My Favorite Sayings, Quotes, and Thoughts

My Favorite Sayings, Quotes, and Thoughts

Last updated 19 September 2012

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear
arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in Government.
Thomas Jefferson

It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than open your
mouth and remove all doubt.
Dr. Wayne S. Amato

Everything in this world, including money, operates not on reality - but the
perception of reality.
Cosmo, Sneakers

Each day is better than the next. (Think about what this really means!)
Dom Wooginowski, There's Something About Mary

Hope is a good thing. Perhaps the best of things and a good thing never dies.
Andy Dufrasne, Shawshank Redemption

Red, I do believe you're talking out of your a**.
Floyd, Shawshank Redemption

Tomorrow is promised to no one.
Luther Whitney, Absolute Power

Everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn't end.
Doug, Cocktail

Live while you live!!!

Every man dies, not every man really lives!
William Wallace, Braveheart

None are more hopelessly enslaved
than those who falsely believe they are free.
Goethe

Beware what you think because your thoughts become your words,
your words become your actions,
your actions become your character,
and your character becomes your destiny!

There's no normal life, Wyatt. There's just life.
Doc Holliday, Tombstone

Never chase women or buses, you'll always get left behind.
Marlboro Man

War is a continuation of politics by other means.
Von Clausewitz

There is no knowledge that is not power.

DOS Computers manufactured by companies such as IBM, Compaq, Tandy,
and millions of others are by far the most popular, with about 70 million
machines in use worldwide. Macintosh fans, on the other hand, may note
that cockroaches are far more numerous than humans, and that numbers
alone do not denote a higher life form.
New York Times, November 26, 1991

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he
didn't exist.
Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects

The only stupid question is the one that is never asked!

The only differences between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom is
that we have a superior intellect and we are not afraid of the vacuum
cleaner!

Lady: Sir, if you were my husband I would poison your drink!
Sir: Madam, if your were my wife I would drink it!

Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

Why is the word abbreviation so long?

First rule of leadership: Everything is your fault.
Hopper, A Bug's Life

Study time equals money!
Stephen C. Amato

Everything you do in your life you do for two reasons: to gain pleasure
and to avoid pain!"
Prof. Zoheri

Don't worry about that which you cannot control!

Every little thing she does is magic, everything thing she does just
turns me on...I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day and ask her
if she'll marry me in some old fashioned way."
Police, "Every Little Thing She Does"

I love the delicate shadow of she wanting me to be.

Luck is where opportunity and preparation meet.

The difference between a good haircut and a bad one is one week.
Stephen C. Amato

Promise yourself success at the beginning of each day, and you will be
surprised how often things will turn out that way.

You'd be surprised how uncommon common sense really is
Alan T. Amato

If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.
Murphy's Laws of Combat

Only a fool is sure of anything, a wise man keeps on guessing.

We are solitary beings, trapped in our bodies, chained by our inability
to communicate our emotions, our feelings, our deepest thoughts to one
another. We can never really connect with other beings, and for this
reason, we will always be alone."
Ian P. Duffy

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

You'd better tuck that (lip) in, gonna get that caught on a tripwire.
Lt. Dan, Forrest Gump

You got to put the past behind you before you can move on.
Forrest Gump

There's many a slip between a cup and a lip.
Billy the Kid, Young Guns

The hand you hold is the hand that holds you down.
Everclear

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; Humor
to console him for what he is.
Francis Bacon

He who fails to plan, plans to fail.
Anonymous

Reputations are like glass, once they are cracked they're impossible to repair.

Chance favors the prepared mind.

May the best of your past be the worst of your future.

Success is determined by how hard you are determined to succeed.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and
deserve to get it good and hard.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Bertrand Russell

I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
Lewis Carroll [Through the Looking Glass] (1832-1898)

You can lead a computer to the Superhighway but you can't make it think.
Des Waller

And dreams in their development have breath, And tears and torture and a
touch of joy.
Lord Byron

As a day well spent brings blessed sleep, so a life well lived brings a blessed death.
Leonardo Da Vinci

If quitters never win, and winners never quit, what fool came up with,
"Quit while you're ahead"?

Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard
and strong.
Zen proverb

Mike, you get turned down more than a bed at a hotel.
Jim Donato to a miscellaneous
Mike 10/20/98

Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.
Archimedes

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting
the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of
light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could
have been formed by natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the
highest degree.
Charles Darwin

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders
of giants.
Issac Newton

I think there's a world market for about five computers.
Thomas Watson, Founder of IBM

...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to
pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
Winston S. Churchill

Time discovers truth.
Seneca

For glory gives herself only to those who have always dreamed of her.
Charles de Gaulle

Je*u*, you were gonna kill that guy.
Of course, I'm a terminator.
John Connor, T2

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it,
anything but live for it.
Charles Caleb Cotton

Follow your dreams, for as you do you will become.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Now let's try something I like to call the right way.
Fred Z. Randall, Rocket Man

Reasonable people adapt to the world.
Unreasonable people expect the world to adapt to them.
Therefore, unreasonable people rule the world.
George Bernard Shaw

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change that is the dominant
factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without
taking into account not only the world as it is but the world as it will be.
Issac Asimov

Victory smiles upon those who anticipate the changes in the character of war,
not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the change occurs.
Cuilio Donhet

War to the hilt between communism and capitalism is inevitable. Today, of
course, we are not strong enough to attack. Our time will come in thirty
or forty years. To win, we shall need the element of surprise. The
Western World will have to be put to sleep. So we shall begin by
launching the most spectacular peace movement on record. There shall be
electrifying overtures and unheard of concessions. The capitalist
countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate to their own
destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends. As soon as
their guard is down, we will smash them with one clenched fist.
Dmitrii Z. Manuil'ski
Speech given to the Lenin School of
Political Warfare

I'm not lost (while driving) as long as I have gas.
Charlie Boone

There's plenty of time between midnight and six o'clock to get your work done.
Wayne S. Amato

Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There
was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even
against the whole world, you were not mad.
George Orwell, "1984"

Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

That's because they think silence and integrity are the same thing.
Ed Exley, L.A. Confidential

The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
Elliot Carver, Tomorrow Never Dies

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle

The easiest way to predict the future is to invent it.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of
patriots and tyrannts.
Thomas Jefferson

I don't like to fly.
Then what are you doing here?
I don't like to lose either.
John McClane, Die Hard 2

Don't be afraid of tomorrow. God is already there.

Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde

The key is to 'structure the truth to your advantage.'
TSgt David Anthony, 1206 training

What we do in life echoes in eternity.
Maximus Decimus Meridius, Gladiator

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Prior planning prevents piss poor performance.

The details of my life are quite inconsequential
Oh no please. Let's hear about your childhood.
Very well where do i begin?
my father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from belgium
with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery.
My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet.
My father would womanize, he would drink.
He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark.
Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy,
the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.
My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons.
In the spring, we'd make meat helmets.
When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds.
Pretty standard, really.
At the age of 12, I received my first scribe.
At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles.
There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum.
It's breathtaking. I suggest you try it.
Dr. Evil, Austin Powers

What goes around comes around.

I do not regret the things I've done but the things I did not do.
Lucas, Empire Records

Truly, for some men nothing is written unless they write it.
Sherif Ali, Lawrence of Arabia

All great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein

Your focus determines your reality.
Qui-gon Gin, Star Wars Episode I

A true friend stabs you in the front.
Oscar Wilde

We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
Max Depree

The Fidelity Bank and Trust is a tough creditor. You make a deposit somewhere else
and they close your account, forever all right?
Arnie, The Family Man, talking to Jack about cheating on his wife

Time is
Too slow for those who want,
Too swift for those who fear,
Too long for those who grieve,
Too short for those who rejoice,
But for those who love,
Time is not.
Henry Van Dyke

Many a truth is said in jest.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
Robert Frost

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest. The decayed and degraded state
of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is
much worse. The person who has nothing for which to fight, nothing which is
more important that his own personal safety is a miserable creature and will
never be free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than
himself.
John Stuart Mill

I'm married, bad sex comes with the territory.
Stacey Halbrook

How am I supposed to heal if I can't feel time.
Leonard, Memento

If everything's under control, your're going too slow.
Mario Andretti

Anyone can become angrythat is easy. But to be angry with the right person,
to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way;
that is not easy.
Aristotle

Being a woman is a chronic disorder.
An unnamed doctor to Lt Boone.

