Quotations

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use - Wendell Johnson

When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes - Victor Hugo

The true critical thinker accepts what few people ever accept -- that one cannot routinely trust perceptions and memories - James Alcock

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it - Samuel Johnson

Indeed, there are no easy correlations between parental ideology, class or race and 'successful' child development. Many children the world over have revealed a kind of toughness and plasticity that make the determined efforts of some parents to spare their children the slightest pain seem ironic - Robert Coles

Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, 'I did not give it to the man, but to humanity - Samuel Johnson

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security - Dwight David Eisenhower

All great truths begin as blasphemies - George Bernard Shaw

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear - Bertrand Russell

Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason - Ashley Montagu

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing - Dale Carnegie

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person - W. Somerset Maugham

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment - Benjamin Franklin

Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us in consequence - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes - Thomas Huxley

When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, 'I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends.' - Abraham Lincoln

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.  - Bertrand Russell

Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment. In the last analysis the welfare of the workers depends upon their own initiative. Whatever is done under the guise of philanthropy or social morality which in any way lessens initiative is the greatest crime that can be committed against the toilers. Let social busy-bodies and professional 'public morals experts' in their fads reflect upon the perils they rashly invite under this pretence of social welfare. - Samuel Gompers

Facts have a cruel way of substituting themselves for fancies. There is nothing more remorseless, just as there is nothing more helpful, than truth. - William C. Redfield

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. - Theodore Roosevelt

He declares himself guilty who justifies himself before accusation. - Anonymous

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools. - Alice Walker

Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals. - Samuel Ullman

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. - Carl Schurz

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. - John Burroughs

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can have. - Theodore H. White

There is, therefore, only one categorical imperative. It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. - Immanuel Kant

What is man but his passion? - Robert Penn Warren

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise - F. Scott Fitzgerald

A great nation is like a great man: When he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers. He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts - Lao-Tzu

Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert... The magic of PROPERTY turns sand to gold - Arthur Young

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next - John Stuart Mill

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 

But make allowance for their doubting too: 

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, 
Or being hated don't give way to hating, 
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; 

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim, 

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster 

And treat those two impostors just the same.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken 

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, 

And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools; 

​

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 

And lose, and start again at your beginnings, 

And never breathe a word about your loss: 

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 

To serve your turn long after they are gone, 

And so hold on when there is nothing in you 

Except the Will which says to them: Hold on! 

​

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 

Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, 

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, 

If all men count with you, but none too much: 

If you can fill the unforgiving minute 

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, 

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, 

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! - Rudyard Kipling

The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves - Helen Keller

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act - G. K. Chesterton

Sympathy: Two hearts tugging at one load - Charles H. Parkhurst

A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers - Robert Quillen

The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions - Claude Levi-Strauss

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity - Eleanor Roosevelt

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem - in my opinion - to characterize our age - Albert Einstein

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as does labour the body - Seneca

What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how valuable we are - F. Scott Fitzgerald

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason - Immanuel Kant

One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others - Moliere

The pleasure we derive from doing favours is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not all together worthless - Eric Hoffer

We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same - Jonathan Swift

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents - George Orwell

Society is no comfort / To one not sociable - William Shakespeare

They always talk who never think - Matthew Prior

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people - Seneca

Opportunity makes the thief - English Proverb

It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so - Jerome K. Jerome

The way to rise is to obey and please - Ben Jonson

The ultimate of being successful is the luxury of giving yourself the time to do what you want to do - Leontyne Price

Pleasure is oft a visitant: but pain / Clings cruelly to us - John Keats

The supernatural is the natural not understood - Elbert Hubbard

Technology is the science of arranging life so that one need not experience it - Anonymous

Television is the first truly democratic culture – the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what the people do want - Clive Barnes

