- As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- The wise see knowledge and action as one; they see truly.
-- Bhagava Gita
- Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are the more leisure we have.
-- William Hazlitt
- The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. What men need is as much knowledge as they can organize for action; give them more and it may become injurious. Some men are heavy and stupid from undigested learning.
-- Thomas Henry Huxley
Malcolm X (1925-1965) U.S. political activist and civil rights leader
- My Alma mater was books, a good library . . . . I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.
- History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.
- Truth is on the side of the oppressed.
- Early in life I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.
- Brothers and sisters, friends and enemies: I just can't believe that everyone in here is a friend and I don't want to leave anybody out.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English economist, philosopher
- That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.
- That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
- The great creative individual . . . is capable of more wisdom and virtue than collective man ever can be.
- They who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them; and what we can achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess than on the use we make of our time.
- One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests.
Plato (427-347 BC) Greek philosopher, student of Socrates
- If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
- When the mind is thinking, it is talking to itself.
- Arguments derived from probabilities are idle.
- Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.
- We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) Scottish author, physician; creator of Sherlock Holmes
- There comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
- It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.
- When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
- Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
- It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you.
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) U.S. critic, social reformer, writer
- Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering pot and the pruning knife.
- The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.
- Art can only be truly Art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life.
- It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.
- Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved.
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) U.S. clergyman, Protestant minister
- Life is a library owned by an author. It has a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him.
- I would rather live in a world where life is surrounded by mystery, than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
- He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.
- No steam or gas drives anything until it is confined. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
- Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.
Miles Davis (1926-1991) U.S. jazz musician, composer
- That was my gift . . . having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it.
- I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning . . . Every day I find something creative to do with my life.
- I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.
- Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn't about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.
- A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.
- There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men.
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell.
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron 1788-1824
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto III [1816], st. 21
- If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to either of you for the rest of the day.
- Frogs are smart--they eat what bugs them.
- A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
-- William Shedd
- Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.
-- John Webster c.1580-c.1625)
- Matrimonially speaking, a bridle for the tongue is better than a rein for the heart.
-- Minna Antrim (fl. 1900) from Naked Truths and Veiled Illusions
- Fighting is essentially a masculine idea; a woman's weapon is her tongue.
-- Hermione Gingold (1897-1987)
- We have drugs to make women speak, but none to keep them silent.
-- Anatole France (1844-1924)
- Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
-- Charles Caleb Colton
- I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings.
-- Humphrey Bogart to Lauren Bacall, in "The Big Sleep"
- Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage.
-- Jean Anouilh
- All courage is a form of constancy. It is always himself that a coward abandons first. After this all other betrayals come.
-- Cormac McCarthy
- We are the echo of the future.
-- W. S. Merwin
- Courage is the price that Love exacts for granting peace.
-- Amelia Earhart
- I was going to change my shirt, but I changed my mind instead.
-- Winnie the Pooh
Some Winnie the Pooh sites:
http://acm.cis.udel.edu/~sun/poohquotes.html
http://www.ecnet.net/users/mueaf3/pooh.htm
http://bsd.meddean.luc.edu/~smarton/pooh.htm
- Courage: doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.
-- Eddie Rickenbacker
- A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whom timidity prevented from making a first effort.
-- Sydney Smith
- Cricket is best described as organised loafing.
-- Anonymous British Radio Broadcaster, 1996
- In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.
-- Mortimer J. Adler
- Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses.
-- Anon.
- Semper Gumby (always flexible)
-- Anon.
- Never try to teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of your time and annoys the pig.
-- Anon.
- If you don't know how to do something, you don't know how to do it with a computer.
-- Anon.
- It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
-- Pierre Augustin de Beaumarchais
- The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
-- Robert Benchley
- Quoting: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
-- Ambrose Bierce
- We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
-- Wehrner von Braun
- The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
-- Nicholas Murray Butler
- Not to anticipate is already to moan.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
- The important thing is not to stop questioning.
-- Albert Einstein
- He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose
-- Jim Elliott
- A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.
-- Martin H. Fischer
- A really busy person never knows how much he weighs.
-- Ed Howe
- Never fear big long words.
Big long words mean little things.
All big things have little names,
Such as life and death, peace and war,
Or dawn, day, night, hope, love, home.
Learn to use little words in a big way.
It is hard to do,
But they say what you mean.