You cannot get ahead while you are getting even.
Dick Armey

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late,
in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never
deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well as now.
P.T. Barnum

When one door closees, another opens; but we often look so long and so
regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has
opened for us.
Alexander Graham Bell

Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile...initially scared
me to death.
Betty Bender

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
Henri Bergson

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
Hector Berlioz

There has been in recent years excessive emphasis on a citizen's
rights and inadequate stress put upon his duties and responsibilities.
Paxton Blair

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
Kenneth Blanchard

There are two kinds of truths; small truth and great truth. You can
recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The
opposite of a great truth is another great truth.
Niels Bohr

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
Derek Bok

History is the version of past events that people have decided to
agree upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral
character of a people once degenerate, their political character
must soon follow.
Elias Boudinot

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue
to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant
may prove to be our executioner.
General Omar Bradley

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever
you hit the target.
Ashleigh Brilliant

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for
tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks.
Phillips Brooks
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
Dorothea Broude

When you are angry or frustrated what comes out? Whatever it is,
it's a good indication of what you're made of.
H. Jackson, Jr. Brown

Be smarter than other people, just don't tell them so.
H. Jackson, Jr. Brown

You either make dust of eat dust.
H. Jackson, Jr. Brown

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.
Les Brown

The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a
record of successful experiences behind you.
William Jennings Bryan

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing
to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
William Jennings Bryan

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt
the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.
Pearl S. Buck

I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to
the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived
at yesterday at the voting booth.
William F., Jr. Buckley

There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.
William F., Jr. Buckley

You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.
Charles Buxton

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those
who dare not, are slaves.
Lord Byron

It is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies.
Arthur Calwell

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they
are looking for the experience of being alive.
Joseph Campbell

It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.
Eddie Cantor

You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with
a kind word alone.
Al Capone

A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people
where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be.
Rosalynn Carter

The basic difference between an ordinary person and a warrior is that a warrior
takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary person takes everything as a
blessing or a curse.
Carlos Castaneda

It is better to wear out than to rust out.
Richard Chamberland

Prefer a loss to a dishonest gain; the one brings pain at the moment,
the other for all time.
Chilton

The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is better to have
enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no
ideas at all.
Edward de Bono

When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
Anatole France

It is what you learn after you know it all that counts.
John Wooden

It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares
who gets the credit.
John Wooden

The thing you really believe in always happens.. and the belief
in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Lloyd Wright

You can't be a Real Country unless you have a beer and an airline. It
helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons,
but at the very least you need a beer.
Frank Zappa

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things
that are in line with your principles and can bear the full light of day. The content
of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and
what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny
... It is the light that guides your path.
Heraclitus Greek poet philosopher

I wish the ring had never come to me...I wish none of this had happened.
So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Plato

Men are ruled by toys.
Napoleon Bonaparte

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
Leo Tolstoy

I couldn't wait for success, so I went ahead without it.
Jonathan Winters

At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; at 45
they are caves in which we hide.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do
him absolutely no good.
Samuel Johnson

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders.
Hal Abelson, MIT professor

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking
together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

You can't buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.
Henry Youngman

Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.
Chuck Yeager

It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow fond of it.
Robert E. Lee

If you are going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill

We're lost but we're making good time.
Yogi Berra

When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
Richard Nixon

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's.
Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
Nelson Algren

If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed.
Thomas Edison

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Howell Forgy, at Pearl Harbor

Every woman should marry – and no man.
Benjamin Disraeli

There is a theory that states that if anyone discovers exactly what the Universe
is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by
something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory
which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop
whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.
Luciano Pavarotti

Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Frank Zappa

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
Voltaire

If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Vince Lombardi

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Confucius

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.
Pablo Picasso

Love and do what you will.
St. Augustine

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Benjamin Franklin

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
Aldous Huxley

Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
Anthony Hope

Of course [God] will forgive me. It's his business.
Heinrich Heine, on his deathbed

