Assorted Quotes

 “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” – Voltaire

 “Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes.  It’s hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.” – Nathan Price in The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

"The separation between past, present and future has only the meaning of an illusion, albeit a tenacious one." Albert Einstein

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Albert Einstein

“Foolish consistencies are the hobgoblins of small minds!” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you don't like something, change it.  If you can't change it, change your attitude." – Maya Angelou

“Donuts—Is there anything they can't do?” – Homer Simpson (Matt Groening's creation)

“Antique dealer seeks attractive young woman interested in one nightstand.” – Robert Skoglund

"Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home." – Bill Cosby

“It’s good to have a frog on a fine summer day.” – Alexander Holzer, grandson of Dan Wolaver

"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do.  And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.' " – Bob Newhart

“Politicians and diapers need changing—often for the same reason” – bumper sticker

“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” – Susan Ertz 

"Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place." – E.B. White

“If I wished to punish my enemy, I should make him hate somebody.” – Hannah More

“Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.” – Samuel Butler

“Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States.  Ask any Indian.”  – Robert Orben  (Speechwriter for President Ford)

 “If a man were so placed or could so place himself as to be absolutely above all dependence on his fellow-beings he would become so proud and arrogant as to be a veritable burden and nuisance to the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

"I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes—and six months later you have to start all over again." – Joan Rivers

"Judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement." – Simón Bolívar

Higher beings from outer space may not want to tell us the secrets of life, because we're not ready. But maybe they'll change their tune after a little torture! – Jack Handey

"Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it." – Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness." – James Thurber

"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes." – Abraham Lincoln

“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." – Aldous Huxley

Music is said to be the speech of angels: in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite. – Thomas Carlyle

"Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart." – Pablo Casals

“It seems like the less a statesman amounts to the more he adores the flag." – Kin Hubbard, humorist

"Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?' " – Erwin Chargaff

"Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation." — Edward R. Murrow

“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

“I shall pass this way but once, therefore any good I can do let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again.” – William Penn

"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument." – William Gibbs McAdoo

“I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry.” – Learned Hand, appellate judge

“It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.” – Samuel Johnson

“By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.” – Charles Wadsworth

"The car has become the exoskeleton—the protective and aggressive shell—of urban and suburban man." – Marshall McLuhan

"Curious people are interesting people. I wonder why that is." – Bill Maher

"lexicographer. n.   a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words." – Samuel Johnson

"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field." – Niels Bohr

"Operator! Give me the number for 911." – Homer Simpson

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy—sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” – Thomas Edison

"I don't believe in astrology; I'm a Sagittarius and we're skeptical." – Arthur C. Clarke

“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.” – William Somerset Maugham

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient; nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in a fever.  Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient; and looking upon them only as sick and extravagant. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca, philosopher (3 BCE - 65 CE)

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” – George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human." – Alan Turing

"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." – Gilbert K. Chesterton

"Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment. "Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate is found to have been absorbed in [court] costs?"

"Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes, what do YOU say?"

"I believe so," said Mr. Vholes.

"And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?"

"Probably," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes?"

"Probably," said Mr. Vholes.

                                                – Charles Dickens in Bleak House

"Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving." – Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

“Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry ... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.” – George Polya, mathematician

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. – Winston Churchill

"Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions." – Isaiah Berlin

"Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat." – Oxford Union Society, London, Rule 46

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” - Socrates, 469 BCE – 399 BCE

"If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds." – J.B. Phillips

"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." – James Thurber

"Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent." – Bertrand Russell

"Why is s.o.b. such a terrible swear word? Everybody loves a puppy.” – Peter Dreyer

"There are just too many molecules involved in a 'fact' for a declarative sentence to cover them all.  When you speak, you simplify.  And when you simplify, you lie." – Bart Kosko in "Fuzzy Thinking" p.86

"Conservatives hate change, foreigners, government, science, intellectuals, and gays.  The worst you can say about liberals is that they are 'bleeding hearts.' "  – Dan Wolaver, philosopher

"I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun." - Katharine Hepburn

"The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His." - Roger Ebert

"Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched." - Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children." -Jimmy Carter

"Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté." - Margaret Atwood, novelist and poet (1939-)

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” - Nelson Mandela

"Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket, and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman". - Lord Chesterfield, statesman and writer (1694-1773)

“Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson