A collection of quotations.
This site used to be called the verbatim annex (then it was merged into spiral::notepad). Now it isn't.
"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages may be preserved by quotation."
–Isaac D'Israeli
This is a large alphabetized list of quotes I've collected over the years. I started this page in 1998. Some of these thoughts and sayings are by people who have inspired me in some way. Others are included because I've found them interesting or amusing. I used to add at least one quote per week, but the additions aren't so frequent anymore.
Table of Contents: 423 quotations, 165 categories.
Last quote added: July 5, 2010.
Sections with new quotes are in light green.
A D A M S (1957- )
"Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end."
–Scott Adams
A L I (1942- )
"To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you're not, pretend you are."
–Muhammad Ali
A N D E R S O N , G. (1968- )
"When I think of normal, I think of mediocrity. And mediocrity scares the fuck out of me."
–Gillian Anderson, Allure, December 1997
A N D E R S O N , P. (1967- )
"Whenever I see a homeless guy, I always run back and give him money, because I think, 'Oh my God, what if that was Jesus?'"
–Pamela Anderson, TV Guide, 2004
A N D E R S S O N (1943- )
"You can't present solutions. A film should stimulate thought, encourage people to question things and invite reflection. That's what I hope for."
–Roy Andersson, Director's Commentary, Songs from the Second Floor DVD, 2000
"Dealing with issues and resolving them, that's our only option to make things better. To me, these 'feel good' movies gloss over the facts. They help turn people into sleepwalkers. Somnambulists . . . who are surprised every time they're confronted with misery. Because they don't know the facts. Nothing has caused them to even reflect on it. The 'feel good' trend is actually awful. We can't afford it. And you can feel good in other ways. You don't have to cover things up. I think the opposite is true; you'll feel better if you take charge of life and deal with problems . . . and ugliness. It's more satisfying. It's a richer and better feeling."
–Roy Andersson, Director's Commentary, Songs from the Second Floor DVD, 2000
A N G E L I
"Either the medication is working or someone gargled with bong water and swallowed."
–Michael Angeli, Oh My God! They Made A Movie!, Details, August 1998
A R I S T O T L E (384 BC-322 BC)
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit."
–Aristotle
A S I M O V (1920-1992)
"Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know—even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction—than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too."
–Isaac Asimov
"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right."
–Isaac Asimov
B A C O N (1561-1656)
"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate."
–Sir Francis Bacon, Idols of the Mind
B A G E H O T (1826-1877)
"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
–Walter Bagehot
B A R R Y (1947- )
"I laugh so hard that sometimes it takes four store employees to wrestle me to the floor and inject my special medicine into my neck."
–Dave Barry, Margaritas help the taxes go down, April 4, 1999
B E N C H L E Y (1889-1945)
"I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well."
–Robert Benchley
B E N N E T T
"This is pretty close to the far end of weird."
–S. Christopher Bennett, July 18, 2002, University of Bridgeport
B E R R A (1925- )
"You have to be careful if you don't know where you're going because you might not get there."
–Yogi Berra
"If you don't know where you're going, you could wind up someplace else."
–Yogi Berra
"If you come to a fork in the road, take it."
–Yogi Berra
"We're lost, but we're making good time."
–Yogi Berra
B I L L I N G S (1818-1885)
"One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness."
–Josh Billings
B L A K E (1757-1827)
"I can look at the knot in a piece of wood until it frightens me."
–William Blake
B O H R (1885-1962)
"The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
–Niels Bohr
"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field."
–Niels Bohr
"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough."
–Niels Bohr
B O I L E A U (1636-1711)
"One fool always find a bigger fool, who admires him."
–Nicolas Boileau
B R A D B U R Y (1920- )
"Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down."
–Ray Bradbury
"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
–Ray Bradbury
B U R G E S S (1917-1993)
"We can destroy what we have written but we cannot unwrite it."
–Anthony Burgess
"Life is, of course, terrible."
–Anthony Burgess
B U R K E (1729-1797)
"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."
–Edmund Burke
C A M P B E L L
"Distance lends enchantment to the view."
–Thomas Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope
C A R T E R , C.
"I'm a skeptic who wants to believe."
–Chris Carter
C A R T E R , R.
"What researchers are finding is that there seem to be common brain pathways underlying all transcendental experiences. It's the cultural interpretations that vary. But what's really challenging is that the research evidence is very strong that what we think of normal everyday reality is actually a construction of the brain. However, it is quite clear that the brain is also able to construct a version of reality that is quite unlike the survival-orientated 'normal', one. Now why on earth should it have evolved to do that and why is our culture so dead set against exploring it?"
–Rita Carter, Times Online, March 5, 2005
C A R T M I L L
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life—so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
–Matt Cartmill
C A R U S O
"Any form of communication is meaningless unless we have something to say."
–Denise Caruso
C A S S A N O V A
"Don't let your preoccupation with reality stifle your imagination."
–Robert A. Cassanova
C A S T L E (1932- )
"If you're hitting the bull's-eye every time, you're standing too close to the target."
–Wendell Castle
C H U R C H I L L (1874-1965)
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
–Sir Winston Churchill
"True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous and conflicting information."
–Sir Winston Churchill
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm."
–Sir Winston Churchill
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
–Sir Winston Churchill
“You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give."
–Sir Winston Churchill
"Never give in. Never. Never. Never. Never."
–Sir Winston Churchill
C L A R K E (1917- )
"The science of one generation was the magic of the preceding one."
–Arthur C. Clarke
C O C T E A U (1889-1963)
"Art is science made clear."
–Jean Cocteau
C O N F U C I U S (551 BC-479 BC)
"The superior man is distressed by his want of ability."
–Confucius
"The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort."
–Confucius
C O R G A N (1967- )
"I would hope that they would be taken on a mystikal journey of digital warlocks and analog martyrs."
–Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins Live Chat, July 14, 1999
C R A N E (1873-1948)
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough."
–Frank Crane
D A L A I L A M A
"Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly."
–Dalai Lama
"If you can't do good, at least don't harm others."
–Dalai Lama
D A V I N C I (1452-1519)
"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
–Leonardo da Vinci
"Impatience is the mother of stupidity."
–Leonardo da Vinci
"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."
–Leonardo da Vinci
D E S C A R T E S (1596-1650)
"I think, I doubt, therefore I am."
–Renè Descartes
D E W E Y (1859-1952)
"People only truly think when they are confronted with a problem. Without some kind of dilemma to stimulate thought, behavior becomes habitual rather than thoughtful."
–John Dewey
D I C K (1928-1982)
"Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it."
–Philip K. Dick
D I S N E Y (1901-1966)
"Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well I won't do that."
–Walt Disney
D ' I S R A E L I (1766-1848)
"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages may be preserved by quotation."
–Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature—Quotation
D I S R A E L I (1804-1881)
"The profound thinker always suspects that he is superficial."
–Benjamin Disraeli
"It is much easier to be critical than to be correct."
–Benjamin Disraeli
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
–Benjamin Disraeli
D O S T O Y E V E S K Y (1821-1881)
"Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic."
–Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
"Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."
–Fyodor Dostoyevsky
D O Y L E (1859-1930)
"When you have eliminated the impossible, what ever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
–Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really merely commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the planning, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chain of events, working through generations and leading to the most outer results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable."
–Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
E D I S O N (1847-1931)
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
–Thomas Edison
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
–Thomas Edison
E I N S T E I N (1879-1955)
"All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have."
–Albert Einstein
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
–Albert Einstein
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
–Albert Einstein
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
–Albert Einstein
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction."
–Albert Einstein
"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
–Albert Einstein
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
–Albert Einstein
"If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
–Albert Einstein
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
–Albert Einstein
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
–Albert Einstein
"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."
–Albert Einstein, March 14, 1949
E I S E N H O W E R (1890-1969)
"Things are more like they are today then they ever were before."
–Dwight D. Eisenhower
E M E R S O N (1803-1882)
"To be great is to be misunderstood."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only way to have a friend is to be one."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
F R A N K (1929-1944)
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too, I can feel the suffering of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out."
–Anne Frank
F R A N K L I N (1706-1790)
"Those who will put peace ahead of freedom shall lose both."
–Benjamin Franklin
F R I S C H (1911-1991)
"Technology . . . the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it."
–Max Frisch, Homo Faber, 1957
G A N D H I (1869-1948)
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
–Mahatma Gandhi
G E I S E L (1904-1991)
"Adults are obsolete children."
–Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel
G I B S O N (1948- )
"You know, the future's already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet."
–William Gibson
G O D A R D (1930- )
"The history of cinema is boys photographing girls. The history of history is boys burning girls at the stake."
–Jean-Luc Godard
G O L D M A N (1869-1940)
"The most violent element in society is ignorance."
–Emma Goldman
G O U L D , M. S.
"When you soar like an eagle, you attract the hunters."
–Milton S. Gould
G O U L D , S. J.
"If a claim cannot be disproven, it does not belong to the enterprise of science."
–Stephen Jay Gould
"Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again."
–Stephen Jay Gould
G R E N I E R
"All generalizations are bad."
–R. H. Grenier
G R E Y
"Skepticism is the disposition, or art, of matching belief to evidence."
–William Grey
G U T F I E L D
"In this age of Oprah, when everyone feels compelled to emote without restraint, life has become one big talkshow session as our culture suffers from a terminal case of verbal incontinence."
–Greg Gutfield, What Makes Men Fall in Love—For Keeps
G W Y N
"Truth is not determined by majority vote."
–Doug Gwyn
H A R D I N
"The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short."
–Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons
H A R R I S
"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"
–Sydney Harris
H A W K I N G (1942- )
"Cosmology isn't science if it doesn't predict what we observe."
–Stephen Hawking
H E I D E G G E R (1889-1976)
"In everydayness everything is all one and the same, but whatever the day may bring is taken as diversification."
–Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 371
H E I M E L
"When in a doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap."
–Cynthia Heimel
H E L L E R (1923-1999)
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would to crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22, and let out a respectful whistle."
–Joseph Heller
H E L Y (1954- )
"When you find yourself eating light bulbs for a living, you know you've made some bad career choices."
–Matt Hely, Bobby Reynolds Circus Sideshow Performer, 2000
H E M I N G W A Y (1899-1961)
"Never mistake motion for action."
–Ernest Hemingway
"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."
–Ernest Hemingway
H E N R Y
"To do what others cannot do is talent. To do what talent cannot do is genius."
–Will Henry
H E P B U R N (1907- )
"I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun."
–Katharine Hepburn
H E S S E (1877-1962)
"When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane."
–Hermann Hesse
"Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom."
–Hermann Hesse
H I C K S (1961-1994)
"Today young men on acid realize that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death. Life is only a dream and we're the imagination of ourselves."
–Bill Hicks
H O F F E R
"In times of change, the learners will inherit the earth. While the learned will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
–Eric Hoffer
"To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life."
–Eric Hoffer
H U X L E Y (1894-1963)
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
–Aldous Huxley
"Facts don't cease to exist because they are ignored."
–Aldous Huxley
"Experience is not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what happens to him."
–Aldous Huxley
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
–Aldous Huxley
J A M E S
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
–William James
J E F F E R S O N (1743-1826)
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
–Thomas Jefferson
"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."
–Thomas Jefferson
J O N E S
"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again."
–Franklin P. Jones
J U N G (1875-1961)
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
–Carl G. Jung
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
–Carl G. Jung
"There is no coming to consciousness without pain."
–Carl G. Jung
"If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures."
–Carl G. Jung
K A Y (1940- )
"The only successful way to predict the future is to invent it."
–Alan Kay
K E R O U A C (1922-1969)
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"
–Jack Kerouac, On The Road
"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."
Jack Kerouac
"Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"
–Jack Kerouac
K E S E Y (1935-2001)
"There had been times when I'd wandered around in a daze for as long as two weeks... living in that foggy, jumbled blur which is a whole lot like the ragged edge of sleep, that gray zone between light and dark, or between sleeping and waking or living and dying, where you know you're not unconscious any more but don't know yet what day it is or who you are or what's the use of coming back at all..."
–Ken Kesey, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, p. 242
"Take what you can use and let the rest go by."
–Ken Kesey
K I N G (1929-1968)
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
K I S S I N G E R (1923- )
"Superstars strive for approbation; heroes walk alone. Superstars crave consensus; heroes define themselves by the judgment of a future they see it as their task to bring about. Superstars seek success in a technique for eliciting support; heroes pursue success as the outgrowth of inner values."
–Henry A. Kissinger
K R I S T O F F E R S O N (1936- )
"It's all a bloody circus mates, and the clowns are in control."
–Kris Kristofferson
K U B R I C K (1928-1999)
"If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered."
–Stanley Kubrick
L A N D E R S (1918- )
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
–Ann Landers
L A W R E N C E (1885-1930)
"The cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection."
–D. H. Lawrence
"Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little."
–D. H. Lawrence
L A R O C H E F O U C A U L D (1613-1680)
"Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?"
–François duc de La Rochefoucauld
L E A C H (1950- )
"Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire."
–Reggie Leach
L E E (1965-1993)
"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
–Brandon Lee, 1993
L E N N O N (1940-1980)
"Life is dick."
–John Lennon
"Life is what happens to you while you're (busy) making other plans."
–John Lennon
L I N K L A T E R (1960- )
"You have to be able to turn on a dime when something's not working. If you're too set in your mind about what it is, all the forces in the universe are going to work against you getting that exact thing. In one way, you know exactly what you don't want, and you know what you're going for, but maybe you don't know you're there until you reach the destination."
–Richard Linklater, The Onion A.V. Club, October 17, 2001
M A C A U L A Y
"The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out."
–Thomas B. Macaulay
M A C Y
"We just love rooting for people as they struggle. That's what life is about, really. When you look around and go, 'You know what? It's me. Whether I like it or not, there's nobody else.'"
–William H. Macy
M A R X (1895-1977)
"I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."
–Groucho Marx
"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."
–Groucho Marx
M C L A C H L A N
"There's no guarantee that you'll ever find the kind of truth you're looking for. You may get close. You might see moments of it, moments of clarity, but then it gets cloudy again. That's why we go on, though, because of those moments."
–Sarah McLachlan
M E A D E
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
–Margaret Meade
M E N C K E N (1880-1956)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
–Henry Louis Mencken
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers."
–Henry Louis Mencken
"Don't overestimate the decency of the human race."
–Henry Louis Mencken
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
–Henry Louis Mencken
M E R T O N
"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
–Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
M I L L
"The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom."
–John Stuart Mill
M O B Y (1965- )
"At one point, I thought about every ideological position I'd taken over the past twenty years, and realized that I was generally full of shit."
–Moby
M U G G E R I D G E (1903-1990)
"Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream."
–Malcolm Muggeridge
M U I R
"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attatched to the rest of the world."
–John Muir
N E W T O N
"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. It is much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things."
–Sir Isaac Newton
N I C H O L S O N (1937- )
"If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG."
–Jack Nicholson
N I E T Z S C H E
"Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man."
–Friedrich Nietzsche
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
–Friedrich Nietzsche
O ' R O U R K E
"Never fight an inanimate object."
–P. J. O'Rourke
O V E R B Y E
"The job of being a scientist, it seemed to me, consisted mostly of constantly exposing yourself to the people who could do you the most harm, the ones who could see through you and pick you apart—your peers. It was the constant grinding of egos that produced the sawdust of progress."
–Dennis Overbye, Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, p. 418
P A I G E (1906-1982)
"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?"
–Leroy "Satchel" Paige
"Smile well and often. It makes people wonder what you've been up to."
–Leroy "Satchel" Paige
"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."
–Leroy "Satchel" Paige
P A I N E (1737-1809)
"My mind is my own church."
–Thomas Paine
P I C A S S O (1881-1973)
"The chief enemy of creativity is good taste."
–Pablo Picasso
"Bad artists copy. Good artists steal."
–Pablo Picasso
P L A T O (427 BC-347 BC)
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."
–Plato
P O E (1809-1849)
"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."
–Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream
"Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears."
–Edgar Allan Poe
P R O U S T (1871-1922)
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
–Marcel Proust
Q U A Y L E (1947- )
"If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure."
–Dan Quayle
"What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is."
–Dan Quayle
R E A G A N (1911- )
"You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans."
–Ronald Reagan
R O C K (1966- )
"I learned life isn't fair at an early age. There's always going to be one kid at school getting beaten up all the time... But that's the kid who's probably going to be the most successful. He's the one with the greatest sense of reality."
–Chris Rock, I'd Rather Tell The Truth
R O G E R S
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
–Will Rogers
R O O N E Y
"We have advanced to the point where the means we use to communicate are more elegant and important than what we have to say."
–Andy Rooney
R O O S E V E L T , E.
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
–Eleanor Roosevelt
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
–Eleanor Roosevelt
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
–Eleanor Roosevelt
R O O S E V E L T , F. D.
"We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."
–Franklin D. Roosevelt
R O O S E V E L T , T.
"Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."
–Theodore Roosevelt
R O S H I
"A strange creature, the human being; groping in the dark with an intelligent look."
–Sawaki Roshi
R O U S S E A U
"Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to save it."
–Jean-Jacques Rousseau
R U S K I N
"When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece."
–John Ruskin
R U S S E L L
"Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself."
–Bertrand Russell
S A B B A H (1034-1124)
"Nothing is true; everything is permitted."
–Hassan-i-Sabbah
S A G A N (1934-1996)
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
–Carl Sagan
"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep-seated need to believe."
–Carl Sagan
"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources."
–Carl Sagan, Cosmos television series
"But amid much elegance and precision, the details of life and the Universe also exhibit haphazard, jury-rigged arrangements and much poor planning. What shall we make of this: an edifice abandoned early in construction by the architect?"
–Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
"If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness."
–Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
–Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"Plainly there is no way back. Like it or not, we are stuck with science. We had better make the best of it. When we finally come to terms with it and fully recognize its beauty and its power, we will find, in spiritual as well as in practical methods, that we have made a bargain strongly in our favor."
–Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science."
–Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking."
–Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."
–Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions, p. 215
"We are a way for the Universe to know itself."
–Carl Sagan
S A L I N G E R (1919- )
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
–J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, p. 214
S A N T A Y A N A (1863-1952)
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
–George Santayana, Life of Reason
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
–George Santayana, Life of Reason
"Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself."
–George Santayana
S A W H I L L (1936-2000)
"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy."
–John Sawhill, President of The Nature Conservancy, 1990-2000
S C R I V E N
"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the ocean searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain any more, so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure."
–Michael Scriven
S E A T T L E (1786-1866)
"The earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth."
–Chief Seattle, 1854
S H A K E S P E A R E (1564-1616)
"Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never taste of death but once."
–William Shakespeare
S H A R I ' A T I (1933-1977)
"The mere holding of a belief is no virtue in itself."
–Ali Shari'ati
S H A W (1856-1950)
"The reasonable man expects to conform to society. The unreasonable man expects society to conform to him. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
–George Bernard Shaw
"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."
–George Bernard Shaw
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
–George Bernard Shaw
S I N G E R (1904-1991)
"Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression."
–Isaac Bashevis Singer
S T E K E L (1868-1940)
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
–Wilhelm Stekel, Austrian Psychoanalyst
S M I T H S O N
"Scaring the bejesus out of everyone isn't a pragmatic step."
–Amy Smithson, Chemical & Biological Weapons Expert, MSNBC, September 25, 2001
S O L Z H E N I T S Y N
"The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature."
