Good Quotations

A collection of quotes that I have collected

 

"All that the soul undertakes and endures, if directed by wisdom, ends in happiness, but if directed by ignorance, it ends in the opposite."

-Socrates

 

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."

-Albert Einstein

 

"I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I -- nor would I want to -- conceive of an individual that survives his physical death. Let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted strivif the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

-Albert Einstein

 

"If God did not exist, then we would invent Him."

-Voltaire

 

"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."

-Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism

"It is no use saying "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." -Sir Winston Churchill

"There are only two kinds of sholars - those who love ideas and those who hate them."

- Alain, French pholosopher

 

"By his station in society, a member of the intelligentsia really has no political interests to defend, except the very general one (the one he most forgets) of not finding himself bossed aroung by a totalitarian government."

- Kingsley Amis, British author

 

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."

- Saul Bellow, American writer

 

It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.

- Alec Bourne, British gynaecologist "Doctor's Creed"

"Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance

than values; that is to say, their own ideas and other people's values."

- Gerald Brenan, British writer "Thoughts in a Dry Season"

 

"It's probably a very good thing to maintain a mistrust of intellectuals. You can hear intellectuals all of the time, condoning some of the worst barbarities."

- John Cooper Clarke, British poet 1978

 

The university must be a tributary to a large society, not a sanctuary from it.

- A. Bartlett Giametti, American academic

 

There is always some sort of tendency for intellectuals to create a paradise somewhere else.

- Dr. A. Halsey, British academic.

 

"There is no use discussing what could be done if we were other beings than what we are."

- Werner Heisenberg

 

"There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition."

- Pascal

 

"The lion may lie down with the lamb, but the lamb isn't going to get a lot of sleep."

-paraphrased from Woody Allen

 

"I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work."

- Gallagher

 

"If you're not a liberal when you are twenty then you have no soul. If you're still a liberal when you are forty, then you have no mind."

-Winston Churchill (attributed, paraphrased)

 

"I never dared be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old."

-Robert Frost, ``Precaution'' (1936)

 

"To be conservative requires no brains whatsoever. Cabbages, cows and conifers are conservatives, and are so stupid they don't even know it. All that is basically required is acceptance of what exists."

-Colin Welch, _Spectator_ (London) July 1921

 

"The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."

-Lenny Bruce, _The Essential Lenny Bruce_ (1967) ``Politics''

 

"When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--_must_ follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

``O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle--be Thou near them! With them--in spirit--we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesites to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sport of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it--for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.''

-Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"

 

"It's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think

you're a dummy than to open it and prove them right."

-Anonymous

 

"Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire."

-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

 

"Every descision is like a murder and our march forward is over the stillborn bodies of all our possible selves that will never be."

-Rene Dubos

 

"That, that is; is. That, that is not; is not. Is that it? It is!"

 

- book "Flowers for Alginon" (sp)

 

"that that

is is

that that

is

not is

not is

that

it it

is"

- without punctuation (quite a difference)

 

"Life is a sexually transmitted, uniformly fatal, disease."

-annon

 

"I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell."

-William Tecumseh Sherman

 

"Here lies Lester Moore

Took four bullets from a .44

No Les,

No More"

-Supposedly real from Boot Hill, but can't verify it:

 

"Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all"

-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)

 

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

-Abraham Lincoln

 

"Buy land. They ain't making it anymore"

- Will Rogers

 

"It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word."

-Andrew Jackson

 

Twain's year by year proposal to simplify spelling by reducing

redundant letters:

 

"For example, in Year 1 that useless letter ``c'' would be dropped to be replased either by ``k'' or ``s'', and likewise ``x'' would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which ``c'' would be retained would be the ``ch'' formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform ``w'' spelling, so that ``which'' and

``one'' would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish ``y'' replasing it with ``i'' and Iear 4 might fiks the ``g/j'' anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez ``c'', ``y'' and ``x''--bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez--tu riplais ``ch'', ``sh'', and ``th'' rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a ojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld."

-Mark Twain - A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

 

 

"Prosperity wont come with wishful thinking. Dont fritter energy away on trivial desires. Drop by drop a leaky faucet wastes gallons."

- J. Donald Walters

 

"Assume a virtue if you have it not."

- Shakespeare

 

"The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one."

- Elbert Hubbard

 

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

- T. S. Eliot

 

"Do not justify your actions rather let your actions justify you."

- anon

 

"There can be no greatness among men without the greatness of God among men."

- anon

 

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."

-Voltaire

 

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

-Patrick Henry

 

"Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws -- always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up."

-Robert A. Heinlien, _The_Moon_is_a_Harsh_Mistress_

 

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

-G.B. Shaw

 

"We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation."

-G.B. Shaw

 

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one

persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all

progress depends on the unreasonable man."

-G.B. Shaw

 

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."

-Albert Einstien

 

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

-Albert Einstien

 

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. It is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

-Mark Twain

 

We, the people, are not free. Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee."

-Helen Keller

 

"All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will privail over those which train lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness."

-Richard Lamm

 

"Humankind has not woven the Web of Life.

We are but one thread within it.

Whatever we do to the Web, we do to ourselves.

All things are bound together. All things connect."

- Chief Seattle

 

"Information is the currency of democracy."

- Thomas Jefferson

 

"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

- Charles Darwin

 

"Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. It's first concern must thus be to penalize the free play of ideas."

-H.L. Mencken

 

"The happiness you create within yourself is permanent. We have to concentrate on the happiness that we build into us. Happiness is a choice and as we reinforce that choice, happiness becomes a deeper and deeper part of us until we are Happiness. Then as as we move through life being Happiness, we create it everyplace we go."

- Leo F. Buscaglia, Ph.D.

 

"Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know."

-Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

 

"Something happens to companies when they get to be a few billion dollars. They sort of turn into vanilla companies. They add a lot of layers of management. They get really into process rather than results, rather than products. They lose touch with their customers. Their soul goes away."

-Steve Jobs, Apple Computer co-founder

 

"Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it"

-Philip K. Dick

 

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying."

- Woody Allen

 

"Science is not so much an advance towards Truth as it is a retreat from Ignorance"

-Wayne Throop, paraprashed

 

"In the desert there is no sign that says 'Thou shalt not eat the stones' "

-Sufi proverb

 

Copyright: Kevin Harris 1995 (may be freely distributed with this acknowledgement)