When you don't know what you mean,
Use big words--
That often fools little people.
-- Arthur Kudner
- Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.
-- Edward H. Land
- At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.
-- Maurice Maeterlink
- All of the great patriots now engaged in edging and squirming their way toward the Presidency of the Republic run true to form. That is to say, they are all extremely wary, and all more or less palpable frauds. What they want, primarily, is the job; the necessary equipment of unescapable issues, immutable principles and soaring ideals can wait until it becomes more certain which way the mob will be whooping.
-- H. L. Mencken, on the 1920 election campaign
- Here is Edward Bear coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way...if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it!
-- A. A. Milne, the opening paragraph of Winnie-the-Pooh
- If you cannot be the master of your language, you must be its slave. If you cannot examine your thoughts, you have no choice but to think them, however silly they may be.
-- Richard Mitchell, from Less than Words Can Say
- The executive exists to make sensible exceptions to general rules.
-- Elting E. Morison
- Use your own best judgment at all times.
-- The entire Nordstrom's Department Stores policy manual
- You cannot think about thinking, without thinking about thinking about something.
-- Seymour Papert
- Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the 'ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome.' You must be willing to fire.
-- Gen. George S. Patton
- If there is any one proof of a man's incompetence, it is the stagnant mentality of a worker who, doing some small routine job in a vast undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine, does not choose to know how the machine got there or what makes his job possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is parasitical and unneccessary.
-- Ayn Rand
- I belong to no organized political party -- I am a Democrat.
-- Will Rogers
- Anything is possible, but only a few things actually happen.
-- Richard Rosen
- The most savage controversies are about those matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
-- Bertrand Russell
- Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
-- John-Paul Sartre
- Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
-- John Steinbeck
- Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
-- Simeon Strunsky
- The democratic theory is that if you accumulate enough ignorance at the polls, you produce intelligence.
-- Philo Vance
- Education is an admirable thing, but nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
-- Oscar Wilde
- I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
-- Oscar Wilde
- A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.
-- Goethe
- Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them.
-- Ralph N. Gerard
- Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.
-- Bill Moyers
- Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
-- Vladimir Nabokov
- What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions; life is plurality, death is uniformity.
-- Octavio Paz
- A person should never be ashamed to own that he is wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
-- Alexander Pope
- In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
-- Al Rogers, Global SchoolHouse Network
- Only that day dawns
to which we are awake.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and
- new beauty waiting to be born.
-- Dr. Dale E. Turner
- Great eaters and great sleepers are incapable of anything else that is great.
-- William Shakespeare, Henry IV
- Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception.
-- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
- What I have to say is far more important than how long my eyelashes are.
-- Singer Alanis Morissette, 7/30/95 explaining her video for You Oughtta Know
- It's the notion that there is no perfection--that there is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still there is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances.
-- Singer Leonard Cohen, 9/24/95 commenting on his song Hallelujah
- -We don't live in Disneyland. We live in blood and in time, not in Fantasyland. We live in a tragic world.
-- - Filmmaker Costa-Gavras, 9/6/95
- Technology is an extension of our hands and our feet, not our spirit.
-- - Filmmaker Costa-Gavras, 9/6/95
- Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching?
- The six phases of a project:
1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Praise and Honors for the Non-Participants
- If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.
-- Dr. W.C. Heuper of the National Cancer Institute, as quoted in the New York Times on April 14, 1954.
- For the majority of People, smoking has a beneficial effect.
-- Dr. Ian G. Macdonald, Los Angeles surgeon, quoted in Newsweek , Nov.18th 1963.
- Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
- Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you wish you weren't.
- Wasting time is an important part of life.
- Dreams never hurt anybody if you keep working right behind the dreams to make as much of them become real as you can.
-- Frank W. Woolworth
- Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.
-- Dean Inge
- There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and, because it takes a man's life to know them, the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
-- Ernest Hemingway
- If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavours to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
-- Henry David Thoreau
- You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- I sing sometimes for the war that I fight, 'Cause every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.
-- Ani DiFranco
- Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.
-- Jerry Garcia
- Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
-- LaRouchefoucauld
- The real questions are the ones that obtrude upon your consciousness whether you like it or not, the ones that make your mind start vibrating like a jackhammer, the ones that you 'come to terms with" only to discover that they are still there. The real questions refuse to be placated. They barge into your life at the times when it seems most important for them to stay away. They are the questions asked most frequently and answered most inadequately, the ones that reveal their true natures slowly, reluctantly, most often against your will.