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.
C.S. Lewis

Oh, god**mn it, we forgot the silent prayer.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Love is a severe mental disorder.
Plato

Money will not make you happy, and happy will not make you money.
Groucho Marx

Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that's bad for you.
Tommy Smothers

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
Franz Kafka

If you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln

There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.
Gen. George A. Custer

My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she
stops to breathe.
Jimmy Durante

Everything flows and nothing stays.
Heraclitus

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

There are two things no man will admit he cannot do well -
drive and make love.
Stirling Moss

The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.
Alexander Jablokov

God gave man both a pe*is and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply
to run both at the same time.
Robin Williams, on Clinton/Lewinsky

Dyin' is a pain in the ass.
Frank Sinatra

I will be sof brief, I have already finished.
Salvador Dali, in world's shortest speech

Knowledge speaks but wisdom listens.
Jimi Hendrix

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens.
Michael Caine

No sane man will dance.
Cicero

I always turn to the sports page first. They record people's accomplishments.
The front page has nothing but man's failure.
Chief Justice Earl Warren

Happiness make up for in height for what is lacks in length.
Robert Frost

If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.
Jay Leno

This the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. Eliot

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Mao Tse Tung

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
Abraham Lincoln

Once integrity is lost, the rest is a piece of cake.
Larry Hagman, as J.R. Ewing

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction.
Fiction has to make sense.
Mark Twain

Love conquers all.
Virgil

I've had 18 straight whiskeys. I think that's the record.
Poet Dylan Thomas, just before his death

What God hath joined together no man ever shall put asunder.
God will take care of that.
George Bernard Shaw

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein

The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.
Robert Deniro, A Bronx Tale

Many a truth is said in jest.

The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to
do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention
to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly
that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the good fight.
The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho

Because time isn't something that always proceeds at the same pace. It is we
who determine how quickly time passes.
The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho

Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible
for yourself.
The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho

What do you need a fake id for?
So I can vote.
Brian, The Breakfast Club

Always emotion is the future.
Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

All things being equal the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.
Occam's Razor

It does not do to dwell on dreams Harry, and forget to live.
Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

No man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally
getting bewildered as to which may be true.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Aerodynamics is for those who cannot manufacture good engines.
Enzo Ferrari

You don't know about real loss, 'cause that only occurs when you love something
more than you love yourself.
Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting

Our limited perspective, our hopes and fears become our measure of life, and
when circumstances don't fit our ideas, they become our difficulties.
Ben Franklin

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last istake.
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-)

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Albert Einstein

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Sir Winston Churchill

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

Give me a museum and I'll fill it.
Pablo Picasso

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

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
Henry Ford

Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.
George Burns

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
Paul Erdos

The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad.
Salvador Dali

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will
find a way around the laws.
Plato

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Napoleon Bonaparte

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

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an
eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'
Unknown

I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
Frank Lloyd Wright

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
Ian L. Fleming

When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command
the attention of the world.
George Washington Carver

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

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas Alva Edison

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.
Aldous Huxley

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving
wordy evidence of the fact.
George Eliot

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter
how improbable, must be the truth.
Sherlock Holmes

Black holes are where God divided by zero.
Steven Wright

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
Walt Disney

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

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
Ambrose Bierce

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered;
an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of
thinking we were at when we created them.
Albert Einstein

Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working.
Albert Giacometti (sculptor)

I am supposed to credit Prof. Gabriel Robins of the University of Virginia for me taking
many of these quotes from his webpage that he has copyrighted. So here it is, along with a quote
from me on the fact that he has copyrighted his webpage of quotes, “Bogus!”. That should satisfy
the lawyers if he decides to sick them on me for any reason.