–Alexander Solzhenitsyn
S T O N E
"We're just telling people to lighten up and not take themselves too seriously. What are my politics? Setting a puppet on fire. That's my politics."
–Matt Stone, USA Today, October 11, 2004
T E S L A
"Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop. The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way."
–Nikola Tesla
"Ere many generations pass our machinery will be driven by power obtainable at any point in the Universe...it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheel work of nature."
–Nikola Tesla, Experiments With Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency
T H O M P S O N (1937-2005)
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours."
–Hunter S. Thompson
"I have no taste for either poverty or honest labour, so writing is the only recourse left for me."
–Hunter S. Thompson
"I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling."
–Hunter S. Thompson
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
–Hunter S. Thompson
"For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled."
–Hunter S. Thompson
T W A I N (1835-1910)
"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
–Mark Twain
"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
–Mark Twain
"Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries."
–Mark Twain
V O N G O E T H E
"Nothing is more terrifying than ignorance in action."
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
V O N N E G U T (1922-2007)
"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."
–Kurt Vonnegut
"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
–Kurt Vonnegut
"The public heath authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide."
–Kurt Vonnegut, Preface of Welcome to the Monkey House, 1969
W A S H I N G T O N (1731-1802)
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go."
–Martha Washington
W A T E R S T O N
"Only do something when you feel it in your heart. Trust yourself and be good to yourself. It can end for you as soon as it began."
–Sam Waterston
W A T T S
"Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its cosmic harmonies. And we are the witness through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence."
–Alan Watts (as paraphrased by Stefan Pashov, Encounters at the End of the World)
W H I T E
"What I lack in spirit, I make up for in apathy."
–Andrew White
W I L D E
"Education is what you have left over after you have forgotten everything you have learned."
–Oscar Wilde
"Truth is rarely pure, and never simple."
–Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
W I L S O N
"Humans need any narrative, even a nonsense narrative, rather than having no explanation at all about their predicament."
–Robert Anton Wilson, Everything Is Under Control
W R I G H T
"Right now I'm having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before."
–Steven Wright
Y A N K O V I C
"I have no idea what they're talking about, but whenever I hear it, I just start jumping up and down and slamming into things."
–"Weird Al" Yankovic
Z A P P A
"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."
–Frank Zappa
"Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read."
–Frank Zappa
"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced."
–Frank Zappa
"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice; there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
–Frank Zappa
U N K N O W N , P R O V E R B S , M A X I M S
"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."
–Anonymous
"In an advanced world such as this we still need something to remind us we're still primitive animals."
–Anonymous
"Minds are like parachutes, they only function when they are open."
–Anonymous
"Confidence is the feeling you sometimes have before you fully understand the situation."
–Anonymous
"If you're not playing a big enough game you'll screw up the game you're playing just to give yourself something to do."
–Anonymous
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."
–Anonymous
"I won't have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent."
–Anonymous
"The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action."
–Anonymous
"I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous."
–Anonymous
"He looked at me at though I were a side dish he hadn't ordered."
–Anonymous
"If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?"
–Anonymous
"Caution... Never drive faster than your angel can fly."
–Anonymous
"If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?"
–Anonymous
"Seeing is rarely believing unless believing is what you're already looking for."
–Anonymous
"A man clinging to a Bible is like a bear wearing a tutu. No matter how loudly the crowd laughs, he'll never understand the absurdity of his predicament."
–Anonymous
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
–Anonymous
"Lord, give me the strength to put up with the people who are going to piss me off today."
–Anonymous
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
–Anonymous
"Indecision is the key to flexibility."
–Anonymous
"To err is human but to really mess things up requires a computer."
–Anonymous
"Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed."
–Anonymous
"I understood each and every word you said but not the order in which they appeared."
–Anonymous
"Your ridiculous little opinion has been noted."
–Anonymous
"As a person gets older and wiser, he talks less and says more."
–Anonymous
"A friend is someone who knows you and likes you anyway."
–Anonymous
"It is only the people you trust who can betray you."
–Anonymous
"It's too bad that the people who know how to run this country are busy teaching school."
–Anonymous
"It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."
–Anonymous
"Only when the last tree is gone, the last river has been dammed, and the last field has been paved over will we realize that we can't eat money."
–Anonymous
"Only when the last tree is dead, the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can't eat money."
–Cree Indian Saying
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
–Anonymous
"What's the biggest problem facing America today: ignorance or apathy? Well, I'll tell you, I don't know and I don't care."
–Anonymous
"If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes."
–Anonymous
"The road to success is always under construction."
–Anonymous
"If a man speaks in the forest, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
–Anonymous
"Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty."
–Anonymous
"The roots of all forms of violence are learned at an early age. No one is born violent."
–Anonymous
"Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the fastest lion or it will get killed. Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up, and it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you had better be running."
–Anonymous
"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
–Japanese Proverb
"Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."
–Chinese Proverb
"Today is the first day of the rest of your life."
–Anonymous
"Never look back unless you are planning to go that way."
–Anonymous
"What if the Hokey-Pokey is really what it's all about?"
–Anonymous
C O M I C S T R I P S , L Y R I C S , S L O G A N S
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
–Sherlock Holmes
"Once you are real you can't be ugly except to people who don't understand."
–Margery Williams Bianco et al., The Velveteen Rabbit
"Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane."
–Dogbert, Dilbert, June 14, 1998
"It's not a good idea to mix enthusiasm with stupidity."
–Wally, Dilbert, February 15, 1999
"I'm putting you on a team. You'll be working with other intelligent, highly motivated people plus... a stubborn dumb guy with a V-neck sweater."
–Pointy-Haired Boss, Dilbert, August 23, 1999
"I'd roll my eyes, but those muscles are tired."
–Peter Fox, FoxTrot, August 23, 1999
"I remember floating above my body, looking down and thinking, 'Meatloaf again?'"
–Leroy Lockhorn, The Lockhorns, June 14, 1998
"I just had a horrible thought! What if years from now I look at these as the good old days?"
–Shoe, Shoe, February 17, 2001
"They tell me not to, but I still drinks it!"
–The King of Town, Strong Bad Email #95: The Bet, January 19, 2004
"They say you get the government you deserve, but I don't remember knife-raping any retarded nuns."
–The Onion, What Do You Think?, 2000
"In the Bible Belt, fried-chicken fellowships and potbellied pastors are as much a part of the culture as stock car races and sentences that start with 'Y'all.' Churches traditionally have not worried much about waistlines."
–The Associated Press, No doughnuts on Sunday, March 8, 2004
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you."
–Kurt Cobain, Territorial Pissings
"The future is no place to place your better days."
–Dave Matthews Band, Cry Freedom
"You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
–The Eagles, Hotel California
"I know someday you'll have a beautiful life. I know you'll be a star, in somebody else's sky, but why can't it be mine?"
–Pearl Jam, Black
"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."
–Semisonic, Closing Time
"And it's true we are immune, when fact is fiction and T.V. is reality."
–U2, Sunday Bloody Sunday
"Think globally, act locally."
–Peace Resource Project
"If aliens are smart enough to travel through space, why do they keep abducting the dumbest people on earth?"
–Winston Cigarettes Advertisement
"Want to think of an idea? Don't try. Occupy your mind with innocuous stuff. Wind chimes. Raindrops. Finding pictures in the stars. Lull it into a false sense of security. That's when your subconscious slips by with all sorts of ideas. Weird ideas. Radical ideas. The really fun stuff."
–QUALCOMM Incorporated Advertisement
C A L V I N & H O B B E S
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
"I hate to think that one day all of my current experiences will become stories with no point."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
"Life's disappointments are harder to take when you don't know any swear words."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
"I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
"The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
"I let my mind wander and it didn't come back."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
T H E X - F I L E S
"The answers are there, you just have to know where to look for them."
–Agent Dana Scully, The X-Files, Pilot, episode 1.00
"If we ignore them, do you think they'll go away?"
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files, Deep Throat, episode 1.01
"How can I disprove lies that are stamped with an official seal?"
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files, Fallen Angel, episode 1.09
"I'm wondering which lie to believe."
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files, E.B.E., episode 1.16
"I'm not going to give up. I can't give up. Not as long as the truth is out there."
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files, The Erlenmeyer Flask, episode 1.23
"Trust no one."
–Deep Throat, The X-Files, The Erlenmeyer Flask, episode 1.23
"There is an ancient Indian saying, that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable, while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who would douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men, for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth."
–Albert Hosteen, The X-Files, The Blessing Way, episode 3.01
"Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it."
–Agent Dana Scully, The X-Files, Herrenvolk, episode 4.01
"A dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet learned how to ask."
–Agent Dana Scully, The X-Files, Paper Hearts, episode 4.08
"If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced."
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files: Fight the Future
"You can kill a man, but you can't kill what he stands for. Not unless you first break his spirit."
–The Cigarette-Smoking Man, The X-Files, The Beginning, episode 6.01
"I don't doubt you. I'm willing to believe, but not in a lie and not in the opposite of what I can prove. It comes down to a matter of trust. I guess it always has."
–Agent Dana Scully, The X-Files, The Beginning, episode 6.01
"There are more worlds than the one you can hold in your hand."
–Albert Hosteen, The X-Files, The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati, episode 7.02
"The only thing you people are cursed with is stupidity. All of you—everybody. Mankind. Everyone I've ever come into contact with. Without fail, always asking for the wrong things."
–Jenn, The X-Files, Je Souhaite, episode 7.21
"You've been out of circulation for a while."
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files, Je Souhaite, episode 7.21
"Human greed still reigns. Shallowness. A propensity for self-destruction."
–Jenn, The X-Files, Je Souhaite, episode 7.21
S E I N F E L D
"You may think you're an idiot, but with all due respect, I'm a much bigger idiot than you."
–Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Apartment, episode 2.06
"I just can't believe the way people are. What is it with humanity? What kind of a world do we live in?"
