Good Quotations by Famous People

[Trooper]

"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."
- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"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)

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

"Dancing is silent poetry."
- Simonides (556-468bc)
"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
- Umberto Eco

 

[Bankhead]

If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.

- Max Born



I spent half my life grasping a baseball only to find out it was the other way around.

- R. Boulton



The first time a man goes into battle is like the first time a man makes love to a woman: the anticipation is overpowering; the ignorance is obstructive; the fear of disgrace is consuming and survival is triumphant.

- Ben Bradlee



It's fun to be the sucker - if you can afford it.

- 'Diamond Jim' Brady



Stay fit, keep sharp, make good decisions.

- Rick Moranis in "Ghostbusters 2"



Person who is in search of freedom, Prisoner thoughts of others does not create.

- Orod Bozorg



Erst das Fressen, dann die Moral.

Mrs. Peachum: Money talks. Mr. Peachum: Not too much, I hope.

First whore: Plain linen puts men off. Second whore: Naah, plain linen makes 'em feel at home.

Terrible is the temptation to do good.

- Bertholt Brecht



I may be a bad woman, but I'm awfully good company.

- Fanny Brice

 

[Bankhead]

You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind
word alone.

- Al Capone



King incorrupt, the employee is not wicked.

- Orod Bozorg



The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum and light but the shadow of God

- Sir Thomas Browne



The English invented cricket to make other human endeavors look interesting.

- Bill Bryson



To every man is given the key to the gate of heaven; the same key opens the gate of hell.

- Buddhist proverb



The stock exchange closes on Saturdays and Sundays and I don't break out in hives.

If you're in a poker game for thirty minutes and don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.

If you don't know jewelry, know your jeweler.

If you don't want to tap dance, you're in the wrong business.

It is difficult to teach a new dog old tricks.

To expect big prizes for small investments is to encourage stupid behavior.

- Warren Buffett



Heredity is nothing but stored environment.

- Luther Burbank



It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not
want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.

- P.G. Wodehouse



It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.

- James Thurber

 

[Bankhead]

By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me.

I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.

My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.

Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is.

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target.

Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.

Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.

- Ashleigh Brilliant



Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

- Mel Brooks



Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on
Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. Our task must be to free
ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature and its beauty. It is my view that the vegetarian
manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would
most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.

- Albert Einstein



Constantly speak of the hard life, brings slavery.

- Orod Bozorg



The public interest requires doing today those things that men of intelligence and goodwill would wish, five and ten years hence, had been done.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

- Edmund Burke

 

[Bankhead]

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words do permanent damage.

When things aren't going well, it's easier to blame someone else.

There is nothing more boring than people who love you.

- Eric Bogosian



It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.

We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?

- Niels Bohr



If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams,
and endeavor to live the life you have imagined,
you will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
You will pass an invisible boundary: new, universal and more liberal laws
will begin to establish themselves around and within you
and you will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

- Henry David Thoreau



Dialogue with thinkers, a rare bonus.

- Orod Bozorg



When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.

- James H. Boren



How I wish I could enumerate pi easily, since all these (censored) mnemonics prevent recalling any of pi's sequences more simply. [number of letters in each word give first digits of pi]

- Peter Brigham



The deities that I adore are social peace and plenty.

Some have meat and cannot eat, some cannot eat that want it. But we have meat and we can eat, so let the Lord be thanked.

- Robert Burns



Once your reputation is shot you can get away with quite a lot.

- Wilhelm Busch



An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.

- Nicholas Murray Butler



I'm telling the truth as God himself would tell it if he could only talk.

- Erskine Caldwell

 

[Bankhead]

The supreme geopolitical fact of the modern era is that Americans speak English.

- Otto von Bismarck



All great events begin with the pulsation of an artery.

- William Blake



Weather! This isn't weather! This is divine vengeance!

I got my **** together and found I couldn't lift it.

- Roy Blount, Jr.



A manager is someone who can look at two numbers on a piece of paper and
immediately tell which one is bigger.

- R. Metcalfe



Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. "Well I never!" said he. "I thought at
first you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it,
after all." "I began to think, Watson," said Holmes, "that I had made a
mistake in explaining. 'Omne ignatum pro magnifico,' you know, and my poor
little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid."

