A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
~ Greek proverb
War is where the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.
~ Niko Bellic, Grand Theft Auto IV
There are few actual gentlemen inside of a gentleman's club.
~ Scott Smith
The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don't wait for her. Start alone.
~ Roger Ebert
You are born an original, don't die a copy
The taming and domestication of religious faith is one of the unceasing chores of civilization.
~ Christopher Hitchens
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 4 BC - 65 AD
Self-confidence is nothing more than belief in one's ability to decide and in one's decisions.
~ L. Ron Hubbard
Once you've ruined your reputation, you can live quite freely.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
~ Rudyard Kipling, 1935
In the world, what counts more than talent, what counts more than energy, concentration, commitment, or anything else is kindness....And all the big words--virtue, justice, truth--are dwarfed by the greatness of kindness.
~ Stephen Fry
In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.
~ Unknown
The first and greatest commandment is, Don't let them scare you.
~ Elmer Davis
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
~ Mahatma Ghandi
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
~ La Bruyere
We do not stop playing because we grow old, We grow old because we stop playing!
~ Benjamin Franklin
I was reading about how countless species are being pushed toward extinction by man's destruction of forests....Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
~ Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson.
Just because it isn't true, doesn't mean it's not helpful.
~ Brent Zupp
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
~ Carl Jung
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
~ George Bernard Shaw
I want to be all used up when I die.
~ George Bernard Shaw
All of nature is the conjugation of the verb "to eat."
~ William Ralph Inge
Free market health care is about letting people die of treatable ailments if they don’t happen to have the money to pay.
~ Unknown
Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~ Unknown
If you are going through hell, keep going.
~ Winston Churchill
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
~ Anais Nin
A wise person knows when to make the exception to every rule.
~ Barry Schwartz
It is the responsibility of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead.
~ Stephen R Donaldson
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
~ Thomas Paine
If all the insects on earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on earth would disappear. If all humans disappeared, within 50 years all species would flourish as never before.
~ Jonas Salk
The law is what we live with. Justice is something harder to achieve.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
The source of the new...is the random.
~ Gregory Bateson
Shared joy is double joy. Shared sorrow is half sorrow.
~ Swedish Proverb
Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult.
~ Hypocrites
Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life
~ Benjamin Franklin
Scientists conclude that being nice, forgiving and cooperative is the best strategy, provided you retaliate against mean people now and then.
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
~ Alice Walker
When we talk to God, we're praying. When God talks to us, we're schizophrenic.
~ Jane Wagner
We pass through this world but once, so do now any good you can do, and show now any kindness you can show, for we may not pass this way again.
~ William Penn
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If it's original, you'll have to ram it down their throats.
~ Howard Aiken
Being happy doesn't mean everything's perfect. It means you've decided to see beyond the imperfections.
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
~ Hilary Cooper
Success in life is determined by your ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
~ Winston Churchill
I want to become the kind of person my dog thinks I am.
~ Unknown
Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.
~ Mark Twain
Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.
~ Nadia Boulanger
The past is history, the future a mystery, and the present a precious gift, hence the name.
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
~ Mother Teresa
I would read stuff in scholarly texts and know they were wrong. Living in Haiti, I realized that a minor error in one setting of power and privilege could have an enormous impact on the poor in another.
~ Paul Farmer to Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains, p 78
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light. but rather because its opponents eventually die, and new generation grow up that is familiar with it (the new scientific truth).
~ Max Plank
There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.
~ J. Robert Oppenheimer (Life, Oct. 10, 1949)
A child's feeling of self-esteem is centered on the experience for which he/she is noticed most intently.
~ Howard Glasser
Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.
~ Exodus 23:2
The only people who find what they are looking for in life are the fault finders.
~ Foster's Law
People will believe the most outrageous of lies once the truth is
removed from consideration.
~ Frank Peretti, from Piercing the Darkness
In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile, and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.
~ Hunter S. Thompson - The Great Shark Hunt, 1979
'Now' is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream. You don’t need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating.
~ Barbara Sher
Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
The way to succeed is to double your error rate.
~ Thomas J. Watson
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.
~ Winston Churchill
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
~ Mark Twain
If you can't solve a problem, it's because you are playing by the rules.
~ Paul Arden
In modern war, what is most shocking is a poor guide to what is most harmful.
~ Jonathan Glover
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
~ Mother Teresa
A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs.
~ Robert Townsend
Perfection is the enemy of the good.
~ Gustave Flaubert
Insanity in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
~ Nietzsche
Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.
