These are quotations that I have gathered over time - - some are from works that I have read, a few are from films, and, then, some I have found in other collections. They are in no particular order at all -- other than that they are, more or less, in the order that I collected them. All of these quotes have appealed to me at the time for one reason or another. Enjoy them.
"I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and
nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own." (John
Bartlett, of Bartlett's quotations)
QUOTATIONS
"Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive: easy to govern, but impossible to enslave."
"I love the man who can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by
reflection." (Thomas Paine)
"Supposing you have tried and "failed" again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for
this thing we call "Failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down." (Mary Pickford)
"All learning begins with the simple phrase 'I don't know'."
"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired -- with enthusiasm." (V. Borge??)
"When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters: one represents danger; the
other opportunity."
"A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is
your mirror." (Ken Keyes Jr.)
"The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it." (Samuel Johnson)
"If they try to rush me, I always say, 'I've only got one other speed -- and it's slower.'" (Glenn Ford)
"The family you come from isn't nearly as important as the family you are going to have." (Ring
Lardner)
"There is nothing permanent except change." (Heraclitus 540-475BC)
"Don't talk unless you can improve the silence." (Vermont Proverb)
"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything." (Bishop W.C. McGee)
"Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again." (Franklin P. Jones)
"There is no failure except in no longer trying." (Elbert Hubbard)
"A liar needs a good memory." (Quintilian 35-95BC??)
"Happiness is not found somewhere else; it is only found where you are now."
"If the Aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of western society would presumably flunk it." (Stanley
Garn)
":My mistake was buying stock in the company. Now I worry about the lousy work I'm turning out."
(Marvin Townsend)
"A man may be a fool and not know it , but not if he is married." (H.L. Mencken)
"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read
a book." (Groucho Marx)
"Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one to ask why." (Bernard M. Baruch)
"It is not the employer who pays the wages -- he only handles the money. It is the product that pays the
wages." (Henry Ford)
"Methuselah lived to be 969 years old ... You boys and girls will see more in the next fifty years than
Methuselah saw in his lifetime." (Mark Twain)
"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem." (G.K. Chesterton)
"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." (Voltaire)
"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." (Thomas Jefferson)
"If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail."
"There is nothing more useless than to do efficiently what should not be done at all." (Peter Drucker)
"A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out." (Samuel
Johnson)
"Everybody wants greener pastures, but nobody wants to mow them." (Globe and Mail
07/09/94)
"We are all of us actors who can not be anything until we have pretended to be it." (W.H. Auden)
A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people too.
"Nam Myoho Renge Kyo" : (The lotus is a flower that grows in the mud: the thicker and deeper the mud,
the more beautiful the lotus blooms.)
(Bhuddist Chant from "What's Love Got to Do with It")
The true art of memory is the art of attention. (S. Johnson)
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. (Chinese Proverb)
We only think when we are confronted with a problem. (John Dewey)
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. (Doris Lessing)
Man is a slow, sloppy and brilliant thinker; the machine is fast, accurate and stupid. (William M.
Kelly)
Facts in books, statistics in encyclopedias, the ability to use them in men's heads.
(Fog Brackell)
Violence is, essentially, a confession of ultimate inarticulateness. (Time magazine)
The cave-dweller's wife complained that he hadn't dragged her anywhere in months.
(Lawrence J. Peter)
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. (Gloria Steinem)
Most people like hard work, particularly when they are paying for it.
(Franklin P. Jones)
By the work one knows the workman. (Jean de la Fontaine)
Work expands so as to fill the time allowed for its completion. (C. Northcote Parkinson)
Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young. (S. Johnson)
There was a small boy of Quebec
Who was buried in snow to his neck:
When they said 'Are you friz?'
He replied 'Yes, I is --
But we don't call this cold in Quebec!'
(Rudyard Kipling)
A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. (George Santayana)
If you think education is expensive -- try ignorance. (Derek Bok)
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects. (Will Rodgers)
Results? Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know 50,000 things that won't work. (Thomas
A. Edison)
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. (Paul R. Ehrlich)
Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up.
(James Magary)
The perfect computer has been developed. You just feed in your problems, and they never come out
again. (Al Goodman)
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I
am right. (Albert Einstein)
Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. (Buckminster Fuller)
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. (Theodore Roosevelt)
Prejudice not being founded on reason cannot be removed by argument. (S. Johnson)
Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools. (Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862)
A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out. (??)
What are we to make of the flurry of industrial ads depicting everything from Standard Oil to Dow
Chemical to the American Rifle Association as conservation-minded people.
(Barry Weisberg)
Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom -- and lakes die. (Gil Stern)
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it. (W. C.
Fields)
The best substitute for experience is being sixteen. (Raymond Duncan)
A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice. (Ed Howe)
I have always thought of a dog lover as a dog that was in love with another dog.
(James Thurber)
I tend to be suspicious of people whose love of animals is exaggerated; they are often frustrated in their
relationships with humans. (Ylla ,ne Camilla Koffler)
Production is not the application of tools to materials, but logic to work. (Peter Drucker)
Business has only two basic functions -- marketing and innovation. (Peter Drucker)
To be a success in business, be daring, be first, be different. (Marchant)
The biggest liar in the world is They Say. (Douglas Malloch)
Imagination is more important than knowledge. (A. Einstein)
It takes a wise man to handle a lie. A fool had better remain honest. (Norman Douglas)
If you don't learn from your mistakes, there is no sense making them. (??)
Smoking is a shocking thing -- blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and
noses, and having the same thing done to us. (S. Johnson)
I'm glad I don't have to explain to a man from mars why each day I set fire to dozens of little pieces of
paper, and then put them in my mouth. (Mignon McLaughlin)
Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. (Aaron
Levenstein)
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. (Benjamin Disraeli b.1804)
Then there is the man who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches. (W.I.E.
Gates)
There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job.
(Dr. George Crane)
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
(Robert Frost)
There has never been any thirty-hour week for men who had anything to do.
(Charles F. Kettering)
If people really liked to work, we'd still be plowing the land with sticks and transporting goods on our
backs. (William Feather)
Only the young die good. (Oliver Herford)
I am not young enough to know everything. (James M. Barrie)
"Stravinsky once said of himself that it was because he had such a bad memory that he had to be original."
(Joan Peyser, Bernstein, A Biography, Beechtree Books: N.Y., 1987 p.168)
"...Sam [Bernstein] discovered a product called the Fredericks permanent wave machine [in the 1920's?]
and outbid his Boston competitors for the New England franchise. Suddenly Sam had real money in the
bank and a great deal of credit everywhere. He has often described the event as 'the American dream
coming through.'" (ibid p.26)
"The emergence of the cold-wave permanent made Sam Bernstein's Fredericks machine obsolete." (ibid
p.92)
My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income. (Errol Flinn)
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. (Napoleon)
Only dead fish swim with the current. ( ? )
TRIVIA
- Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read.
- Issac Newton did poorly in grade school.
- Beethoven's music teacher once said of him, "As a composer, he is hopeless."
- When Thomas Edison was a boy, his teachers told him he was too stupid to learn anything.
- A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had "no good ideas."
- Caruso's music teacher told him: "You can't sing -- you have no voice at all."
- Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college.
- Louis Pasteur was rated as mediocre in chemistry when he attended the Royal College.
- Abraham Lincoln entered the Black Hawk War as a Captain and came out as a private.
- Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade.
Music (Lorenzo)
Lor. The man that has no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, strategems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.
(Merchant of Venice, V,i,83)
The Crocodile (Lepidus and Antony)
Lep. What manner o' thing is your crocodile?
Ant. It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is
broad as it has breadth: it is just so high as
it is, and moves with its own organs: it lives by
that which nourisheth it; and, the elements once
out of it, it transmigrates.
Lep. What colour is it of?
Ant. Of its own colour too.
Lep. ‘Tis a strange serpent.
Ant. ‘Tis so, and the tears of it are wet.
Caes. Will this description satisfy him?
(Antony and Cleopatra, II, vii)
Polonius' "Few Precepts" (to Laertes)
Pol. There, -- my blessing with you!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear't that the man opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all, -- to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
(Hamlet, I, iii)
From the pen of Alexander Pope
"A man should never be afraid to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other
words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday." (A.P., Thoughts on Various Subjects)
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor the last to lay the old aside.
(A.P., An Essay on Criticism)
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." (A.P., An Essay on Criticism)
"To err is human, to forgive, divine." (A.P., An Essay on Criticism.)
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blest. (A.P., An Essay on Man)
'Tis with our judgements as with our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own. (A.P., An Essay on Criticism)
A little learning is a dangerous thing:
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
(A.P., An Essay on Criticism)
All seems infected that th'infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundic'd eye.
(A.P., An Essay on Criticism)
Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise;
His pride in reasoning, not in acting, lies.
(A.P., Moral Essays)
Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things proposed as things forgot.
(A.P., An Essay on Criticism)
"We may see the small value God has for riches by the people he gives them to."
(A.P., Thoughts on Various Subjects)
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
(A.P., An Essay on Criticism)
"There is but one elemental truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: the
moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one
that never otherwise would have occurred... Whatever you can do, Or Dream you can do, Begin it.