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes



Speak of friendship and lasting enmity in politics is laughable.

- Orod Bozorg



If a computer is a god, it is an Old Testament god with lots of rules and no mercy.

Let us worship Zarathustra, just the way we useta. I'm a Zarathustra boosta and he's good enough for me.

Let us worship Aphrodite. She's beautiful but flighty. She doesn't wear a nightie, but she's good enough for me.

- Joseph Campbell



Love can burn or love can last but not both.

There is no defense against scorn.

- Camus

 

[Bankhead]

Technology is great as long as you don't try to use it.

- Ian Campbell



A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals

It's a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it

There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.

The truth deserves a bodyguard of lies.

- Winston Churchill



In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back
to us with a certain alienated majesty.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so
regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.

- Alexander Graham Bell



Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflection, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot.

Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on the forceps.

There is no lack of void.

When I'm asked how long I've been here, I answer "A second." ........ Or "A day." ........ Or "A century." It all depends on what I mean by "here" ........and "me" ........and "been."

Soon there will be nothing where there never was anything.

That's the way I am - either I forget something immediately or I never forget it.

- Samuel Beckett



I disclaim all patriotism as incompatible with the principles of eternal justice.

- John Quincy Adams



Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to show the world we mean business.

- Michael Ledeen

 

[Bankhead]

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

- Henri Frederic Amiel



Organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.

- Mike Adams



It is not our abilities that show what we truly are - it is our choices. - Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Decisions determine destiny.

- George Patton



I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth
even if it costs them their jobs.

- Samuel Goldwyn



Someone who is helpless, and the ideal self is lost.

- Orod Bozorg



I may not believe in life after death, but what a gift it is to be alive now.

- Natalie Angier



Wit is educated insolence.

- Aristotle



In flying the probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.

- Neil Armstrong



You carry a little pad of paper in your pocket, don't you? I knew you did. Well, you set this down. I thought of it the other day. Let's take decay. Now what is decay? It's fire. It burns up wood and other things. You never thought of that? Of course not. This sidewalk here and this feed store, the trees down the street there--they're all on fire. They're burning up. Decay, you see, is always going on. It doesn't stop. Water and paint can't stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It rusts, you see. That's fire, too. The world is on fire. Start your pieces in the paper that way. Just say in big letters 'The World Is On Fire.' That will make 'em look up.

- Sherwood Anderson



I wish I knew as much about anything as that young man knows about everything.

- Asquith (on the young Churchill)



Genius is childhood recalled at will.

- Charles Baudelaire



Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

- Tom Stoppard

 

[Bankhead]

It was blackness without a single gleam.

It was solemn, and a little ridiculous, too, these struggles of an individual trying to save from the fire his idea of his moral identity.

A confounded democratic quality of vision which may be better than total blindness but has been of no advantage to me, I can assure you. Men expect one to take into account their fine linen.

...and forthwith had gone out of the remnants of their minds.

The onlookers see most of the game.

All those things which had made him a master had made him a captive, too.

Every day added a link to the fetters of that strange freedom.

He was one of those brilliantly endowed men who are not dull enough to nurse a success.

His object seemed to awaken the indignant attention of the universe.

His loathsomeness, too, was abject, so that a simply disgusting person would have appeared noble by his side.

Obviously it would be something very simple, the simplest impossibility in the world.

All she knew of the world was a betrayed woman and a sinister pantaloon.

[The letter was full of] easy morality and family news.

- Joseph Conrad



The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

- Robert R. Coveyou



It's amazing how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

One should start everyday by asking everyone how they are. It oils the wheels.

The devil is not wise because he is the devil but because he is old.

Down with the head, up with the heart and you're over the top and skimming down the other side like a dragonfly.

- Noel Coward



Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

- Seneca, 65 CE



Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking,
honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity.
But then, we elected them.

- Lily Tomlin

 

[Bankhead]

There is a connection between neurosis and talent but there is also a connection between genius and mental illness.

- John Cleese



I feel that there is an angel inside me whom I am forever shocking.

- Jean Cocteau



Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.

- Charles Caleb Colton



Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

- John Donne



If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it
expects what never was and never will be... if we are to guard against
ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be
informed.

- Thomas Jefferson



Patriotism, like love child of the mother.

