macbeth
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
-Sidney J. Harris
In less than twenty-five years. . .the motorcar will be obsolete, because the aeroplane will run along the ground as well as fly over it.
-Sir Philip Gibbs, The Day After Tomorrow: What is Going to Happen in the World
He's dead, Jim.
-Star Trek
I rejoice in the multifariousness of nature and leave the chimera of certainty to politicians and preachers.
-Stephen Jay Gould
I am a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
-Stephen Leacock
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.
-Sydney Smith
I am no profit -- and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.
-T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The benefits bestowed on us are welcome as long as we believe they can be repaid. Once that time has passed, gratitude is replaced by hate.
-Tacitus
If you think it's easy to be a politician, try to straddle a fence and keep both ears to the ground at the same time.
-The Globe and Mail
The ordinary 'horseless carriage' is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.
-The Literary Digest, October 14, 1899
What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?
-The Quarterly Review, England, March 1825
When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes a mistake they call it nature.
-The Witches of Eastwick
The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.
-Theodore Hesburgh
The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.
-Thomas Carlyle
I am captivated more by dreams of the future than by the history of the past.
-Thomas Jefferson
I cannot live without books.
-Thomas Jefferson, 1815
A man lives not only his personal life as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.
-Thomas Mann
The arts are called liberal because they enable those who practice them to live in freedom.
-Tirso de Molina
This is the room of the wolfmother wallpaper. The toadstool motel you once thought a mere folk tale, a corny, obsolete, rural invention. This is the room where your wisest ancestor was born, be you Christian, Arab, or Jew. The linoleum underfoot is sacred linoleum. Please remove your shoes.
-Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All
If you only look at what is, you might never attain what could be.
-Unknown
It is wise to keep in mind that no success or failure is necessarily final.
-Unknown
The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
-Vince Lombardi
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
-Voltaire
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
-Walter Bagehot
Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection - they have many friends and few enemies.
-Wendell Phillips, American abolitionist (1811-1884)
Even if you're on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-Will Rogers
If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.
-William Arthur Ward
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
-William James
To be or not to be that is the question.
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet
All the world's a stage.
-William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Oh! Bother.
-Winnie-the-Pooh
You can always count on American's to do the right thing after they've tried everything else.
-Winston Churchill
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
-Woody Allen
Showing up is eighty-percent of life.
-Woody Allen
3.9 million trees are used annually for Sunday editions of the New York Times.
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Apathy is running wild!
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Babies born in May weigh an average of six ounces more than babies born in any other month.
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Even considering the improvements possible. . .the gas turbine could hardly be considered a feasible application to airplanes because of the difficulty of complying with the stringent weight requirements (1940). - US National Academy of Science It may not be possible to build a vehicle with single-stage-to-orbit capability in the mid 1990s (1989).
- US National Academy of Science [The DC-X, McDonnel Douglas's single-stage-to-orbit space craft, made its first fight on August 18, 1993]
Friendship is like a bank account. You can't continue to draw on it without making deposits.
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Only one out of every 40 kites sold ever gets into the air.
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The human body can survive three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, and about six weeks without food.
The nail on the middle finger of your dominant hand grows fastest.
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The sun in its journey around the earth shines longer on Texas than on any other state.
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We hope that Professor Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time, and the money involved, in further airship experiments. Life is short, and he is capable of services to humanity incomparably greater than can be expected to result from trying to fly...for students and investigators of the Langley type there are more useful employments.
-The New York Times, December 10, 1903 [Orville and Wilbur Wright's first flight, December 17, 1903]