Television is democracy at it’s ugliest - Paddy Chayefsky

I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book - Groucho Marx

If you can’t be good, be careful - Proverb

One thought fills immensity - William Blake

What was once thought can never be unthought - Friedrich Durrenmatt

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils - Hector Berlioz

Wait for that wisest of all counsellors, Time - Pericles

The highest result of education is tolerance - Helen Keller

By being civilized we mean that there is a certain list of things about which we permit a man to have an opinion different from ours. Usually they are things which we have ceased to care about: for instance, the worship of God - Aubrey Menen

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him - John Morley

They are not long, the days of wine and roses - Ernest Dowson

Little things affect little minds - Benjamin Disraeli

Truth, like a torch, the more it’s shook it shines - William Hamilton

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth - Plato

If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you - Billy Wilder

Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it - Thomas Cooper

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood - Marie Curie

The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, understand one another - Emma Goldman

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them - Benedict Spinoza

Adultery is the application of democracy to love - H. L. Mencken

The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter - James Jeans

There may be guilt when there is too much virtue - Jean Racine

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices - Benjamin Franklin

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible - Jonathan Swift

The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves - Logan Pearsall Smith

Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes - Chinese Proverb

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees - William Blake

Work spares us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need - Voltaire

We adore, we invoke, we seek to appease, only that which we fear - Voltaire

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything - Oscar Wilde

Zest is the secret of all beauty. There is no beauty that is attractive without zest - Christian Dior

Anecdotes and maxims are rich treasures to the man of the world, for he knows how to introduce the former at fit place in conversation - Johann von Goethe

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase 'It is the busiest man who has time to spare - C. Northcote Parkinson

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires - Susan B. Anthony

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus - Mark Twain

Who is wise? He that learns from every One. Who is powerful? He that governs his Passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody - Benjamin Franklin

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all - Charles Babbage

I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all - Ecclesiastes

Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence … - Ambrose Bierce

... all the modern inconveniences ... - Mark Twain

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence - H. L. Mencken

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error - John Kenneth Galbraith

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in? - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness is having a scratch for every itch - Ogden Nash

Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again - Lazarus Long

The being we call god is merely a pawn working for a powerful and rational force in some far-off galaxy. This force is trying to weed out people who are irrational by seeing who would be stupid enough to believe in his god illusion so easily. Those that believe in this illusion, he will send to eternal damnation and he will deliver the rational beings, those who stoically refused to believe in a god, to heaven - Nicholas Yee

God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it - Carl Sagan

Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones - Anonymous

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use - Galileo Galilei

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable - John F. Kennedy

There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over - Anonymous

Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else - Anonymous

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people? - Anonymous

If at first you don't succeed, redefine success - Anonymous

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission - Anonymous

Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence - Anonymous

The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop and take a rest - Anonymous

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep - Anonymous

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish - Euripides

My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right - Anonymous

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped - Elbert Hubbard

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life - John Stuart Mill

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws - Plato

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort - Franklin D. Roosevelt

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self, but the point is not only to get out, you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand - Henry James

To others we are not ourselves but a performer in their lives cast for a part we do not even know that we are playing - Elizabeth Bibesco

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you - Eric Hoffer

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies - Oscar Wilde

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence - Robert Frost

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead - Clarence Shepard Day

We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction. There are many voices of counsel, but few voices of vision; there is much excitement and feverish activity, but little concert of thoughtful purpose. We are distressed by our own ungoverned, undirected energies and do many things, but nothing long. It is our duty to find ourselves - Woodrow Wilson

The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love. - Pearl Bailey

The believer is happy; the doubter is wise. - Hungarian Proverb

The world of achievement has always belonged to the optimist - Harold Wilkins

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind - Aristotle

To perceive is to suffer - Aristotle

Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat - Mark Twain

People with opinions just go around bothering each other - Budda

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned - Budda

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind. - Budda

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds - Budda

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful - Budda

You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger - Budda

Happiness: Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine - Budda

Life: The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly - Budda

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress - Charles Kettering

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal - Arthur Schopenhauer

People underestimate their capacity for change. There is never a right time to do a difficult thing. A leader's job is to help people have vision of their potential - John Porter

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

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found - Ann Morrow Lindbergh