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Chinese Restaurant, episode 2.12
"There's too much urinary freedom in this society. I'm proud to hold it in. It builds character."
–Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Parking Garage, episode 3.06
"What's the difference? We'll all be dead eventually."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Parking Garage, episode 3.06
"We're like rats in some experiment."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Parking Garage, episode 3.06
"Can you die from an odor?"
–Elaine Benes, Seinfeld, The Alternate Side, episode 3.11
"I don't want hope. Hope is killing me. My dream is to become hopeless. When you're hopeless you don't care. And when you don't care, that indifference makes you attractive."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Fix-Up, episode 3.16
"Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year's gone by and how little we've grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, each flicker of the candles on the cake we know it's not to be. That for the rest of our sad, wretched, pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably. Happy birthday? No such thing."
–Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Visa, episode 4.15
"I'm disturbed, I'm depressed, I'm inadequate, I have it all!"
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Visa, episode 4.15
"Nobody is sicker than me."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Visa, episode 4.15
"Yeah, I'm a great quitter. It's one of the few things I do well. I come from a long line of quitters. My father was a quitter, my grandfather was a quitter... I was raised to give up."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Old Man, episode 4.18
"Sometimes when I think you're the shallowest man I've ever met, you somehow manage to drain a little more out of the pool."
–Elaine Benes, Seinfeld, The Implant, episode 4.19
"It's like they chopped off your arms and legs, dipped you in plastic, then screwed you all back together again and stuck you on a pedestal. It's really quite exquisite."
–Cosmo Kramer, Seinfeld, The Pie, episode 5.15
"Why did it all turn out like this for me? I had so much promise. I was personable. I was bright. Oh, maybe not academically speaking, but I was perceptive. I always know when someone's uncomfortable at a party. It all became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have in every aspect of life, be it something to wear, something to eat... It's often wrong."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Opposite, episode 5.22
"This has been the dream of my life ever since I was a child, and it's all happening because I'm completely ignoring every urge towards common sense and good judgement I've ever had. This is no longer just some crazy notion... This is my religion."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Opposite, episode 5.22
"No, go ahead. I second-hand smoke two packs a day."
–Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Chinese Woman, episode 6.04
"If you take everything I've accomplished in my life and condense it down into one day, it looks decent."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Muffin Tops, episode 8.21
"It has a certain understated stupidity."
–Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Strike, episode 9.10
O T H E R T V
"If you're falling off a cliff, you may as well try to fly. You've got nothing to lose."
–Captain John Sheridan, Babylon 5
"There's always choice. We say there is no choice only to comfort ourselves with the decisions we've already made."
–Lady Morella, Babylon 5
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
–Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
"I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special."
–Jane Lane, Daria, Esteemsters, episode 1.01
"Don't worry, I don't have low self-esteem. It's a mistake. I have low esteem for everyone else."
–Daria Morgendorffer, Daria, Esteemsters, episode 1.01
"I'm too smart and too sensitive to live in a world like ours at a time like this with a sister like mine. Maybe I do miss out on stuff, but this attitude is what works for me now."
–Daria Morgendorffer, Daria, Gifted, episode 2.08
"To the rational mind, nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained."
–The Doctor, Doctor Who
"You know, your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself."
–The Doctor, Doctor Who
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"
–The Doctor, Doctor Who
"He takes naked pictures of us, then he eats chicken, and then he looks at them!"
–Rachel Green, Friends, The One With Ross's Sandwich, episode 5.09
"Just when I think you said the stupidest thing, you keep talking."
–Hank Hill, King of the Hill
"If you hold someone underwater long enough, they'll come around to your way of thinking."
–A. Whitney Brown, Saturday Night Live
"Well, son, I think you've got a pretty stupid plan there."
–Jimbo, South Park, episode 5.01
O T H E R F I L M S
"Sell crazy somewhere else. We're all stocked up here."
–Melvin Udall, As Good As It Gets (1997)
"If you stare at someone long enough, you start to see their humanity."
–Simon Bishop, As Good As It Gets (1997)
"She's not someone you get tired of. She's the first person I've ever met where I'm more worried she's going to get tired of me."
–Buddy Amaral, Bounce (2000)
"Everything is temporary. Everything begins and ends and begins again. When I look ahead, I imagine infinite possible futures repeated like countless photocopies, a thousand blank pages, and in each one I see myself, never hiding, never sitting silently, and never just waiting and waiting and watching the world go by."
–Iris Chapman, Clockwatchers (1997)
"Sometimes it hits you how quickly the present fades into the past, and you question everything around you. You wonder if anything you'd ever do would matter."
–Iris Chapman, Clockwatchers (1997)
"To know that one does not know is the gift of a superior spirit. Not to know and to think that one does know is a mistake. To know that this is a mistake keeps one from making it."
–Jeremy Prokosch, Contempt (1963)
"All I'm saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself."
–Randall "Pink" Floyd, Dazed and Confused (1993)
"Tradition is the illusion of permanence."
–Harry Block, Deconstructing Harry (1997)
"Between air conditioning and the Pope, I choose air conditioning."
–Harry Block, Deconstructing Harry (1997)
"All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it."
–Harry Block, Deconstructing Harry (1997)
"I can't believe it! We've got no food, we've got no water, our pets heads are falling off!"
–Lloyd Christmas, Dumb & Dumber (1994)
"Yeah I called her up, she gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention."
–Harry Dunne, Dumb & Dumber (1994)
"Do or do not. There is no try."
–Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
"Anything can be faked by anyone."
–Harry Houdini, FairyTale: A True Story (1997)
"Never try to fool children. They expect nothing and therefore see everything."
–Harry Houdini, FairyTale: A True Story (1997)
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."
–Narrator, Fight Club (1999)
"The things you own end up owning you."
–Tyler Durden, Fight Club (1999)
"You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis."
–Tyler Durden, Fight Club (1999)
"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
–Tyler Durden, Fight Club (1999)
"We now have discrimination down to a science."
–Vincent Freeman, Gattaca (1997)
"I hate it, yet I'm uncontrollably drawn to it."
–Todd Gaines, Go (1999)
"Eighty percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in danger of contamination."
–Horace Vandergelder, Hello, Dolly! (1969)
"Their smiling faces just point out your inability to enjoy anything."
–Pete, Knocked Up (2007)
"Some men get the world, others get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona."
–Lynn Bracken, L.A. Confidential (1997)
"I don't know where to put things, you know? I really do have love to give; I just don't know where to put it."
–Donnie Smith, quiz kid, Magnolia (1999)
"You'll get used to it, or you'll have a psychotic episode."
–Agent Zed, Men in Black (1997)
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
–Agent K, Men in Black (1997)
"1500 years ago, everybody 'knew' that the earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody 'knew' that the earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you 'knew' that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll 'know' tomorrow."
–Agent K, Men in Black (1997)
"I mean, isn't it what we wait for? To meet someone? And they're—they’re like a lens, and suddenly you're looking through them and everything changes and nothing can ever be the same again."
–Arthur Edens, Michael Clayton (2007)
"What I try to do to maintain my sanity is alternate between artist and whore. If I was just an artist I'd be broke, and if I was just a whore I'd be sad."
–Jonathan Lemkin, More Tales From the Script (2010)
"It's amazing the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy."
–George Downes, My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
"Yeah, they're dead... They're all messed up."
–Police Chief, Night of the Living Dead (1968)
"It's just something that happens. It's like seeing someone for the first time—like you could be passing on the street—and you look at each other, and for a few seconds there's this kind of a recognition, like you both know something. Next moment the person's gone, and it's too late to do anything about it. And you always remember it because it was there and you let it go. And you think to yourself, 'What if I had stopped? What if I had said something? What if...? What if...?' It may only happen a few times in your life. Or once."
–Jack Foley, Out of Sight (1998)
"Some stories you can tell, some you spend the rest of your life trying to pretend they never happened."
–Jerry Stahl, Permanent Midnight (1998)
"Don't look at me with that tone of voice."
–Paul, Playing by Heart (1998)
"Anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me finds me disagreeable."
–Detective William Somerset, Se7en (1995)
"I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue. I didn't say I was different or better. I'm not. Hell, I sympathize; I sympathize completely. Apathy is a solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work."
–Detective William Somerset, Se7en (1995)
"Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."
–Detective William Somerset, Se7en (1995)
"In the end, no one wins at the game of life, but I want to lose as slow as possible."
–Tisa, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987)
"I'm a woman. We don't say what we want but we do reserve the right to get pissed off when we don't get it. That's what makes us so fascinating, and not a little bit scary."
–Lydia, Sliding Doors (1998)
"This movie has warped my fragile little mind."
–Eric Cartman, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999)
"We draw a magic circle and shut out everything that doesn't agree with our secret games. Each time life breaks the circle the games turn grey and ridiculous. Then we draw a new circle and build a new defense."
–David, Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that?"
–Renton, Trainspotting (1996)
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
–Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects (1995)
"I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."
–Harry Burns, When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
"My dog barks some. Mentally, you picture my dog, but I have not told you the type dog which I have. Perhaps you might even picture Toto, from 'The Wizard of Oz.' But I can tell you, my dog is always with me."
–OO Spool, Wild at Heart (1990)
"A place where there isn't any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain."
–Dorothy Gale, The Wizard of Oz (1939)
"A person can't escape their nature."
–Daryl Zero, Zero Effect (1998)
"Passion is the enemy of precision."
–Daryl Zero, Zero Effect (1998)
"What doesn't kill you, defines you."
–Gloria Sullivan, Zero Effect (1998)
"Some questions are for answering, others are better left to torture and torment for all eternity."
–Daryl Zero, Zero Effect (1998)
© 1997-2024 oxygenesis design.
"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages may be preserved by quotation."
