Favorite Quotes


"People often applaud an imitation and then sneer at the real thing." (Aesop)

"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." (Howard Aiken)

"Nothing is better than the unintended humor of reality." (Steve Allen)

"If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner." (Tallulah Bankhead)

"You can only be young once. But you can always be immature." (Dave Barry)

"There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between." (Sir Thomas Beecham)

"Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?" (Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, speaking through his puppet "Charlie McCarthy")

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." (Yogi Berra)

"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think." (Niels Bohr)

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." (Niels Bohr)

"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet." (Napoleon Bonaparte)

"Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain." (Edward de Bono)

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is the illusion of knowledge." (Daniel J. Boorstin)

"And up there, overhead, the voluminous structures of unparalleled beauty, beauty that is there merely for the taking, all that is needed to make it complete, is one humble being, and a small but wonderful god given device... the human eye." (Remy Bosio)

"If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning." (Warren Buffett)

"Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." (Warren Buffett)

"You're neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You're right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right - that's the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don't have to worry about anybody else." (Warren Buffett)

"Beware of Geeks bearing formulas." (Warren Buffett)

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." (George Carlin)

"It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear." (Dick Cavett)

"Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency." (Raymond Chandler)

"You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light." (Vicomte de Chateaubriand)

"For myself I am an optimist-it does not seem to be much use being anything else." (Winston Churchill)

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. (William Congreve)

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone." (Bill Cosby)

"We recognize, however dimly, that greater efficiency, ease, and security may come at a substantial price in freedom, that law and order can be a doublethink version of oppression, that individual liberties surrendered for whatever good reason are freedom lost." (Walter Cronkite)

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." (W. Edwards Deming)

"If once a man indulges himself in Murder, very soon he comes to think little of Robbing, and from Robbing he comes next to Drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to Incivility and Procrastination." (Thomas De Quincey)

"A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." (Everett Dirksen)

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless." (Thomas Alva Edison)

"Hell, there are no rules here -� we're trying to accomplish something." (Thomas Alva Edison)

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." (Thomas Alva Edison)

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." (Thomas Alva Edison)

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." (Albert Einstein)

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe." (Albert Einstein)

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy." (Nora Ephron)

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." (Richard Feynmann)

"Instant gratification takes too long." (Carrie Fisher)

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." (Benjamin Franklin)

"There is no such thing as a good war and there is no such thing as a bad peace. (Benjamin Franklin)

"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it." (Benjamin Franklin)

"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." (R. Buckminster Fuller)

"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything." (John Kenneth Galbraith)

"There is enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed." (Mohandas Gandhi)

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. (Mohandas Gandhi)

"If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it." (Stanley Garn)

"Only the mediocre are always at their best." (Jean Giraudoux)

"In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine." (Benjamin Graham)

"Keep clam." (Ivar Haglund)

"There is no way of proving your point to someone whose income and position depend upon believing the contrary. (Sidney Harris)

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible." (Ben Hecht)

"Never eat more than you can lift." ("Miss Piggy," a Jim Henson puppet)

"It is cheering to see that the rats are still around - the ship is not sinking." (Eric Hoffer)

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

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing." (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

"It is easier to get forgiveness than permission." (Grace Hopper)

"Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise." (Grace Hopper)

"It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians." (Henrik Ibsen)

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." (Thomas Jefferson)

"War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses." (Thomas Jefferson)

"Any solution to a problem changes the problem." (R.W. Johnson)

"Unemployed people get into trouble. They go into politics or crime." (Rohit Johri)

"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again." (Franklin P. Jones)

"The greatest enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and deceitful, it is the myth - persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." (John F. Kennedy)

"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river." (Nikita Khrushchev)

"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." (Soeren Kierkegaard)

"Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name." (Henry Kissinger)

"The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously." (Henry Kissinger)

"Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence." (Morris Kline)

"An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible." (Alfred A. Knopf)

"Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything." (Charles Kuralt)

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line." (Oscar Levant)

"What the world needs is more geniuses with humility. There are so few of us left." (Oscar Levant)

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." (Abraham Lincoln)