~ Scottish proverb
Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
~ Plato
War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
~ Thomas Mann
Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?
~ Nietzsche
Knowledge, idea, belief stands in the way of wisdom.
~ J. Krishnamurthi
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
~ Stephen Roberts
You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do.
~ [Usenet]
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
~ Bertrand Russell
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
~ Satchel Paige
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.
~ Gene Roddenberry
I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
~ Mohandas Gandhi
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
~ Oscar Wilde
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
~ George Bernard Shaw
We, on our side, are praying to Him to give us victory, because we believe we are right; but those on the other side pray to Him, too, for victory, believing they are right. What must He think of us?
~ Abraham Lincoln
True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to others, not by how much you can coerce others to do what you want.
~ Larry Wall, Creator of Perl
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
~ Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
When all else fails, men turn to reason.
~ Abba Eban
Play is the highest form of research.
~ Albert Einstein
The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.
~ George Bernard Shaw
When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
~ R. Buckminster Fuller
Look to the origin of your effort, not the results
~ Shunryu Suzuki
It's good to have the things money can buy, provided we do not lose the things money cannot buy.
~ W. Wiersbe
Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.
~ unknown
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim
above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.
~ Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Don't worry about avoiding temptation! As you grow old, it starts avoiding you!
~ Unknown
Most problems are created not by circumstances but by a particular perception of them.
~ Edward de Bono
The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.
~ George Bernard Shaw
Failure is never permanent.
~ unknown
The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral crisis, preserved their neutrality.
~ Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
He who buys what he does not need steals from himself.
~ Author Unknown
The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others
~ Vincent Van Gogh
Adolescents sense a secret, unique greatness in themselves that seeks expression. They gesture toward the heart when trying to express any of this, a significant clue to the whole affair.
~ Joseph Chilton Pearce, Evolution's End
I don't develop; I am.
~ Pablo Picasso
One always learns one's mystery at the price of one's innocence.
~ Robertson Davies, Fifth Business
In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.
~ C. G. Jung
Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap.
~ Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
There is more in a human life than our theories of it allow.
~ James Hillman, The Soul's Code
Death is an enemy because we have too much unlived life within us.
~ W.D. Norwood paraphrase of Norman O. Brown sentiment
Start before you are ready
~ Robert Zuckerman, from Kindsight
It is not enough to add years to one's life, one must also add life to those years.
~JFK
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
~ Dr. Seuss
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
~ Carl Bard
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
~ Peter Drucker
I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.
~ Albert Schweitzer
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
~ Eric Hoffer
You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give.
~ Winston Churchill (attribution disputed)
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
~ Thomas A. Edison
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
~ Blaise Pascal
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
~ Soren Kierkegaard
The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish.
~ Robert Jackson
Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to others, not by how much you can coerce others to do what you want.
~ Larry Wall, Creator of Perl
The desire to protect ourselves is what stands in our way of being fully able to respond.
~ Patrick Cassidy
If I had only a year left to live, how would I live it? A day?
Common sense is a set of prejudices you accumulate (until the age of 18)
~ Paraphrased from Albert Einstein
The trouble with so many of us is that we have sought directions, answers, values, and beliefs from the important people in our world. Rather than trusting ourselves to search within and find our own answers to the conflicts in our life, we sell out by becoming what others expect of us. Our being becomes rooted in their expectations, and we become strangers to ourselves.
~ Gerald Corey, Theory and Practice of Counseling & Psychotherapy
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."
~ H. L. Mencken, Minority Report (1956)
Effectiveness without values is a tool without a purpose.
~ Edward de Bono
Perception is real even when it is not reality.
~ Edward de Bono
If you never change your mind, why have one?
~ Edward de Bono
Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.
~ Czech Proverb
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
~ Leonardo Da Vinci
Fun is the process of discovering areas in a possibility space.
~ Will Wright
Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.
~ Will Cuppy
The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.
~ Douglas Adams, Last Chance To See...
To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All models are wrong; some models are useful.
~ George Box
Ye have made your way from worm to man, and much within you is still worm.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Snowmen fall from Heaven, unassembled.
~ Unknown
Grant me the Serenity to prioritize things I cannot delegate, the Courage to say No when I need to, and the Wisdom to know when to go home.
~ Unknown
Your question is [your quest]. No questions -- no journey. Timid questions -- timid trips. Radical questions -- an expedition to the root of your being. Bon voyage.
~ Sam Keen
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
~ Mark Twain
If someone wrote a book about your life, would anyone want to read it?
~ From Ad for U.S. Army
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We must love them both, those with whom we agree, and those with whom we disagree. For both have labored in the search of truth, and both have helped in the finding of it.