–Isaac D'Israeli
This is a large alphabetized list of quotes I've collected over the years. I started this page in 1998. Some of these thoughts and sayings are by people who have inspired me in some way. Others are included because I've found them interesting or amusing. I used to add at least one quote per week, but the additions aren't so frequent anymore.
Table of Contents: 423 quotations, 165 categories.
Last quote added: July 5, 2010.
Sections with new quotes are in light green.
A D A M S (1957- )
"Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end."
–Scott Adams
A L I (1942- )
"To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you're not, pretend you are."
–Muhammad Ali
A N D E R S O N , G. (1968- )
"When I think of normal, I think of mediocrity. And mediocrity scares the fuck out of me."
–Gillian Anderson, Allure, December 1997
A N D E R S O N , P. (1967- )
"Whenever I see a homeless guy, I always run back and give him money, because I think, 'Oh my God, what if that was Jesus?'"
–Pamela Anderson, TV Guide, 2004
A N D E R S S O N (1943- )
"You can't present solutions. A film should stimulate thought, encourage people to question things and invite reflection. That's what I hope for."
–Roy Andersson, Director's Commentary, Songs from the Second Floor DVD, 2000
"Dealing with issues and resolving them, that's our only option to make things better. To me, these 'feel good' movies gloss over the facts. They help turn people into sleepwalkers. Somnambulists . . . who are surprised every time they're confronted with misery. Because they don't know the facts. Nothing has caused them to even reflect on it. The 'feel good' trend is actually awful. We can't afford it. And you can feel good in other ways. You don't have to cover things up. I think the opposite is true; you'll feel better if you take charge of life and deal with problems . . . and ugliness. It's more satisfying. It's a richer and better feeling."
–Roy Andersson, Director's Commentary, Songs from the Second Floor DVD, 2000
A N G E L I
"Either the medication is working or someone gargled with bong water and swallowed."
–Michael Angeli, Oh My God! They Made A Movie!, Details, August 1998
A R I S T O T L E (384 BC-322 BC)
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit."
–Aristotle
A S I M O V (1920-1992)
"Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know—even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction—than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too."
–Isaac Asimov
"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right."
–Isaac Asimov
B A C O N (1561-1656)
"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects; in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate."
–Sir Francis Bacon, Idols of the Mind
B A G E H O T (1826-1877)
"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
–Walter Bagehot
B A R R Y (1947- )
"I laugh so hard that sometimes it takes four store employees to wrestle me to the floor and inject my special medicine into my neck."
–Dave Barry, Margaritas help the taxes go down, April 4, 1999
B E N C H L E Y (1889-1945)
"I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well."
–Robert Benchley
B E N N E T T
"This is pretty close to the far end of weird."
–S. Christopher Bennett, July 18, 2002, University of Bridgeport
B E R R A (1925- )
"You have to be careful if you don't know where you're going because you might not get there."
–Yogi Berra
"If you don't know where you're going, you could wind up someplace else."
–Yogi Berra
"If you come to a fork in the road, take it."
–Yogi Berra
"We're lost, but we're making good time."
–Yogi Berra
B I L L I N G S (1818-1885)
"One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness."
–Josh Billings
B L A K E (1757-1827)
"I can look at the knot in a piece of wood until it frightens me."
–William Blake
B O H R (1885-1962)
"The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
–Niels Bohr
"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field."
–Niels Bohr
"We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough."
–Niels Bohr
B O I L E A U (1636-1711)
"One fool always find a bigger fool, who admires him."
–Nicolas Boileau
B R A D B U R Y (1920- )
"Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down."
–Ray Bradbury
"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
–Ray Bradbury
B U R G E S S (1917-1993)
"We can destroy what we have written but we cannot unwrite it."
–Anthony Burgess
"Life is, of course, terrible."
–Anthony Burgess
B U R K E (1729-1797)
"Superstition is the religion of feeble minds."
–Edmund Burke
C A M P B E L L
"Distance lends enchantment to the view."
–Thomas Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope
C A R T E R , C.
"I'm a skeptic who wants to believe."
–Chris Carter
C A R T E R , R.
"What researchers are finding is that there seem to be common brain pathways underlying all transcendental experiences. It's the cultural interpretations that vary. But what's really challenging is that the research evidence is very strong that what we think of normal everyday reality is actually a construction of the brain. However, it is quite clear that the brain is also able to construct a version of reality that is quite unlike the survival-orientated 'normal', one. Now why on earth should it have evolved to do that and why is our culture so dead set against exploring it?"
–Rita Carter, Times Online, March 5, 2005
C A R T M I L L
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life—so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
–Matt Cartmill
C A R U S O
"Any form of communication is meaningless unless we have something to say."
–Denise Caruso
C A S S A N O V A
"Don't let your preoccupation with reality stifle your imagination."
–Robert A. Cassanova
C A S T L E (1932- )
"If you're hitting the bull's-eye every time, you're standing too close to the target."
–Wendell Castle
C H U R C H I L L (1874-1965)
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
–Sir Winston Churchill
"True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous and conflicting information."
–Sir Winston Churchill
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm."
–Sir Winston Churchill
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
–Sir Winston Churchill
“You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give."
–Sir Winston Churchill
"Never give in. Never. Never. Never. Never."
–Sir Winston Churchill
C L A R K E (1917- )
"The science of one generation was the magic of the preceding one."
–Arthur C. Clarke
C O C T E A U (1889-1963)
"Art is science made clear."
–Jean Cocteau
C O N F U C I U S (551 BC-479 BC)
"The superior man is distressed by his want of ability."
–Confucius
"The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort."
–Confucius
C O R G A N (1967- )
"I would hope that they would be taken on a mystikal journey of digital warlocks and analog martyrs."
–Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins Live Chat, July 14, 1999
C R A N E (1873-1948)
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough."
–Frank Crane
D A L A I L A M A
"Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly."
–Dalai Lama
"If you can't do good, at least don't harm others."
–Dalai Lama
D A V I N C I (1452-1519)
"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
–Leonardo da Vinci
"Impatience is the mother of stupidity."
–Leonardo da Vinci
"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."
–Leonardo da Vinci
D E S C A R T E S (1596-1650)
"I think, I doubt, therefore I am."
–Renè Descartes
D E W E Y (1859-1952)
"People only truly think when they are confronted with a problem. Without some kind of dilemma to stimulate thought, behavior becomes habitual rather than thoughtful."
–John Dewey
D I C K (1928-1982)
"Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it."
–Philip K. Dick
D I S N E Y (1901-1966)
"Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well I won't do that."
–Walt Disney
D ' I S R A E L I (1766-1848)
"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages may be preserved by quotation."
–Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature—Quotation
D I S R A E L I (1804-1881)
"The profound thinker always suspects that he is superficial."
–Benjamin Disraeli
"It is much easier to be critical than to be correct."
–Benjamin Disraeli
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
–Benjamin Disraeli
D O S T O Y E V E S K Y (1821-1881)
"Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic."
–Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
"Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."
–Fyodor Dostoyevsky
D O Y L E (1859-1930)
"When you have eliminated the impossible, what ever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
–Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really merely commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the planning, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chain of events, working through generations and leading to the most outer results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable."
–Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
E D I S O N (1847-1931)
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
–Thomas Edison
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
–Thomas Edison
E I N S T E I N (1879-1955)
"All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have."
–Albert Einstein
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
–Albert Einstein
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
–Albert Einstein
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
–Albert Einstein
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction."
–Albert Einstein
"He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
–Albert Einstein
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
–Albert Einstein
"If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
–Albert Einstein
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
–Albert Einstein
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
–Albert Einstein
"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."
–Albert Einstein, March 14, 1949
E I S E N H O W E R (1890-1969)
"Things are more like they are today then they ever were before."
–Dwight D. Eisenhower
E M E R S O N (1803-1882)
"To be great is to be misunderstood."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only way to have a friend is to be one."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
F R A N K (1929-1944)
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too, I can feel the suffering of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out."
–Anne Frank
F R A N K L I N (1706-1790)
"Those who will put peace ahead of freedom shall lose both."
–Benjamin Franklin
F R I S C H (1911-1991)
"Technology . . . the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it."
–Max Frisch, Homo Faber, 1957
G A N D H I (1869-1948)
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
–Mahatma Gandhi
G E I S E L (1904-1991)
"Adults are obsolete children."
–Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel
G I B S O N (1948- )
"You know, the future's already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet."
–William Gibson
G O D A R D (1930- )
"The history of cinema is boys photographing girls. The history of history is boys burning girls at the stake."
–Jean-Luc Godard
G O L D M A N (1869-1940)
"The most violent element in society is ignorance."
–Emma Goldman
G O U L D , M. S.
"When you soar like an eagle, you attract the hunters."
–Milton S. Gould
G O U L D , S. J.
"If a claim cannot be disproven, it does not belong to the enterprise of science."
–Stephen Jay Gould
"Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again."
–Stephen Jay Gould
G R E N I E R
"All generalizations are bad."
–R. H. Grenier
G R E Y
"Skepticism is the disposition, or art, of matching belief to evidence."
–William Grey
G U T F I E L D
"In this age of Oprah, when everyone feels compelled to emote without restraint, life has become one big talkshow session as our culture suffers from a terminal case of verbal incontinence."
–Greg Gutfield, What Makes Men Fall in Love—For Keeps
G W Y N
"Truth is not determined by majority vote."
–Doug Gwyn
H A R D I N
"The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short."
–Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons
H A R R I S
"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"
–Sydney Harris
H A W K I N G (1942- )
"Cosmology isn't science if it doesn't predict what we observe."
–Stephen Hawking
H E I D E G G E R (1889-1976)
"In everydayness everything is all one and the same, but whatever the day may bring is taken as diversification."
–Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 371
H E I M E L
"When in a doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap."
–Cynthia Heimel
H E L L E R (1923-1999)
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would to crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22, and let out a respectful whistle."