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

Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.
Elbert Hubbard

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"

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance
Oscar Wilde

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
Jimi Hendrix

A clever man commits no minor blunders.
Goethe

A witty saying proves nothing.
Voltaire

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will Durant

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
Xenocrates

If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough.
Mario Andretti

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
Henry Ford

I'll sleep when I'm dead.
Warren Zevon

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
Mahatma Gandhi

Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
Georg Lichtenberg

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau

While we are postponing, life speeds by.
Seneca

Luck is the residue of design.
Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
Bertrand Russell

Wit is educated insolence."
Aristotle

Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
Ambrose Bierce

Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them.
Samuel Palmer

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Albert Einstein

The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis

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

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound
truth may well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr

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

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

I would have made a good Pope.
Richard M. Nixon

Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits
is, of course, in a state of sin."
John von Neumann

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

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.
H. H. Munro

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

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

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
Oscar Wilde

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.
Martin Fraquhar Tupper

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
Oscar Wilde

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
Goethe

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

He who hesitates is a damned fool.
Mae West

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
Gail Godwin

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
Charles de Gaulle

You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty.
Sacha Guitry

If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.
Aristotle Onassis

I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
General George Patton

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
George Bernard Shaw

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

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure
Oliver Herford

The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce

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

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
Igor Stravinsky

When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
Mae West

Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
Robert Frost

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Abraham Lincoln

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

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

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau

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

Attention to health is life greatest hindrance.
Plato

Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
Ross MacDonald

Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain

It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant.
Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
Woody Allen

Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.
Abba Eban

To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me.
Charles William Stubbs

Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.
Wilson Mizner

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
T. S. Eliot

Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.
Karl Wallenda

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Sun Tzu

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Kay

Hell is paved with good samaritans.
William M. Holden

Never mistake motion for action.
Ernest Hemingway

Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin

Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd.
William Congreve

Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.
Perelman

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
Henry David Thoreau

There is a country in Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal.
Sigfried Hulzer

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Sir Winston Churchill

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

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!
Will Rogers

If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?
Will Rogers

The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."
Von Clausewitz

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.)

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

A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.
General George S. Patton

After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."
Cato the Elder

Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.
Last words of Pancho Villa

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
Benjamin Franklin

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's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
Flannery O'Connor

I worship the quicksand he walks in.
Art Buchwald

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction.
General Douglas MacArthur

"#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 lines were not so dominant

I just bought a Mac to help me design the next Cray.
Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when was informed that Apple Inc. had
recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac

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

The truth is more important than the facts.
Frank Lloyd Wright

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

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

Have no fear of perfection – you'll never reach it.
Salvador Dali

Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong.
Muhammad Ali

I was born and raised with crocodiles; they are a piece of cake. But kids
are so ... unpredictable.
Crododile Hunter Steve Irwin

The day people stop bringing you their problems is the day you have topped leading them.
Colin Powell

Life is too short to drink the house wine.
Helen Thomas

It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.
P.D. James

Whenever you see darkness, there is extraordinary opportunity for the light to burn brighter.
Bono

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it
to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
Linda Ellerbee

What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite.
Thomas Carlyle

Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they desire, either one.
Benjamin Franklin

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is to little.
Epicurus

You will soon break the bow if you keep it always stretched.
Phaedrus

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.
Robert F. Kennedy

Winning is a habit. unfortunately, so is losing.
Vince Lombardi

Most of us ask for advice when we know the answer but we want a different one.
Ivern Ball

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Soren Kirkegaard

You've just one problem. You stand too close to the ball--after you've hit it.
Sam Snead

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Thomas Jefferson

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent Van Gogh

Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.
Alexis Carrel

Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.
Thomas Fuller

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
Carl Sandburg

The world is a dangerous place to live in, not because of those who do
evil, but because of those who watch and let it happen.
Albert Einstein

Develop an infallible technique, then put yourself at the mercy of inspiration.
Zen maxim

Well ya see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo.
And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first.
This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of
the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way,
the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as
we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In
this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster
and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.
Cliff Clavin of "Cheers" to Norm

Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.
Anonymous

There are more men than women in mental hospitals, which just goes to show who's driving who crazy.
Peter Veale, musician

If you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln

Actually, it only takes one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the 13th or the 14th.
George Burns

A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.
W.C. Fields

You better live every day like it's your last because one day you're going to be right.
Ray Charles

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his cell.
Simone Weil

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.
Edith Sitwell

Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy.
Cynthia Nelms

Life is easier to take than you'd think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible,
do without the indispensible, and bear the intolerable.
Kathleen Norris