- Orod Bozorg



I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

- Confucius



Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it.

- Jimmy Connors

 

[Bankhead]

When one man finds the way, his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven.

Eight immortals cross the sea; each shows a saintly passage.

The sky is high; the emperor is far away.

When you mention Cao Cao, he soon arrives.

Never pull on your shoes in a melon patch; never adjust your cap under a plum tree.

Lord Jiang casts a line, a fish wants to be caught.

- Chinese proverbs



The more you don't do it, the more fun it is to read about it.

- C. Churchill



A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

- John Ciardi



There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.

- Cicero



But for the sake of a small mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun
and light, and that proportion of life and time that it had been born into the
world to enjoy.

- Plutarch



The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not
when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.

- Sir Francis Bacon, 1561-1626



Thinkers and scientists are always alive.

- Orod Bozorg



It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.

- Arthur C. Clarke



The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

- Tom Clancy

 

[Bankhead]

A woman of forty whose fine skin and clear features could be counted among her organizational gifts.

...the essence of her beauty was disenchantment.

...it looked as if it had been put together by old ladies and mice.

...where people drank their gin surrounded by the relics of an arduous and orderly way of life of which they knew nothing.

All things of the sea belong to Venus; pearls and shells and alchemist's gold and kelp and the riggish smell of neap tides, the inshore water green and purple further out and the joy of distances, all these are hers.

- John Cheever



Anyone watching us would thing that we were not traveling but going insane! [during a particularly difficult trip through Siberia]

To be in continual ecstasies over nature shows poverty of imagination.

- Chekhov



People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton



It's better to die cool than to live uncool.

- Harley Davidson (movie)



Without leaving his door
He knows everything under heaven
Without looking out of his window
He knows all the ways of heaven
For the further one travels
The less one knows
Therefore the Sage arrives without going,
Sees all without looking,
Does nothing, yet achieves everything.

- Tao Te Ching, Chapter 47



you simple, plain life Deer, soon dies with witchcraft.

- Orod Bozorg



Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.

- Lord Chesterfield

 

[Bankhead]

LA doesn't have the heart of a paper cup.

She was a blond who could make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.

LA is a mail order city. Everything you can get in the catalog you can get better somewhere else.

They knocked over tombs and sneered at the dead. Which is only as it should be. [on new generation]

I could have so easily become everything the world has no use for.

To live in a place you must either love it or hate it or do both by turns, as you do with a woman.

- Raymond Chandler



Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage.

- William Ellery Channing



A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human
history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

- Mitch Ratliffe



It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to
have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no
human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

- Carl Sagan



Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?

- Richard Lederer, Mensan



Why is it that when you send something by car it's a shipment, but when you send it by ship, it's a cargo?

- Richard Lederer, Mensan



Debacle is born, people with the intolerance.

- Orod Bozorg



In some cases non-violence requires more militancy than violence.

- Cesar Chavez



What nedeth it to sermone of it moore?

- Chaucer

 

[Bankhead]

"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

The rule is: jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam today.

- Lewis Carroll



When it comes to a wife, give me a woman everytime.

- Joyce Cary



Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with necessity.

- Thomas Caryle



After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.

- Cato



Kids were different then. They didn't have their heads filled with all this Cartesian dualism.

- Monty Python



A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls.

- Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic



Where is happiness? Instead all are valuable.

- Orod Bozorg



As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.

- Dick Cavett



Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offence.

Even among galley slaves ten percent were volunteers.

The beginning of the end begins with the loss of the sense of proportion.

- Celine



The majority of those who put together collections of verses or epigrams resemble those who eat cherries or oysters; they begin by choosing the best and end by eating everything.

- Chamfort

 

[Bankhead]

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision
for the limits of the world.

- Arthur Schopenhauer



Artists are the future builders.

- Orod Bozorg



You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

- Al Capone



Bourbon to artifice bears the same relation as tears to mascara.

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.

- Truman Capote



Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

- Dale Carnegie



How these curiosities
would be quite forgott,
did not such idle fellows
as I am putt them downe.

- John Aubrey



I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it.

- Abraham Lincoln



Thinkers, only the main cause of life is self think.

- Orod Bozorg



They are the omelet makers and we are the eggs.

- Jon Carroll