–Joseph Heller
H E L Y (1954- )
"When you find yourself eating light bulbs for a living, you know you've made some bad career choices."
–Matt Hely, Bobby Reynolds Circus Sideshow Performer, 2000
H E M I N G W A Y (1899-1961)
"Never mistake motion for action."
–Ernest Hemingway
"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."
–Ernest Hemingway
H E N R Y
"To do what others cannot do is talent. To do what talent cannot do is genius."
–Will Henry
H E P B U R N (1907- )
"I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun."
–Katharine Hepburn
H E S S E (1877-1962)
"When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane."
–Hermann Hesse
"Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom."
–Hermann Hesse
H I C K S (1961-1994)
"Today young men on acid realize that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death. Life is only a dream and we're the imagination of ourselves."
–Bill Hicks
H O F F E R
"In times of change, the learners will inherit the earth. While the learned will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists."
–Eric Hoffer
"To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life."
–Eric Hoffer
H U X L E Y (1894-1963)
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
–Aldous Huxley
"Facts don't cease to exist because they are ignored."
–Aldous Huxley
"Experience is not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what happens to him."
–Aldous Huxley
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
–Aldous Huxley
J A M E S
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
–William James
J E F F E R S O N (1743-1826)
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
–Thomas Jefferson
"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."
–Thomas Jefferson
J O N E S
"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again."
–Franklin P. Jones
J U N G (1875-1961)
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
–Carl G. Jung
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
–Carl G. Jung
"There is no coming to consciousness without pain."
–Carl G. Jung
"If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures."
–Carl G. Jung
K A Y (1940- )
"The only successful way to predict the future is to invent it."
–Alan Kay
K E R O U A C (1922-1969)
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"
–Jack Kerouac, On The Road
"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."
Jack Kerouac
"Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"
–Jack Kerouac
K E S E Y (1935-2001)
"There had been times when I'd wandered around in a daze for as long as two weeks... living in that foggy, jumbled blur which is a whole lot like the ragged edge of sleep, that gray zone between light and dark, or between sleeping and waking or living and dying, where you know you're not unconscious any more but don't know yet what day it is or who you are or what's the use of coming back at all..."
–Ken Kesey, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, p. 242
"Take what you can use and let the rest go by."
–Ken Kesey
K I N G (1929-1968)
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
K I S S I N G E R (1923- )
"Superstars strive for approbation; heroes walk alone. Superstars crave consensus; heroes define themselves by the judgment of a future they see it as their task to bring about. Superstars seek success in a technique for eliciting support; heroes pursue success as the outgrowth of inner values."
–Henry A. Kissinger
K R I S T O F F E R S O N (1936- )
"It's all a bloody circus mates, and the clowns are in control."
–Kris Kristofferson
K U B R I C K (1928-1999)
"If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered."
–Stanley Kubrick
L A N D E R S (1918- )
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
–Ann Landers
L A W R E N C E (1885-1930)
"The cruelest thing a man can do to a woman is to portray her as perfection."
–D. H. Lawrence
"Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little."
–D. H. Lawrence
L A R O C H E F O U C A U L D (1613-1680)
"Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?"
–François duc de La Rochefoucauld
L E A C H (1950- )
"Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire."
–Reggie Leach
L E E (1965-1993)
"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
–Brandon Lee, 1993
L E N N O N (1940-1980)
"Life is dick."
–John Lennon
"Life is what happens to you while you're (busy) making other plans."
–John Lennon
L I N K L A T E R (1960- )
"You have to be able to turn on a dime when something's not working. If you're too set in your mind about what it is, all the forces in the universe are going to work against you getting that exact thing. In one way, you know exactly what you don't want, and you know what you're going for, but maybe you don't know you're there until you reach the destination."
–Richard Linklater, The Onion A.V. Club, October 17, 2001
M A C A U L A Y
"The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out."
–Thomas B. Macaulay
M A C Y
"We just love rooting for people as they struggle. That's what life is about, really. When you look around and go, 'You know what? It's me. Whether I like it or not, there's nobody else.'"
–William H. Macy
M A R X (1895-1977)
"I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."
–Groucho Marx
"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."
–Groucho Marx
M C L A C H L A N
"There's no guarantee that you'll ever find the kind of truth you're looking for. You may get close. You might see moments of it, moments of clarity, but then it gets cloudy again. That's why we go on, though, because of those moments."
–Sarah McLachlan
M E A D E
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
–Margaret Meade
M E N C K E N (1880-1956)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
–Henry Louis Mencken
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers."
–Henry Louis Mencken
"Don't overestimate the decency of the human race."
–Henry Louis Mencken
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
–Henry Louis Mencken
M E R T O N
"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
–Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
M I L L
"The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom."
–John Stuart Mill
M O B Y (1965- )
"At one point, I thought about every ideological position I'd taken over the past twenty years, and realized that I was generally full of shit."
–Moby
M U G G E R I D G E (1903-1990)
"Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream."
–Malcolm Muggeridge
M U I R
"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attatched to the rest of the world."
–John Muir
N E W T O N
"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. It is much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things."
–Sir Isaac Newton
N I C H O L S O N (1937- )
"If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG."
–Jack Nicholson
N I E T Z S C H E
"Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man."
–Friedrich Nietzsche
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
–Friedrich Nietzsche
O ' R O U R K E
"Never fight an inanimate object."
–P. J. O'Rourke
O V E R B Y E
"The job of being a scientist, it seemed to me, consisted mostly of constantly exposing yourself to the people who could do you the most harm, the ones who could see through you and pick you apart—your peers. It was the constant grinding of egos that produced the sawdust of progress."
–Dennis Overbye, Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, p. 418
P A I G E (1906-1982)
"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?"
–Leroy "Satchel" Paige
"Smile well and often. It makes people wonder what you've been up to."
–Leroy "Satchel" Paige
"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."
–Leroy "Satchel" Paige
P A I N E (1737-1809)
"My mind is my own church."
–Thomas Paine
P I C A S S O (1881-1973)
"The chief enemy of creativity is good taste."
–Pablo Picasso
"Bad artists copy. Good artists steal."
–Pablo Picasso
P L A T O (427 BC-347 BC)
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."
–Plato
P O E (1809-1849)
"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."
–Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream
"Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears."
–Edgar Allan Poe
P R O U S T (1871-1922)
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
–Marcel Proust
Q U A Y L E (1947- )
"If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure."
–Dan Quayle
"What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is."
–Dan Quayle
R E A G A N (1911- )
"You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans."
–Ronald Reagan
R O C K (1966- )
"I learned life isn't fair at an early age. There's always going to be one kid at school getting beaten up all the time... But that's the kid who's probably going to be the most successful. He's the one with the greatest sense of reality."
–Chris Rock, I'd Rather Tell The Truth
R O G E R S
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
–Will Rogers
R O O N E Y
"We have advanced to the point where the means we use to communicate are more elegant and important than what we have to say."
–Andy Rooney
R O O S E V E L T , E.
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
–Eleanor Roosevelt
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
–Eleanor Roosevelt
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
–Eleanor Roosevelt
R O O S E V E L T , F. D.
"We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."
–Franklin D. Roosevelt
R O O S E V E L T , T.
"Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."
–Theodore Roosevelt
R O S H I
"A strange creature, the human being; groping in the dark with an intelligent look."
–Sawaki Roshi
R O U S S E A U
"Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to save it."
–Jean-Jacques Rousseau
R U S K I N
"When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece."
–John Ruskin
R U S S E L L
"Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself."
–Bertrand Russell
S A B B A H (1034-1124)
"Nothing is true; everything is permitted."
–Hassan-i-Sabbah
S A G A N (1934-1996)
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
–Carl Sagan
"You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep-seated need to believe."
–Carl Sagan
"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources."
–Carl Sagan, Cosmos television series
"But amid much elegance and precision, the details of life and the Universe also exhibit haphazard, jury-rigged arrangements and much poor planning. What shall we make of this: an edifice abandoned early in construction by the architect?"
–Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
"If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness."
–Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
–Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"Plainly there is no way back. Like it or not, we are stuck with science. We had better make the best of it. When we finally come to terms with it and fully recognize its beauty and its power, we will find, in spiritual as well as in practical methods, that we have made a bargain strongly in our favor."
–Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science."
–Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking."
–Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."
–Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions, p. 215
"We are a way for the Universe to know itself."
–Carl Sagan
S A L I N G E R (1919- )
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
–J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, p. 214
S A N T A Y A N A (1863-1952)
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
–George Santayana, Life of Reason
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
–George Santayana, Life of Reason
"Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself."
–George Santayana
S A W H I L L (1936-2000)
"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy."
–John Sawhill, President of The Nature Conservancy, 1990-2000
S C R I V E N
"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the ocean searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain any more, so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure."
–Michael Scriven
S E A T T L E (1786-1866)
"The earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth."
–Chief Seattle, 1854
S H A K E S P E A R E (1564-1616)
"Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never taste of death but once."
–William Shakespeare
S H A R I ' A T I (1933-1977)
"The mere holding of a belief is no virtue in itself."
–Ali Shari'ati
S H A W (1856-1950)
"The reasonable man expects to conform to society. The unreasonable man expects society to conform to him. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
–George Bernard Shaw
"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."
–George Bernard Shaw
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
–George Bernard Shaw
S I N G E R (1904-1991)
"Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression."
–Isaac Bashevis Singer
S T E K E L (1868-1940)
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
–Wilhelm Stekel, Austrian Psychoanalyst
S M I T H S O N
"Scaring the bejesus out of everyone isn't a pragmatic step."
–Amy Smithson, Chemical & Biological Weapons Expert, MSNBC, September 25, 2001
S O L Z H E N I T S Y N
"The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature."
–Alexander Solzhenitsyn
S T O N E
"We're just telling people to lighten up and not take themselves too seriously. What are my politics? Setting a puppet on fire. That's my politics."