If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded—or even if it suspects—that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe - Irving Kristol

If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them - Baron D'Holbach

God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time—life and death—stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore I don't think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out - Richard Feynman

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion - Steven Weinberg

Religion is considered by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful - Seneca

Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds - Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Agnosticism: A theory about knowledge and not about religion - Richard Downey

One should not have the arrogance to declare that God does not exist - Umberto Eco

Until I get some evidence one way or the other which is compelling to me, I'm going to have to remain an agnostic - Robert James Lee Hawke

It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts - Thomas Huxley

We should be agnostic about those things for which there is no evidence. We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify our desires for afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc - Sir Julian Huxley

As a matter of fact, no one knows that God exists and no one knows that God does not exist. To my mind there is no evidence that God exists - that this world is governed by a being of infinite goodness, wisdom and power, but I do not pretend to know - Robert Greene Ingersoll

Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available - Gregory Benford

If it sells, it's art - Frank Lloyd

So often we rob tomorrow's memories by today's economies - John Mason Brown

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it - Pearl Buck

Flattery is the infantry of negotiation - Lord Chandos

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack - Winston Churchill

Fanaticism is ... overcompensation for doubt - Robertson Davies

Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse - Joseph Brodsky

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge - Daniel J. Boorstin

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences - Norman Cousins

[Gods] power we allow [is] infinite: Whatever he wills is executed: But neither man nor any other animal are happy: Therefore he does not will their happiness. His wisdom is infinite: He is never mistaken in choosing the means to any end: But the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity: Therefore it is not established for that purpose. Through the whole compass of human knowledge, there are no inferences more certain and infallible than these. In what respect, then, do his benevolence and mercy resemble the benevolence and mercy of men? - David Hume

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time - John Steinbeck

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings - Elie Wiesel

We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable - John Updike

Future shock [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time - Alvin Toffler

Fearful as reality is, it is less fearful than evasions of reality ... Look steadfastly into the slit, pinpointed malignant eyes of reality as an old-hand trainer dominates his wild beasts - Caitlin Thomas

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise - Paul Engle

There is love of course. And then there’s life, its enemy - Ardéle

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god - Politics

Whenever you want to marry someone, go have lunch with his ex-wife - Shelley Winters

I am certain there is too much certainty in the world - Michael Crichton

Can omniscient God, who knows the future, find the omnipotence to change his future mind? - Karen Owens

The less you know, the more you believe - Bono

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity - Dorothy Parker

If it were not for hopes, the heart would break - Thomas Fuller

Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all - Gerald W. Johnson

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good - Bertrand Russell

Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority - Alfred Adler

A technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel - Heywood Broun

Be careful how you interpret the world: it *is* like that - Erich Heller

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be - Thomas Kempis

Scoundrels are always sociable - Arthur Schopenhauer

Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them - Suzanne Necker

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself - Sir R. F. Burton

There is no personal charm so great as the charm of a cheerful temperament - Henry Van Dyke

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions - Naguib Mahfouz

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place - George Bernard Shaw

To think is to say no - Emile Chartier

People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority - Philip Chesterfield

I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe - Leo Rosten

Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know - Andre Maurois

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few - Shunryu Suzuki

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking - George S. Patton

I wanted no part of politics. And I wasn't in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I'd learned long ago from Charles Riley, the only victory that counts is the one over yourself - Jesse Owens

I would… That's what I would do. - Steve Dyke

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition - Jose Bergamin

Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five - W. Somerset Maugham

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense - Winston Churchill

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions - Frank Lloyd Wright

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh - Voltaire

The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error - Bertolt Brecht

Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone - Charles de Gaulle

No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut - Sam Rayburn

The art of pleasing consists in being pleased - William Hazlitt

Be who you are and say what you feel 'cause people who mind don't matter, and people who matter don't mind - Theodor Seuss Geisel

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy - Nora Ephron

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right - Thomas Paine

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony - Mahatma Gandhi

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them - Livy

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them - Isaac Asimov

In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism - Hannah Arendt

Not to be able to grow old is just as ridiculous as to be unable to outgrow childhood - Carl Gustav Jung