"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." (Jack London)

"Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it." (James Russell Lowell)

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." (Groucho Marx)

"There's one way to find out if a man is honest-ask him. If he says 'yes,' you know he is a crook." (Groucho Marx)

"I sent the club a wire stating, Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member." (Groucho Marx)

"I learned one really sad fact from my career as a columnist: nobody changes their mind about anything. Ever. Once we form the opinion, we become evidence processors and we just collect all the evidence that supports our opinion and reject all the evidence that disputes it." (Bob Metcalfe)

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." (A.A. Milne)

"Imagine what it would be like if TV actually were good. It would be the end of everything we know." (Marvin Minsky)

"You should adopt the mantra, 'In God we trust. Everybody else is suspect.' People are the weakest link when it comes to security, and an important question to ask yourself is not if, but when, is your e-business going to be targeted?" (Kevin Mitnick)

"Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish.  Only the bicycle remains pure in heart." (Iris Murdoch)

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar." (Edward R. Murrow)

"When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained. (Edward R. Murrow)

"Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long." (Ogden Nash)

"Belief means not wanting to know what is true." (Friedrich Nietzsche)

"Nobody believes the official spokesman... but everybody trusts an unidentified source." (Ron Nessen)

"In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs." (Sir William Osler)

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church." (Thomas Paine)

"Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art." (Charlie Parker)

"The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things beyond it." (Blaise Pascal)

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." (Blaise Pascal)

"Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." (George S. Patton)

"Against logic there is no armor like ignorance." (Laurence J. Peter)

"The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance." (Lawrence J. Peter)

"An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today." (Laurence J. Peter)

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it." (Pablo Picasso)

"Remember what Simonides said -- that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken." (Plutarch)

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" (Monty Python)

"Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else --and failing." (Raymond Radiguet)

"Every increased possession loads us with new weariness." (John Ruskin)

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." (Bertrand Russell)

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." (Bertrand Russell)

"There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can't do any business from there." (Colonel Sanders)

"Finance is the art of passing currency from hand to hand until it finally disappears." (Robert W. Sarnoff)

"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)

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." (E.F. Schumacher)

"Finally, in conclusion, let me say just this." (Peter Sellers)

"It's better to know useless things than to know nothing." (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

"There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on." (Rod Serling)

"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." (Rod Serling)

"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who do not have it." (George Bernard Shaw)

"Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week." (George Bernard Shaw)

"A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows." (George Bernard Shaw)

"A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion - but doesn't." (George Shearing)

"The road to hell is paved." (Andrew Singer)

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." (Herbert Spencer)

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." (Gertrude Stein)

"I think we could put Adolf Hitler in center field and fans would cheer for him if he hit .350." (George Steinbrenner, in The Sporting News, March 13, 1989)

"When you buy high and sell low, it is very hard to make money, even if you do it with great enthusiasm." (David Swenson)

"Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes." (Henry David Thoreau)

"If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons." (James Thurber)

"Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world." (Lily Tomlin)

"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain." (Lily Tomlin)

"If you cannot convince them, confuse them." (Harry S. Truman)

"My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!" (Harry S. Truman)

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

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure." (Mark Twain)

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." (Mark Twain)

"The music of the Hawaiians, the most fascinating in the world, is still in my ears and haunts me sleeping and waking." (Mark Twain)

"It is easy to spot an informed man -- his opinions are just like your own." (Miguel de Unamuno)

"A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about." (Miguel de Unamuno)

"For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream." (Vincent van Gogh)

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." (Wernher Von Braun)

"The obvious is always least understood." (Klemens von Metternich)

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine." (George Washington)

"It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it." (George Washington)

"The stock market has as much relationship to the underlying economy as Fantasy Baseball has to the real thing." (Craig D. Wilson)

"All the good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow." (Grant Wood)

"When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary." (William Wrigley Jr.)

"Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows." (Jennifer Yane)

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." (Frank Zappa)

"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it." (Frank Zappa)

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Updated on 2009-10-31 by Terry Conboy N6RY
Questions or comments to n6ry (at) qsl (dot) net