They say that adultery is the main thing that can damage a marriage, but it's not.
It's boredom.
Barry Cryer

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.
Margaret Mead

Man's loneliness is but his fear of life.
Eugene O'Neill

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
Margaret Lee

It is always brave to say what everyone thinks.
George Duhamel

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Eric Hoffer

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing
is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius
is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

We live as we dream-alone
Capt Marlow, Heart of Darkness

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
J. Paul Getty

No man is so poor as to have nothing to give.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.
'Eloisa to Abelard' by Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Ulysses - Alfred Lord Tennyson

So much there is to catch,
And the years so short,
That there is scarce time to snatch
Pen, palette, or aught,
And to seize some shape we can see,
That others may keep
Its moment of mystery,
Then go to our sleep.
Lord Dunsany

Photograph not only what you see but also what you feel.
Ansel Adams

The real voyage of discovery consists
not in seeing new landscapes,
but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
Ansel Adams

Hope is not a method
LTC Crowder advised me on 12 Nov 04

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up..
Lily Tomlin

Heaven and Hell
Heaven is where the police are British,
the chefs are French,
the mechanics are German,
the lovers Italian,
and it's all organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the chefs are British,
the mechanics French,
the lovers Swiss,
the police German,
and it's all organized by the Italians.
Author Unknown

You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau

Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly.
Robert Doisneau

Our friends define us by what we have done; we define ourselves by what we are capable of.

Never lie, steal, cheat or drink. But if you must lie,
lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must
steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat,
cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the
moments that take your breath away.
Alex Hitchens, Hitch

To look at a thing is very different from seeing it.
Oscar Wilde

The best zoom lens is your legs.
Ernst Haas

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.
Dorothea Lange

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Jack London

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing.
Action always generates inspiration. Inspriation seldom generates action.
Frank Tibolt

A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
Ansel Adams

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Joseph Chilton Pearce

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.
Herbert Spencer

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau

In this age, which believes that there is a shortcut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned
is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.
Henry Miller

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Human beings tend to attribute their own successes to personal intelligence, knowledge, and artistry
but they explain away their failures as the results of situations beyond their control.
Unknown

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
James Madison

Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must run faster than the fastest lion
or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up, it knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or
it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter if you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up
you better start running.
African proverb

All art is autobiographical.
Federico Fellini

Being in a minority, even a minority of one, didn't make you made. There was truth and there was untruth.
And if you clung to the truth, even against the whole world, you were not mad.
Winston, 1984

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its one sure defense.
Mark Twain

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Thomas Jefferson

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Winston Churchill

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
George Bernard Shaw

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan (1986)

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will Rogers

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
P.J. O'Rourke

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
Voltaire (1764)

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.
Pericles (430 B.C)

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
Mark Twain (1866)

Talk is cheap ... except when Congress does it.
Unknown

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
Winston Churchill

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.
Edward Langley, Artist (1928 - 1995)

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
Thomas Jefferson

You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
Dr. Seuss

If you don't do it this year, you'll just be one year older when you do.
Warren Miller

If something is not happening for you it doesn't mean it's never going to happen. It means you're not ready for it.
Unknown

A Man Is Not Old Until Regrets Take the Place of Dreams.
John Barrymore

It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think.
If you give a man an answer all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.
Kvothe from Patrick Rothfuss - A Wise Man's Fear - MP3 20/36 1:01:10

If we look at photography as first a technical pursuit, then the starting
point is the technique or the technology, with nothing to drive our decisions. If we begin, instead, with our intent for the
photograph, the what follows is a pursuit of the aesthetic - the look. Technique and the tools of the trade are merely the means to get us there.
David Duchemin - Vision Driven Photographer pg 10

Once more into the fray,
Into the last good fight I'll ever know,
Live and die on this day,
Live and die on this day!
The Grey - Liam Neeson

Paper is poverty; it is the ghost of money and not money itself.
Thomas Jefferson

You can ignore reality but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
Ayn Rand

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
Bruce Lee

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
Maria Robinson

You canÕt build a reputation on what youÕre going to do.
Henry Ford