- I think all of us are looking at the future with yesterday's eyes.
-- Dan Burrus
- Few people even scratch the surface, much less exhaust the contemplation of their own experience.
-- Randolph Bourne
- Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation ...
In my end is my beginning.
-- T. S. Eliot
- Good to forgive;
Best to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.
-- R. Browning
- 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
- The office of the President is such a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy, that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.
-- Jimmy Breslin
- It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
-- Pierre Augustin de Beaumarchais
- Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men?
-- Natalie Clifford Barney
- The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
-- Nicholas Murray Butler
- Quoting: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
-- Ambrose Bierce
- The best defence against the atom bomb is not to be there when it goes off.
-- The British Army Journal
- Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devel's Dictionary"
- Liar: One who tells an unpleasant truth.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devel's Dictionary"
- Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it.
- -Ambrose Bierce, "The Devel's Dictionary"
- Nobody makes a greater mistake then he who does nothing because he could only do a little.
-- Edmund Burke
- No happiness is like unto it, no love so great as that of man and wife, no such comfort as a sweet wife.
-- Robert Burton
- Democracy--the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob conditions.
-- H L Mencken
- In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments -- there are consequences.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), (1896)
- I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by the accidents of race or color. They are superior wh have the best heart -- the best brain.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)
- Justice is the only worship.
Love is the only priest.
Ignorance is the only slavery.
Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now,
The place to be happy is here,
The way to be happy is to make others so.
-- Anon.
- It's the Government's job to print the money, deliver the mail and declare war. Now give me my cigarettes.
-- Florence King
- Sad is his lot, who, once at least in his life, has not been a poet.
-- Lamartine
- Nonsense, it was all nonsense: this whole damned outfit, with its committees, its conferences, its eternal talk, talk, talk, was a great con trick; it was a mechanism to earn a few hundred men and women incredible sums of money.
-- Doris Lessing
- Randomness scares people. Religion is a way to explain randomness.
-- Fran Lebowitz
- Religion is a candle inside a multi-colored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but the candle is always there.
-- Modammed Neguib
- Few maxims are true from every point of view.
-- Vauvenargues
- Even Plato didn't care for the flickering images of reality projected on the cave walls.
-- Jason Vigdior, _Jest_, 1996
- To execute great things, one should live as though one would never die.
-- Vauvenargues (1715-1747)
- Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
-- Paul Valery
- It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.
-- Whitney Young, Jr.
- No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
-- The wisdom of the Taoists
- The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend passion, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals of American society.
-- Robert F. Kennedy
- 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
- 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
- If you don't want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.
-- Ogden Nash
- Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume; the hellish cycle is complete.
-- Raoul Vaneigem
- Don't LOOK at anything in a physics lab. Don't TASTE anything in a chemistry lab. Don't SMELL anything in a biology lab. Don't TOUCH anything in a medical lab. And, most importantly, don't LISTEN to anything in a philosophy department.
-- Bill Lye
- Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.
-- Walt Kelly
- If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
-- Kurt Lewin
- The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
-- Lew Mammel, Jr.
- The crime bill passed by the Senate would reinstate the Federal death penalty for certain violent crimes: assassinating the President; hijacking an airliner; and murdering a government poultry inspector.
-- Knight Ridder News Service dispatch
- Flowers often grow more beautifully on dung-hills than in gardens that look beautifully kept.
-- Saint Francis De Sales
- Men create the gods in their own image.
-- Xenophanes
- When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.
-- Richard Nixon in an interview with David Frost 1977.
- It was involuntary. They sank my boat.
-- President Kennedy quoted in Schlesinger's A Thousand Days remarking how he became a hero.
- The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they are expected to do - they always reach.
-- Lee Iacocca
- The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend passion, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals of American society.
-- Robert F. Kennedy
- Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
-- John F. Kennedy
- I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
-- Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
- We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.
-- Timothy Leary (1920-1996)
- Science is all metaphor.
-- Timothy Leary (1920-1996)
- In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.
-- Timothy Leary (1920-1996)
- If you don't like what you are doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove.
-- Timothy Leary (1920-1996)
- If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.