-- Ingrid Bengis
- Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up.
-- Anon
- Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more than the estimate the job will cost.
-- Anon
- It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.
-- St. Francis of Assisi
- It is a product of Einstein's genius -- taking a commonplace observation, combining it with some simple imaginary experiments, and arriving at a revolutionary conclusion.
-- Clifford M. Wills, 1986
- Both class and race survive education, and neither should. What is education then? If it doesn't help a human being to recognize that humanity is humanity, what is it for? So you can make a bigger salary
- than other people?
-- Beah Richards
- People, like nails, lose their effectiveness when they lose direction and begin to bend.
-- Walter Savage Landor
- Nothing average ever stood as a monument to progress. When progress is looking for a partner it doesn't turn to those who believe they are only average. It turns instead to those who are forever searching and striving to become the best they possibly can. If we seek the average level we cannot hope to achieve a high level of success. Our only hope is to avoid being a failure.
-- A. Lou Vickery
- Keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.
-- Roger Babson (1875-1967)
- Nature gave men two ends - one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most.
-- George R. Kirkpatrick
- The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are going.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Realism is a corruption of reality.
-- Wallace Stevens
- The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
-- Paul Ehrlich
- They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.
-- Antonio Porchi
- All human actions are equivalent... and... all are on principle doomed...
-- Jean-Paul Sartre, "Being and Nothingness" (Conclusion, sct. 2)
- Feeding the hungry is a greater work than raising the dead.
-- Saint John Chrysostom
- Consequences, schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich!
-- Chuck Jones-directed cartoon
- Someday is not a day of the week.
-- Anon.
- Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
1. Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
2. Advising the President.
3. Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.
-- David Letterman
- Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.
-- Ed Abbey
- That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.
-- Madeleine L'Engle
- The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them.
-- Benjamin Jowett
From: Lovisa Lindberg
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 1996 00:01:04 -0500
Subject: Quotes from Loesje
Hallo!Here are some quotes for your amusement. They are all from the home-page of Loesje Interntional (Http://www.loesje.nl). Loesje International is association which members make posters with texts like those below. The posters can be seen in big cities all over Europe, and in other continents as well.
- It was a day like this Marco Polo left for China. What are your plans for today?
--Loesje
- Isn't it incredible that the news from all over the world always fit exactly into the newspaper?
--Loesje
- With both feet on the ground you won't get far.
--Loesje
- Next time I'll take parents of my own age.
--Loesje
- Better watch out that you won't become a television set in your next life.
--Loesje
- Does living take a lot of your time?
--Loesje
- I always think twice before I say something stupid.
--Loesje
Television
- Per cubic inch, your current TV set is perhaps the dumbest appliance in your home (and I'm not even talking about the programs).
-- Nicholas Negroponte
- The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime television.
-- Anon.
Past
- It's linkage I'm talking about,
and harmonies and structures
And all the various things that lock
our wrists to the past.
--Charles Wright
- In the late 1600s the finest instruments originated from three rural families whose workshops were side by side in the Italian village of Cremona. First were the Amatis, and outside their shop hung a sign: "The best violins in all Italy." Not to be outdone, their next-door neighbors, the family Guarnerius, hung a bolder sign proclaiming: "The Best Violins In All The World!" At the end of the street was the workshop of Anton Stradivarius, and on its front door was a simple notice which read: "The best violins on the block."
-- Freda Bright
- For my part, I believe that the vainglorious and the violent will not inherit the earth... In pursuance of that faith my friends and I take the hands of the dying in our hands. And some of us travel to the Pentagon, and others live in the Bowery and serve there, and others speak unpopularly and plainly of the fate of the unborn and of convicted criminals. It is all one.
-- Daniel Berrigan
- Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their planning to reduce the time it takes.
-- Unknown
- In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.
-- Conway's Law
- Corrupt, adj.: In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
- No matter how horrid a person may appear on the surface, if you dig deeper, you will find some nice, unexpected little quality.
-- Brooke Astor, age 15
- Your body cannot heal without play.
Your mind cannot heal without laughter.
Your soul cannot heal without joy.
-- Catherine Rippenger Fenwick
- Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.
-- Not Your Average Dictionary
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