Boldness had genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832)
"We can always redeem the man who aspires and strives." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is." (Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe)
"If you call a dog's tail a leg, and then ask how many legs a dog has, it will still have four legs, for calling a
tail a leg does not make it so." (parphrased from A. Lincoln)
Dare to be true, nothing needs a lie;
A fault which needs it most, grows two thereby. (Herbert)
Friendship is the wine of life: But friendship new...is neither strong nor pure. (Young)
Forsake not an old friend for the new is not comparable unto him. A new friend is as a new wine: when it
is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure. (Ecclesiasties)
Chance makes our parents, but choice makes our friends. (Delille)
Joys too exquisite too last yet more exquisite when past.
In jealousy there is more self love than love. (La Rouchfoucauld)
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
-Edward Abbey
Might does not make right but it sure makes what is.
-Edward Abbey
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet
Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so
much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in
the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons.
-Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)
The History of the Galaxy has got a little muddled, for a number of reasons: partly because those who are
trying to keep track of it have got a little muddled, but also because some very muddling things have been
happening anyway.
-Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)
There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will
instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another
theory which states that this has already happened.
-Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to
underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
-Douglas Adams
The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of
technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led
them into it in the first place.
-Douglas Adams
There's nothing in life so difficult that a Microsoft manual can't make it completely incomprehensible.
-Douglas Adams
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.
-Scott Adams
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
-Aesop
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
-Woody Allen
There is a life-size picture of a dogcow conveniently located in the Finder. Look under "Page Setup..."
Now look under "Options." Like any talented dog, it can do flips. Like any talented cow, it can do
precision bitmap alignment.
-Apple Tech Note #31
Nothing is intrinsically good or evil, but its manner of usage may make it so.
-St. Thomas Aquinas
The wise learn many things from their enemies.
-Aristophanes
There was never a great genius without a tincture of madness.
-Aristotle
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-Isaac Asimov
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I
found it!) but "That's funny..."
-Isaac Asimov
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
-Isaac Asimov
United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the Christmas season was marred by a
proclamation of a general strike of all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of all the
patriots of every persuasion.
Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the world.
-Isaac Asimov
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don't know.
-W.H. Auden
No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
-Honore de Balzac
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
-P.T. Barnum
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
The way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence.
-Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than
nothing.
-Dick Brandon
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.
-James Branch Cabell
God put me on this Earth to accomplish certain things. Right now, I am so far behind, I will never die.
-Calvin
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little
practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog.
-Calvin
I am always willing to learn, however I do not always like to be taught
-Winston Churchill
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist see the opportunity in every difficulty.
-Winston Churchill
Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
-Philip K. Dick
He that will not reason is a bigot, he that cannot reason is a fool, he that dares not reason is a slave.
-William Drummond
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
-Thomas Alva Edison
Organization! Hell! I'm the organization! ... Hell! There ain't no rules around here! We are trying to
accomplish some'pn'.
-Thomas Alva Edison
When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it's only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove
for a minute, you think it's two hours. That's relativity.
-Albert Einstein
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
-Albert Einstein
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
Asking 'who ought to be the boss' is like asking 'who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?' Obviously, the
man who can sing tenor.
-Henry Ford
There won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go.
-Bill Gates
640K ought to be enough for anybody
-Bill Gates
If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.
-Bill Gates
Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come
along and copy your work and market it under it's own name...without legal restraints to such copying,
companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art.
-Bill Gates
Well, to create a new standard, it takes something that's not just a little bit different. It takes something
that's really new and really captures people's imagination. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever
seen, is the only one that meets that standard.
-Bill Gates
The next generation of interesting software will be made on a Macintosh, not an IBM PC.
-Bill Gates
Be the change you want to see in this world.
-Ghandi
You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
-Wayne Gretzky
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At
night, the ice weasels come.
-Matt Groening
When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "compared to what?"
-Sydney J. Harris
Perserverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent; beating your head against a
wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall.
-Sydney J. Harris
An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist
believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
-Sydney J. Harris
Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is
his own.
-Sydney J. Harris
The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's
leisure.
-Sydney J. Harris
Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and
lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation.
-Johnny Hart
One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
-Heinrich Heine
To escape criticism - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
-Elbert Hubbard
Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either
one.
-Thomas Jefferson
If someone had told me I would be pope one day, I would have studied harder.
-Pope John Paul I
In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vicysoise of nations -- it's cold, half-French, and
difficult to stir.
-Stuart Keate
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
-John F. Kennedy
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
-Kronecker
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
-Abraham Lincoln
God, when he makes the prophet, does not unmake the man.
-John Locke
The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, and there are 1,322 words in the
Declaration of Independence. Yet, government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words.
-David McIntosh
Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.
-Milton
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't
her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.