–Matt Stone, USA Today, October 11, 2004
T E S L A
"Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop. The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way."
–Nikola Tesla
"Ere many generations pass our machinery will be driven by power obtainable at any point in the Universe...it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheel work of nature."
–Nikola Tesla, Experiments With Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency
T H O M P S O N (1937-2005)
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours."
–Hunter S. Thompson
"I have no taste for either poverty or honest labour, so writing is the only recourse left for me."
–Hunter S. Thompson
"I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling."
–Hunter S. Thompson
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
–Hunter S. Thompson
"For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled."
–Hunter S. Thompson
T W A I N (1835-1910)
"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
–Mark Twain
"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
–Mark Twain
"Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries."
–Mark Twain
V O N G O E T H E
"Nothing is more terrifying than ignorance in action."
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
V O N N E G U T (1922-2007)
"If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind."
–Kurt Vonnegut
"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
–Kurt Vonnegut
"The public heath authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide."
–Kurt Vonnegut, Preface of Welcome to the Monkey House, 1969
W A S H I N G T O N (1731-1802)
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go."
–Martha Washington
W A T E R S T O N
"Only do something when you feel it in your heart. Trust yourself and be good to yourself. It can end for you as soon as it began."
–Sam Waterston
W A T T S
"Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its cosmic harmonies. And we are the witness through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence."
–Alan Watts (as paraphrased by Stefan Pashov, Encounters at the End of the World)
W H I T E
"What I lack in spirit, I make up for in apathy."
–Andrew White
W I L D E
"Education is what you have left over after you have forgotten everything you have learned."
–Oscar Wilde
"Truth is rarely pure, and never simple."
–Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
W I L S O N
"Humans need any narrative, even a nonsense narrative, rather than having no explanation at all about their predicament."
–Robert Anton Wilson, Everything Is Under Control
W R I G H T
"Right now I'm having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before."
–Steven Wright
Y A N K O V I C
"I have no idea what they're talking about, but whenever I hear it, I just start jumping up and down and slamming into things."
–"Weird Al" Yankovic
Z A P P A
"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."
–Frank Zappa
"Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read."
–Frank Zappa
"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced."
–Frank Zappa
"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice; there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."
–Frank Zappa
U N K N O W N , P R O V E R B S , M A X I M S
"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."
–Anonymous
"In an advanced world such as this we still need something to remind us we're still primitive animals."
–Anonymous
"Minds are like parachutes, they only function when they are open."
–Anonymous
"Confidence is the feeling you sometimes have before you fully understand the situation."
–Anonymous
"If you're not playing a big enough game you'll screw up the game you're playing just to give yourself something to do."
–Anonymous
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."
–Anonymous
"I won't have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent."
–Anonymous
"The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action."
–Anonymous
"I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous."
–Anonymous
"He looked at me at though I were a side dish he hadn't ordered."
–Anonymous
"If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?"
–Anonymous
"Caution... Never drive faster than your angel can fly."
–Anonymous
"If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?"
–Anonymous
"Seeing is rarely believing unless believing is what you're already looking for."
–Anonymous
"A man clinging to a Bible is like a bear wearing a tutu. No matter how loudly the crowd laughs, he'll never understand the absurdity of his predicament."
–Anonymous
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
–Anonymous
"Lord, give me the strength to put up with the people who are going to piss me off today."
–Anonymous
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
–Anonymous
"Indecision is the key to flexibility."
–Anonymous
"To err is human but to really mess things up requires a computer."
–Anonymous
"Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed."
–Anonymous
"I understood each and every word you said but not the order in which they appeared."
–Anonymous
"Your ridiculous little opinion has been noted."
–Anonymous
"As a person gets older and wiser, he talks less and says more."
–Anonymous
"A friend is someone who knows you and likes you anyway."
–Anonymous
"It is only the people you trust who can betray you."
–Anonymous
"It's too bad that the people who know how to run this country are busy teaching school."
–Anonymous
"It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."
–Anonymous
"Only when the last tree is gone, the last river has been dammed, and the last field has been paved over will we realize that we can't eat money."
–Anonymous
"Only when the last tree is dead, the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we can't eat money."
–Cree Indian Saying
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
–Anonymous
"What's the biggest problem facing America today: ignorance or apathy? Well, I'll tell you, I don't know and I don't care."
–Anonymous
"If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes."
–Anonymous
"The road to success is always under construction."
–Anonymous
"If a man speaks in the forest, and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"
–Anonymous
"Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty."
–Anonymous
"The roots of all forms of violence are learned at an early age. No one is born violent."
–Anonymous
"Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the fastest lion or it will get killed. Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up, and it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you had better be running."
–Anonymous
"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
–Japanese Proverb
"Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."
–Chinese Proverb
"Today is the first day of the rest of your life."
–Anonymous
"Never look back unless you are planning to go that way."
–Anonymous
"What if the Hokey-Pokey is really what it's all about?"
–Anonymous
C O M I C S T R I P S , L Y R I C S , S L O G A N S
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
–Sherlock Holmes
"Once you are real you can't be ugly except to people who don't understand."
–Margery Williams Bianco et al., The Velveteen Rabbit
"Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane."
–Dogbert, Dilbert, June 14, 1998
"It's not a good idea to mix enthusiasm with stupidity."
–Wally, Dilbert, February 15, 1999
"I'm putting you on a team. You'll be working with other intelligent, highly motivated people plus... a stubborn dumb guy with a V-neck sweater."
–Pointy-Haired Boss, Dilbert, August 23, 1999
"I'd roll my eyes, but those muscles are tired."
–Peter Fox, FoxTrot, August 23, 1999
"I remember floating above my body, looking down and thinking, 'Meatloaf again?'"
–Leroy Lockhorn, The Lockhorns, June 14, 1998
"I just had a horrible thought! What if years from now I look at these as the good old days?"
–Shoe, Shoe, February 17, 2001
"They tell me not to, but I still drinks it!"
–The King of Town, Strong Bad Email #95: The Bet, January 19, 2004
"They say you get the government you deserve, but I don't remember knife-raping any retarded nuns."
–The Onion, What Do You Think?, 2000
"In the Bible Belt, fried-chicken fellowships and potbellied pastors are as much a part of the culture as stock car races and sentences that start with 'Y'all.' Churches traditionally have not worried much about waistlines."
–The Associated Press, No doughnuts on Sunday, March 8, 2004
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you."
–Kurt Cobain, Territorial Pissings
"The future is no place to place your better days."
–Dave Matthews Band, Cry Freedom
"You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
–The Eagles, Hotel California
"I know someday you'll have a beautiful life. I know you'll be a star, in somebody else's sky, but why can't it be mine?"
–Pearl Jam, Black
"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."
–Semisonic, Closing Time
"And it's true we are immune, when fact is fiction and T.V. is reality."
–U2, Sunday Bloody Sunday
"Think globally, act locally."
–Peace Resource Project
"If aliens are smart enough to travel through space, why do they keep abducting the dumbest people on earth?"
–Winston Cigarettes Advertisement
"Want to think of an idea? Don't try. Occupy your mind with innocuous stuff. Wind chimes. Raindrops. Finding pictures in the stars. Lull it into a false sense of security. That's when your subconscious slips by with all sorts of ideas. Weird ideas. Radical ideas. The really fun stuff."
–QUALCOMM Incorporated Advertisement
C A L V I N & H O B B E S
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
"I hate to think that one day all of my current experiences will become stories with no point."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
"Life's disappointments are harder to take when you don't know any swear words."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
"I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
"The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
"I let my mind wander and it didn't come back."
–Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes
T H E X - F I L E S
"The answers are there, you just have to know where to look for them."
–Agent Dana Scully, The X-Files, Pilot, episode 1.00
"If we ignore them, do you think they'll go away?"
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files, Deep Throat, episode 1.01
"How can I disprove lies that are stamped with an official seal?"
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files, Fallen Angel, episode 1.09
"I'm wondering which lie to believe."
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files, E.B.E., episode 1.16
"I'm not going to give up. I can't give up. Not as long as the truth is out there."
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files, The Erlenmeyer Flask, episode 1.23
"Trust no one."
–Deep Throat, The X-Files, The Erlenmeyer Flask, episode 1.23
"There is an ancient Indian saying, that something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable, while history serves only those who seek to control it, those who would douse the flame of memory in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth. Beware these men, for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember and of those who seek the truth."
–Albert Hosteen, The X-Files, The Blessing Way, episode 3.01
"Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it."
–Agent Dana Scully, The X-Files, Herrenvolk, episode 4.01
"A dream is an answer to a question we haven't yet learned how to ask."
–Agent Dana Scully, The X-Files, Paper Hearts, episode 4.08
"If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced."
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files: Fight the Future
"You can kill a man, but you can't kill what he stands for. Not unless you first break his spirit."
–The Cigarette-Smoking Man, The X-Files, The Beginning, episode 6.01
"I don't doubt you. I'm willing to believe, but not in a lie and not in the opposite of what I can prove. It comes down to a matter of trust. I guess it always has."
–Agent Dana Scully, The X-Files, The Beginning, episode 6.01
"There are more worlds than the one you can hold in your hand."
–Albert Hosteen, The X-Files, The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati, episode 7.02
"The only thing you people are cursed with is stupidity. All of you—everybody. Mankind. Everyone I've ever come into contact with. Without fail, always asking for the wrong things."
–Jenn, The X-Files, Je Souhaite, episode 7.21
"You've been out of circulation for a while."
–Agent Fox Mulder, The X-Files, Je Souhaite, episode 7.21
"Human greed still reigns. Shallowness. A propensity for self-destruction."
–Jenn, The X-Files, Je Souhaite, episode 7.21
S E I N F E L D
"You may think you're an idiot, but with all due respect, I'm a much bigger idiot than you."
–Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Apartment, episode 2.06
"I just can't believe the way people are. What is it with humanity? What kind of a world do we live in?"
