Good Quotes by Famous People
A collection of quotes by Prof. Gabriel Robins
 
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
 
"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)
 
"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat
 
"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."
- A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)
 
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."
- St Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (circa 5th century AD)
 
"This book fills a much-needed gap."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review
 
"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
- e e cummings (1894-1962)
 
"Give me a museum and I'll fill it."
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
 
"Assassins!"
- Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) to his orchestra
 
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
 
"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."
- Rene Descartes, Discours de la Methode
 
"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
 
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
- Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')
 
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
 
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
 
"Wit is educated insolence."
- Aristotle (284-322 B.C.)
 
"Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
 
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
- Gore Vidal
 
"Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them."
- Samuel Palmer
 
"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny."
- Guy Davenport
 
"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 (1874-1965)
 
"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 (1902-1984)
 
"I would have made a good Pope."
- Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
 
"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."
- John von Neumann
 
"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."
- chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game's opening position
 
"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
 
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
 
"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
 
"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 (1905-1980)
 
"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
 
"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
 
"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)
 
"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
 
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
 
"Logic is in the eye of the logician."
- Gloria Steinem
 
"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
 
"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
 
"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
- Martin Fraquhar Tupper
 
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
 
"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
- Groucho Marx
 
"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
 
"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
 
"In the end, everything is a gag."
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
 
"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people."
- Lucille S. Harper
 
"You got to be careful if you dont know where your'e going, because you might not get there."
- Yogi Berra
 
"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known."
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)
 
"He who hesitates is a damned fool."
- Mae West (1892-1980)
 
"Good teaching is one-forth preparation and three-fourths theater."
- Gail Godwin
 
"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
- Henry Kissinger
 
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
 
"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
 
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
 
"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
 
" I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
 
"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
- General George Patton (1885-1945)
 
"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
 
"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
 
"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
 
"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."
- Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
 
"Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure."
- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)
 
"I have read your book and much like it."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
 
"The cover of this book are too far apart."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
 
"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 (1925-1964)
 
"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."
- Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
 
"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
 
"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
- Mae West (1892-1980)
 
"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
 
"No Sane man will dance."
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
 
"Hell is a half-filled auditorium."
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)
 
"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
- C. G. Jung (1875-1961)
 
"Vote early and vote often."
- Al Capone (1899-1947)
 
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
 
"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
 
"Hell is other people."
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
 
"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."
- Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (from the Bhagavadgita)
 
"Happiness is good health and a bad memory."
- Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)
 
"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 (1899-1947)
 
"The gods too are fond of a joke."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
 
"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
 
"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."
- Gloria Leonard
 
"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."
- H. L. Menchen (1880-1956)
 
"There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
 
"Attention to health is life greatest hindrance."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
 
"Plato was a bore."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
 
"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal."
- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
 
"I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy."
- Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961)
 
"Hemingway was a jerk."
- Harold Robbins
 
"How can I lose to such an idiot?"
- A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)
 
"Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure."
- Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)
 
"Men have become the tools of their tools."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
 
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
 
"It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant."
- Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines
 
"I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
- Gore Vidal
 
"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
 
"Sanity is a madness put ot good uses."
- George Santayana
 
"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
 
"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
 
"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
 
"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
 
"Why don't you write books people can read?"
- Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)
 
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
 
"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."
- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
 
"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
- Tom Stoppard
 
"Never mistake motion for action."
- Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961)
 
"Hell is paved with good samaritans."
- William M. Holden
 
"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
 
"Silence is argument carried out by other means."
- Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928-1967)
 
"Well done is better than well said."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
 
"The average person thinks he isn't."
- Father Larry Lorenzoni
 
"Heaven hath no rage like love to hatred turned Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned"
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
 
"A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted."
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)
 
"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 is Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal."
- Sigfried Hulzer
 
"Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done."
- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) when informed that his wife is dying
 
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
 
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
 
"I think it would be a good idea.
- Mahatma Ghandi, 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 (1729-1797)
 
"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
 
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" "
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
 
"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
 
"There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole."
- Bill Wulf
 
"There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
 
"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
- Paul Valery (1871-1945)
 
"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 (1879-1955)

Page design courtesy of Prof. Gabriel Robins