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live - Dorothy Thompson

How small of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure - Samuel Johnson

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago - Horace Mann

A wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him - Niccolo Machiavelli

Men build too many walls and not enough bridges - Isaac Newton

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain - Samuel Johnson

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements - Norman Douglas

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence - Aristotle

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it - Upton Sinclair

What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves - Seneca

If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it - Edgar Howe

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. - Adelle Davis

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. - Bertrand Russell

Nothing has an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not on our side. - George Savile

Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding. - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Our most important thoughts are those which contradict our emotions. - Paul Valery

Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought. - G. K. Chesterton

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Alert von Szent-Gyorgy

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret - Henri Amiel

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything - Johann Von Goethe

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority - Thomas Huxley

Man is what he believes - Anton Chekhov

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man - Oliver Wendell Holmes

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism - Sir William Osler

Everybody's friend is nobody's - Arthur Schopenhauer

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy - William Shakespeare

In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences - Robert Greene Ingersoll

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible - Saint Thomas Aquinas

To find yourself, think for yourself - Socrates

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them - Joseph Brodsky

Nothing is a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of the parents - Carl Gustav Jung

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you want - Italian Proverb

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants - Isaac Newton

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so - Douglas Adams

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy - Alfred North Whitehead

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk - Soren Kierkegaard

Fear is the parent of cruelty - James Anthony Froude

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it - Christopher Morley

The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs - Charles de Gaulle

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular - Edward R. Murrow

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent - William Durant

Sometimes the best way to convince someone he is wrong is to let him have his way - Hugh Roe O'Donnell

Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes - Antisthenes

Anger as soon as fed is dead. 'Tis starving makes it fat - Emily Dickinson

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him and to let him know that you trust him - Booker Washington

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage - Anais Nin

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things - Albert Einstein

It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about - Dale Carnegie

Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle - Plato

When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love - Martin Luther King Jr.

The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned - W. Somerset Maugham

To be content with what one has is the greatest and truest of riches - Cicero

He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others - James Boswell

One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Happiness is the full use of your powers along lines of excellence - John F. Kennedy

It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required - Winston Churchill

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality - Ayn Rand

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not - Andre Gide

Life is a long lesson in humility - James M. Barrie

A lot of people like to do certain things, but they're not that good at it. Keep going through the things that you like to do, until you find something that you actually seem to be extremely good at. It can be anything - George Lucas

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions - Albert Einstein

The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. It was man's ability to invent which has made human society what it is - Dennis Gabor

Since ancient times, the philosophers' secret has always been this: we know that God does not exist, or, at least, if he does, he's utterly indifferent to our individual affairs--but we can't let the rabble know that; it's the fear of God, the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward, that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own. - Robert J. Sawyer

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams - William Butler Yeats

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true - Robert Brault

The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers - Ruth Benedict

My experience is what I agree to attend to - William James

Life is playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on - Samuel Butler

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it - Harry S. Truman

The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly - Cecil B. DeMille

By the time a man asks you for advice, he has generally made up his mind what he wants to do, and is looking for confirmation rather than counselling - Sidney J. Harris

Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is? - Frank Scully

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things - Robert Louis Stevenson

Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it - Sir William Haley

The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed; each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round - Bertrand Russell

Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be - Ambrose Bierce

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it - Robert A. Heinlein

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist - Friedrich Nietzsche

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance - William Durant

Words are the only things that last forever; they are more durable than the eternal hills - William Hazlitt

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. - Dr. Seuss

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. - Albert Camus

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. - Maya Angelou

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. - Apple

Life is what happens to us while we are busy making other plans. - Thomas la Mance