-- Timothy Leary (1920-1996)
- Total freedom is never what one imagines and, in fact, hardly exists. It comes as a shock in life to learn that we usually only exchange one set of restrictions for another. The second set, however, is self-chosen, and therefore easier to accept.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
- John Gillespie Magee (1922-1941)
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds-and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of-wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never the lark, nor even eagle flew-
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
- There never were in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.
-- Michel De Montaigne
- Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.
-- Christopher Morley
- We are fortunate to live in such interesting times, we have a ringside seat for the fall of western civilization, the only problem is that it is inside the ring.
-- Robert A. Nelson
- Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-- George Santayana, The Life of Reason
- We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us.
-- Virginia Satir
- The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is made.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer
- You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
-- Beverly Sills
- The reason so little is done, is generally because so little is attempted.
-- Samuel Smiles
- Lillian Smith
- When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.
- When you say Yes, say it quickly. But always take a half hour to say No, so you can understand the other fellow's side.
-- Francis Cardinal Spellman
- Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.
-- Thornton Wilder
- Arguing with a person's faith is like chasing them around a big empty parking lot. You can keep backing them up, and backing them up--but you never actually corner them.
-- George Weilacher
- Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need.
-- Charles Kettering
- When you point your finger 'cause your plan fell through You got three more fingers pointing back at you!
-- Mark Knoppfler
- When we lose, I eat. When we win, I eat. I also eat when we're rained out.
-- Tommy Lasorda
- Food is an important part of a balanced diet.
-- Fran Lebowitz
- Use your own best judgment at all times.
-- The entire Nordstrom's Department Stores policy manual
- Not to anticipate is already to moan.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
- Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
-- Reggie Leach
- The only true time which a man can properly call his own, is that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's time, not his.
-- Charles Lamb
- If competitive advantage can be achieved from just-in-time participatory management styles, then bottom-line oriented organizations can better facilitate their gain-sharing systems to network for the new global technologies. At my company, for example, detected casualties fluctuate between generic niche discontinuities and complementary enculturative yield functions.
-- Harvard Business Review article
- That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.
-- Adlai Stevenson
- It's getting harder and harder to act weird.
-- Zippy the Pinhead
- When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
-- Helen Keller
- Do not be deceived by this technological terror you have created. The power to destroy a planet is insignificant when compared with the power of the Force.
-- Darth Vader in "STAR WARS"
- Never wrestle with pigs. You get dirty, and they enjoy it.
- The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
-- William James
- Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede--not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen.
-- G. C. Lichtenberg
- When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.
-- John F. Kennedy
- If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in this country.
-- James Buchanan to Abraham Lincoln
- I had been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a dome on it.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- Seriously, I do not think I am fit for the Presidency.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- Malesuada fames.
[Hunger persuades to evil.]
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil) (70-19 BC), _Aeneid_, Book III
- A am not old but mellow like good wine.
-- Stephen Phillips (1868-1915), _Ulysses_
- Against boredom, even the gods struggle in vain.
--Nietzsche
- Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.
-- Henry Kissinger
- When congressman Newt Gingrich was a graduate student at Tulane University I baptized him by immersion into the membership of the St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church. Perhaps I didn't hold him under long enough.
-- Rev. G. Avery Lee
- I never knew what real happiness was until I got married. And by then it was too late.
-- Max Kauffmann
- Marriage is the only known example of the happy meeting of the immovable object and the irresistible force.
-- Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
- Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.
-- Ovid (B.C. 43-18 A.D.)
- Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.
-- Plato
- Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs.
-- Pearl Strachen
- Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
-- LILY TOMLIN
- If the creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely meant us to stick it out.
-- Arthur Koestler, _Encounter_ Hungarian novelist, journalist
- Motivation is everything. You can do the work of two people, but you can't be two people. Instead, you have to inspire the next guy down the line and get him to inspire his people.
-- Lee Iacocca
- The only conquests that are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves.
-- Napoleon
- Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
-- Helen Keller
- The world is your mirror and your mind is a magnet. What you perceive is in this world is largely a reflection of your own attitudes and beliefs. Life will give you what you attract with your thoughts think, act and talk negatively and your world will be negative. Think and act and talk with enthusiasm and you will attract positive results.