~ Saint Thomas Aquinas
Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit.
~ R.E. Shay
One saggy boob said to the other saggy boob: "If we don't get some support soon, people will think we're nuts."
To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
~ French Poet, Paul Valery
To find your true self, you need to cultivate your eccentricities.
~ paraphrased from James Hillman (Jungian Psychologist)
To live in the hearts we leave behind, is not to die.
~ Thomas Campbell
One useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, three or more is a congress.
~ John Quincy Adams
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.
~ Bertrand Russell
People travel to faraway places to watch in fascination the kind of people they ignore at home.
~ Dagobert D. Runes
I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.
~ Edgar Allen Poe
Make stupidity your most redeeming quality.
~ Walter Hamady (either said himself or quoted someone else.)
He who dies with the most stuff ... obviously didn't have enough hit points.
~ Dave
No place is so strongly fortified that money could not capture it.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
~ James Joyce
Love is what is left in a relationship after all the selfishness is taken out.
~ Nick Richardson
Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.
~ John Gardner
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
~ Arthur C. Clarke (Clarkes' First Law)
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves
~Rilke
I had the self identity of your average mollusk
~ Tony Hendra (in interview w/ Terri Gross)
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
~ Woody Allen
Not all who wander are lost
~ J.R.R. Tolkien
A fool and his money are soon parted.
~ Some Poor Fool
I can't get no satisfaction.
~ Mick
Behold the turtle. He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.
~ James Bryant Conant
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
~ Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953)
You are the wind beneath my cheeks.
~ Induhvidual in Dilbert Newsetter
All's fair in horseshoes and hand-grenades.
~ Induhvidual in Dilbert Newsletter
I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.
~ William Faulkner
In Science, truths are cummulative; In Business, truths are ephemeral.
~ Chris Rigatuso
An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.
~ Gene Knudsen Hoffman
God gave us two ears and only one mouth, that we should listen twice as much as we speak
~ Proverb
It takes nine months to make a baby, no matter how many women you throw at the project.
~ Unknown
In the beginner's mind there are many possiblilities, but in the expert's there are few.
~ Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
What I cannot create, I do not understand.
~ Richard Feynman - found on his office blackboard after his death
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
~ Umberto Eco
If we can reduce using a tool to habit then we no longer need to think about the tool and can concentrate on the task.
~ Jef Raskin
I married my wife for her looks... but not the ones she's been giving me, lately!
~ Anonymous
Every time I walk into a singles bar, I can hear Mom's wise words: "Don't pick that up, you don't know where it's been!"
~ Momma's Boy
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.
~ Rilke
Please remember that law is the wise restraint that make men free.
~ Creed of Harvard Law Graduates
My favorite color is chocolate.
~ Homer Simpson
I love natural disasters because we're allowed to get out of work.
~ Homer Simpson
Be generous in the bedroom -- share your sandwich.
~ Homer Simpson
The office is no place for off-color remarks or offensive jokes. That's why I never go there.
~ Homer Simpson
The skirt is like the perfect essay, long enough to cover the main subject, but short enough to be interesting.
~ Unknown
In God we trust. All others pay cash.
~ Unknown
I don't know what your problem is, but I'll bet it's hard to pronounce.
~ Unknown
I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...
~ Unknown
I don't work here. I'm a consultant.
~ Unknown
You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers.
~ Unknown
I have plenty of talent and vision. I just don't give a damn.
~ Unknown
You sound reasonable...Time to up the medication.
~ Unknown
Does your train of thought have a caboose?
~ Unknown
Not all men are annoying. Some are dead.
~ Unknown
A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.
~ Unknown
Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.
~ Unknown
Don't believe everything you think.
~ Unknown
I don't know what your problem is, but I'm sure it's hard to pronounce.
~ Unknown
If you have something to say, raise your hand and put it over your mouth.
~ Unknown
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
~ Unknown
There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
~ W. Somerset Maugham
Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage. Why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage!
~ Andy Rooney
Borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back.
~ Steven Wright
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
~ Steven Wright
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
~ Steven Wright
Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now.
~ Steven Wright
Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
~ Steven Wright
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
~ Steven Wright
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
~ Steven Wright
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
~ Steven Wright
When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
~ Steven Wright
...but chaos is stimulating, provocative, if only to strengthen our resolve to create order.
~ Brent Zupp
I love you my little Boo-Bah. You've come so far in the past year. Soon you'll be using all English words and no Klingon.
~ Brent Zupp--16 Sept 1998
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