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. - William Shakespeare

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. - Friedrich Nietzsche

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. - Thomas A. Edison

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. - Robert A. Heinlein

Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. - G. K. Chesterton

I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. - Winston Churchill

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain. - Maya Angelou

If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary. - David Sedaris

I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing. - Neil Gaiman

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. - Lewis Carroll

When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'. - Groucho Marx

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. - Groucho Marx

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself. - Groucho Marx

Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.  - Groucho Marx

The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him - Henry L. Stimson

What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen? - Evelyn Waugh

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something that one finds. It is something that one creates - Thomas Szasz

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn - Albert Camus

Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness - David Augsburger

Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others - Jules Renard

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago - Jim Bishop

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it - John Ruskin

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning - Bill Gates

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month's study of books - Chinese Proverb

I have noted that persons with bad judgment are most insistent that we do what they think best - Lionel Abel

You owe it to us all to get on with what you're good at - W. H. Auden

There are times when I think that the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends - always ready to meet your mood, always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that - J. Donald Adams

Books are quiet. They do not dissolve into wavy lines or snowstorm effects. They do not pause to deliver commercials. They are three-dimensional, having length, breadth and depth. They are convenient to handle and completely portable - Anonymous

Our life is what our thoughts make it - Marcus Aurelius

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten - B. F. Skinner

I now perceive one immense omission in my psychology: the deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated - William James

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular - Adlai Stevenson

Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills - Minna Antrim

The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators - Edward Gibbon

The biggest things are always the easiest to do because there is no competition - William Van Horne

You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren - William Henry Hudson

Never look down to test the ground before taking your first step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road - Dag Hammarskjold

Everyone must row with the oars he has - English Proverb

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps - David Lloyd George

If you want a thing done, go - if not, send - Benjamin Franklin

All glory comes from daring to begin - Anonymous

The great end of life is not knowledge, but action - Thomas Fuller

It is much easier to do and die than it is to reason why - G. A. Studdert-Kennedy

'Mean to' don't pick no cotton - Anonymous

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will - Henri Amiel

Blessed is he who carries within himself a god, and an ideal and who obeys it - an ideal of art, of science or gospel virtues. Therein lie the springs of great thought and great actions - Louis Pasteur

A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice - Edgar Howe

The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public - H. L. Mencken

A good indignation brings out all one's powers - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

The most savage controversies are about those matters as to which there is no good evidence either way - Bertrand Russell

The cheap, no matter how charming, how immediate, does not wear so well. It has a way of telling it's whole story the first time through - William Littler

Exuberance is beauty - William Blake

When I was born I did lament and cry

And now each day doth show the reason why - Richard Watkyns

Business is a combination of war and sport - Andre Maurois

Everything is worth what it's purchaser will pay for it - Publilius Syrus

Canada is a society, rather than a nation - Kildare Dobbs

So long as the majority of Canadians have two countries, one here and one in Europe, national unity will remain a myth and a constant source of internecine quarrels - Henri Bourassa

The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck - Hector Berlioz

Every man has his follies - and often they are the most interesting things he has got - Josh Billings

What children expect from grownups is not to be understood, but only to be loved, even though this love may be expressed clumsily or in sternness. Intimacy does not exist between generations - only trust - Carl Zucker

A Christian is a man who feels repentance on a Sunday for what he did on Saturday and is going to do on Monday - Thomas R. Ybarra

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practised - Samuel Butler

The city is a cultural invention enforcing on the citizen knowledge of his own nature. And this we do not like. That we are aggressive beings, easily given to violence, that we get along together because we must more than because we want to, and that the brotherhood of man is about as far from reality as it was two thousand years ago, that reason's realm is small, that we never have been and never shall be created equal, that if the human being is perfectible, he has so far exhibited few symptoms - all are considerations of man from which space tends to protect us - Robert Audrey

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book - Cyril Connolly

Civilization is just a slow process of learning to be kind - Charles L. Lucas

As I got warmed up, and felt perfectly at home in talk, I heard myself boasting, lying, exaggerating. Oh, not deliberately, far from it. It would be unconvivial and dull to stop and arrest the flow of talk, and speak only after carefully considering weather I was telling the truth - Bernard Berenson