-- Michael LeBeuf
- The mind of the scholar, if he would leave it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882
- Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882
- If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it: Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882
- In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme
excellence is simplicity.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882
- We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882
- The individual who prosecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
-- Voltaire,_Philosophical Dictionary_, 1764
- The true leader must submerge himself in the fountain of the people.
-- V I Lenin, quoted by John Gunther, Soviet Russia Today (1958)
- I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- The age is dull and mean. Men creep,
Not walk; with blood too pale and tame
To pay the debt they owe to shame;
Buy cheap, sell dear; eat. drink, and sleep
down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want;
Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep
Six days to Mammon, one to Cant
God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
They touch the shining hills of day;
The evil cannot brook delay,
The good can well afford to wait,
Give ermined knaves their hour of crime;
Yet have the future grand and great,
The safe appeal of Truth to Time!
- John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), _For Righteousness' Sake_ (1855)
- I demonstrate by means of philosophy that the earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides; that it is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars.
-- Johannes Kepler, "Astronomis nova"
- Every animal knows far more than you do.
-- [Nez Pearce]
- When the legends die, the dreams end;
there is no more greatness.
-- [Shawnee]
- Look out how you use proud words.
When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back.
They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can't hear you
calling--
Look out how you use proud words.
-- "Primer Lesson" by Carl Sandburg.
- Sad is his lot, who, once at least in his life, has not been a poet.
-- Lamartine
- Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
- George Orwell (Eric Blair), Politics and the English Language (1946)
- But Dulness sits at Helm, and in this Age,
Governs on Councils, Pulpits, and the Stage:
Here a dull _Councellor_ ador'd we see,
And there a Poet, duller yet than he,
With beardless Bishop, dullest of the three,
'Tis dangerous to think--
For who by thinking tempts his jealous Fate,
Is straight arraign'd as Traytor to the State,
And none that come within the Verge of Sense,
Have to Preferment now the least Pretence...
--John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680)
- Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never doall he can do.
-- Henry Drummond
- For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making, and rendering success impossible by their own cross-grained ungentleness; whilst others, it may be much less gifted, make their way and achieve success by simple patience, equanimity, and self-control.
-- Samuel Smiles
- Go for the moon. If you don't get it, you will still be heading for a star.
-- Willis Reed
- Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.
-- Willis R. Whitney
- When a man boasts about what he'll do tomorrow we like to find out what he did yesterday.
-- Anon.
- A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse form the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
-- Alexander Tyler
- Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
-- Robert Burton (1576-1640)
- When you take charge of your life, there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.
-- Geoffrey F. Abert
- Work out you own salvation. Do not depend on others.
-- Buddha
- Every now and then we discover in the seething mass of humanity round us a person who does not seem to need anybody else, and the contrast with ourselves is stinging.
-- Ernest Dimnet
- Most people - one may say the best sort of people - greatly prefer to do things for themselves, however badly, than to have things done for them, however well.
-- Anon.
- If you don't run your own life, somebody else will.
-- John Atkinson
- I deal with the obvious. I present, reiterate and glorify the obvious -- because the obvious is what people need to be told.
-- Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)
- Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.
-- Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)
- The most important thing in life is not simply to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The important thing is to profit from your loses. That requires intelligence, and makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.
-- Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)
- Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
-- Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)
- Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is Justice.
-- H L Mencken
- The love of Justice in most men is simply the fear of suffering Injustice.
-- Francois, Duc de la Rouchefoucauld
- Never expect justice in this world. That is not part of God's plan. Everybody thinks that if they don't get it, they're some kind of odd man out. And it's not true. Nobody gets justice -- people just get good luck or bad luck.
-- Orson Welles
- Think of this doctrine -- That reasoning beings were created for one another's sake;
-- Marcus Aurelius Antonius
- That to be patient is a branch of justice; and that we often sin without intending it.
-- Marcus Aurelius Antonius
- Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to,
the more ought law to weed it out.
-- Francis Bacon
- The price of Justice is eternal publicity.
-- Enoch Arnold Bennett
- Life is a warfare, & a stranger's sojourn, And after fame is oblivion.
-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
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