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Chinese Restaurant, episode 2.12
"There's too much urinary freedom in this society. I'm proud to hold it in. It builds character."
–Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Parking Garage, episode 3.06
"What's the difference? We'll all be dead eventually."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Parking Garage, episode 3.06
"We're like rats in some experiment."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Parking Garage, episode 3.06
"Can you die from an odor?"
–Elaine Benes, Seinfeld, The Alternate Side, episode 3.11
"I don't want hope. Hope is killing me. My dream is to become hopeless. When you're hopeless you don't care. And when you don't care, that indifference makes you attractive."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Fix-Up, episode 3.16
"Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year's gone by and how little we've grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, each flicker of the candles on the cake we know it's not to be. That for the rest of our sad, wretched, pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably. Happy birthday? No such thing."
–Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Visa, episode 4.15
"I'm disturbed, I'm depressed, I'm inadequate, I have it all!"
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Visa, episode 4.15
"Nobody is sicker than me."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Visa, episode 4.15
"Yeah, I'm a great quitter. It's one of the few things I do well. I come from a long line of quitters. My father was a quitter, my grandfather was a quitter... I was raised to give up."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Old Man, episode 4.18
"Sometimes when I think you're the shallowest man I've ever met, you somehow manage to drain a little more out of the pool."
–Elaine Benes, Seinfeld, The Implant, episode 4.19
"It's like they chopped off your arms and legs, dipped you in plastic, then screwed you all back together again and stuck you on a pedestal. It's really quite exquisite."
–Cosmo Kramer, Seinfeld, The Pie, episode 5.15
"Why did it all turn out like this for me? I had so much promise. I was personable. I was bright. Oh, maybe not academically speaking, but I was perceptive. I always know when someone's uncomfortable at a party. It all became very clear to me sitting out there today, that every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have in every aspect of life, be it something to wear, something to eat... It's often wrong."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Opposite, episode 5.22
"This has been the dream of my life ever since I was a child, and it's all happening because I'm completely ignoring every urge towards common sense and good judgement I've ever had. This is no longer just some crazy notion... This is my religion."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Opposite, episode 5.22
"No, go ahead. I second-hand smoke two packs a day."
–Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Chinese Woman, episode 6.04
"If you take everything I've accomplished in my life and condense it down into one day, it looks decent."
–George Costanza, Seinfeld, The Muffin Tops, episode 8.21
"It has a certain understated stupidity."
–Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Strike, episode 9.10
O T H E R T V
"If you're falling off a cliff, you may as well try to fly. You've got nothing to lose."
–Captain John Sheridan, Babylon 5
"There's always choice. We say there is no choice only to comfort ourselves with the decisions we've already made."
–Lady Morella, Babylon 5
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
–Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
"I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special."
–Jane Lane, Daria, Esteemsters, episode 1.01
"Don't worry, I don't have low self-esteem. It's a mistake. I have low esteem for everyone else."
–Daria Morgendorffer, Daria, Esteemsters, episode 1.01
"I'm too smart and too sensitive to live in a world like ours at a time like this with a sister like mine. Maybe I do miss out on stuff, but this attitude is what works for me now."
–Daria Morgendorffer, Daria, Gifted, episode 2.08
"To the rational mind, nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained."
–The Doctor, Doctor Who
"You know, your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity in trying to destroy itself."
–The Doctor, Doctor Who
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"
–The Doctor, Doctor Who
"He takes naked pictures of us, then he eats chicken, and then he looks at them!"
–Rachel Green, Friends, The One With Ross's Sandwich, episode 5.09
"Just when I think you said the stupidest thing, you keep talking."
–Hank Hill, King of the Hill
"If you hold someone underwater long enough, they'll come around to your way of thinking."
–A. Whitney Brown, Saturday Night Live
"Well, son, I think you've got a pretty stupid plan there."
–Jimbo, South Park, episode 5.01
O T H E R F I L M S
"Sell crazy somewhere else. We're all stocked up here."
–Melvin Udall, As Good As It Gets (1997)
"If you stare at someone long enough, you start to see their humanity."
–Simon Bishop, As Good As It Gets (1997)
"She's not someone you get tired of. She's the first person I've ever met where I'm more worried she's going to get tired of me."
–Buddy Amaral, Bounce (2000)
"Everything is temporary. Everything begins and ends and begins again. When I look ahead, I imagine infinite possible futures repeated like countless photocopies, a thousand blank pages, and in each one I see myself, never hiding, never sitting silently, and never just waiting and waiting and watching the world go by."
–Iris Chapman, Clockwatchers (1997)
"Sometimes it hits you how quickly the present fades into the past, and you question everything around you. You wonder if anything you'd ever do would matter."
–Iris Chapman, Clockwatchers (1997)
"To know that one does not know is the gift of a superior spirit. Not to know and to think that one does know is a mistake. To know that this is a mistake keeps one from making it."
–Jeremy Prokosch, Contempt (1963)
"All I'm saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself."
–Randall "Pink" Floyd, Dazed and Confused (1993)
"Tradition is the illusion of permanence."
–Harry Block, Deconstructing Harry (1997)
"Between air conditioning and the Pope, I choose air conditioning."
–Harry Block, Deconstructing Harry (1997)
"All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it."
–Harry Block, Deconstructing Harry (1997)
"I can't believe it! We've got no food, we've got no water, our pets heads are falling off!"
–Lloyd Christmas, Dumb & Dumber (1994)
"Yeah I called her up, she gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention."
–Harry Dunne, Dumb & Dumber (1994)
"Do or do not. There is no try."
–Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
"Anything can be faked by anyone."
–Harry Houdini, FairyTale: A True Story (1997)
"Never try to fool children. They expect nothing and therefore see everything."
–Harry Houdini, FairyTale: A True Story (1997)
"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."
–Narrator, Fight Club (1999)
"The things you own end up owning you."
–Tyler Durden, Fight Club (1999)
"You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis."
–Tyler Durden, Fight Club (1999)
"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
–Tyler Durden, Fight Club (1999)
"We now have discrimination down to a science."
–Vincent Freeman, Gattaca (1997)
"I hate it, yet I'm uncontrollably drawn to it."
–Todd Gaines, Go (1999)
"Eighty percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in danger of contamination."
–Horace Vandergelder, Hello, Dolly! (1969)
"Their smiling faces just point out your inability to enjoy anything."
–Pete, Knocked Up (2007)
"Some men get the world, others get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona."
–Lynn Bracken, L.A. Confidential (1997)
"I don't know where to put things, you know? I really do have love to give; I just don't know where to put it."
–Donnie Smith, quiz kid, Magnolia (1999)
"You'll get used to it, or you'll have a psychotic episode."
–Agent Zed, Men in Black (1997)
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
–Agent K, Men in Black (1997)
"1500 years ago, everybody 'knew' that the earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody 'knew' that the earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you 'knew' that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll 'know' tomorrow."
–Agent K, Men in Black (1997)
"I mean, isn't it what we wait for? To meet someone? And they're—they’re like a lens, and suddenly you're looking through them and everything changes and nothing can ever be the same again."
–Arthur Edens, Michael Clayton (2007)
"What I try to do to maintain my sanity is alternate between artist and whore. If I was just an artist I'd be broke, and if I was just a whore I'd be sad."
–Jonathan Lemkin, More Tales From the Script (2010)
"It's amazing the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy."
–George Downes, My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)
"Yeah, they're dead... They're all messed up."
–Police Chief, Night of the Living Dead (1968)
"It's just something that happens. It's like seeing someone for the first time—like you could be passing on the street—and you look at each other, and for a few seconds there's this kind of a recognition, like you both know something. Next moment the person's gone, and it's too late to do anything about it. And you always remember it because it was there and you let it go. And you think to yourself, 'What if I had stopped? What if I had said something? What if...? What if...?' It may only happen a few times in your life. Or once."
–Jack Foley, Out of Sight (1998)
"Some stories you can tell, some you spend the rest of your life trying to pretend they never happened."
–Jerry Stahl, Permanent Midnight (1998)
"Don't look at me with that tone of voice."
–Paul, Playing by Heart (1998)
"Anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me finds me disagreeable."
–Detective William Somerset, Se7en (1995)
"I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue. I didn't say I was different or better. I'm not. Hell, I sympathize; I sympathize completely. Apathy is a solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work."
–Detective William Somerset, Se7en (1995)
"Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."
–Detective William Somerset, Se7en (1995)
"In the end, no one wins at the game of life, but I want to lose as slow as possible."
–Tisa, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987)
"I'm a woman. We don't say what we want but we do reserve the right to get pissed off when we don't get it. That's what makes us so fascinating, and not a little bit scary."
–Lydia, Sliding Doors (1998)
"This movie has warped my fragile little mind."
–Eric Cartman, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999)
"We draw a magic circle and shut out everything that doesn't agree with our secret games. Each time life breaks the circle the games turn grey and ridiculous. Then we draw a new circle and build a new defense."
–David, Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that?"
–Renton, Trainspotting (1996)
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
–Verbal Kint, The Usual Suspects (1995)
"I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."
–Harry Burns, When Harry Met Sally... (1989)
"My dog barks some. Mentally, you picture my dog, but I have not told you the type dog which I have. Perhaps you might even picture Toto, from 'The Wizard of Oz.' But I can tell you, my dog is always with me."
–OO Spool, Wild at Heart (1990)
"A place where there isn't any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain."
–Dorothy Gale, The Wizard of Oz (1939)
"A person can't escape their nature."
–Daryl Zero, Zero Effect (1998)
"Passion is the enemy of precision."
–Daryl Zero, Zero Effect (1998)
"What doesn't kill you, defines you."
–Gloria Sullivan, Zero Effect (1998)
"Some questions are for answering, others are better left to torture and torment for all eternity."
–Daryl Zero, Zero Effect (1998)
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