Some persons talk simply because they think sound is more manageable than silence - Margaret Halsey

Every man who attacks my belief diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy, and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy - Samuel Johnson

Whether you are really right or not doesn't matter, it's the belief that counts - Robertson Davies

You are fully convinced of the purity of your ideals and the high virtue of your goals. But each man has the same conviction, with the exception of a few cynics who are convinced of the high virtue of cynicism - Anonymous

Habit is stronger than reason - George Santayana

Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do - Bertrand Russell

Half the work that is done in the world is to make things appear what they are not - E. R. Beadle

It is the greatest good to the greatest number which is the measure of right and wrong - Jeremy Bentham

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life, sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest - Henry David Thoreau

All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal or fattening - Alexander Woollcott

A proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it - John Keats

Public opinion: a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for any one of us who is not content to be the average man - Dean Inge

Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics - George Bernard Shaw

There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people - Robert Frost

More die in the United States of too much food than of too little - John Kenneth Galbraith

The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life - Cyril Connolly

None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence - Samuel Johnson

A successful individual typically sets his next goal somewhat but not too much above his last achievement. In this way he steadily raises his level of aspiration - Kurt Lewin

Winning isn't everything. It is the only thing - Vince Lombardi

If I've learned anything in my seventy years it's that nothings as good or as bad as it appears - Bushrod H. Campbell

The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able - Blaise Pascal

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants, and how much more unhappy he might be than he really is - Joseph Addison

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness - George Santayana

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in - Robert Frost

A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion - Samuel Johnson

Make yourself necessary to somebody - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them - Albert Einstein

If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time - Shimon Peres

Indecision and delays are the parents of failure - George Cannin

Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own - Arnold Bennett

My friend shows what I can do, and my foe what I should - Friedrich von Schiller

The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure - Sven-Göran Eriksson

At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone, to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions, to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to his side of the standing argument - Robert Frost

If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There are things of deadly earnest that can only be safely mentioned under the cover of a joke - J. J. Procter

Every time a man puts a new idea across he finds ten men who thought of it before he did - but they only thought of it - Anonymous

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge - Alfred North Whitehead

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know - Cicero

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy - Cyril Connolly

We love in others what we lack ourselves, and would be everything but what we are - R. H. Stoddard

Lack of something to feel important about is almost the greatest tragedy a man may have - Arthur Morgan

What makes life dreary is the want of motive - George Elliot

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince, but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still - Samuel Johnson

The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason - Marya Mannes

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance - William Durant

Knowledge is of two kinds, we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it - Samuel Johnson

We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed - Charles Caleb Colton

In all affairs, love, religion, politics or business, it's healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on things you have long taken for granted - Bertrand Russell

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so - Will Rogers

Law…begins when someone takes to doing something someone else does not like - Karl Llewellyn

Lawyers and painters can soon change white to black - Danish Proverb

We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free - Cicero

People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation - Soren Kierkegaard

Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement - Henry Miller

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment - Samuel Johnson

Life as we find it is too hard for us, it entails too much pain, too many disappointments, impossible tasks. We cannot do without palliative remedies - Sigmund Freud

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - Victor Hugo

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else - George Bernard Shaw

If you want to be loved, be lovable - Ovid

If we are to judge love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

There are some remedies worse than the disease - Publilius Syrus

They answered, as they took their fees, There is no cure for this disease - Hillaire Belloc

Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience - Eleanor Hibbert

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.' - Mary Anne Radmacher

Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded, because it is so easy not to battle at all, to just accept and call that acceptance inevitable - Audre Lorde

Power is the ability not to have to please - Elizabeth Janeway

We all admire the wisdom of people who come to us for advice - Jack Herbert

A man must get a thing before he can forget it - Oliver Wendell Holmes

The palest ink is better than he best memory - Chinese Proverb

A minority group has 'arrived' only when it has the right to produce some fools and scoundrels without the entire group paying for it - Carl T. Rowan

Better go back than go wrong - Anonymous

Most men would rather be charged with malice than with making a blunder - Josh Billings