Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.
-- Pablo Picasso "If you light a man a fire, he will be warm for a day; if you light a man on fire, he will be warm for the rest of his life." (Anonymous) It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should
live honourably.
-- Kant, Immanuel Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
-- Erma Bombeck Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
- Henry Ford Society and Culture A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever, and generally
stopping before it gets there.
-- Agnes Repplier I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps the time I found out that
M&Ms really do melt in your hand...
-- Peter Oakley In olden times sacrifices were made at the altar--a practice which is still continued.
-- Helen Rowland Society and Culture
"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free." (James Douglas Morrison, lead singer of The Doors) Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
-- Simeon Strunsky What does not kill me makes me stronger.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Why did Nature create man? Was it to show that she is big enough to make mistakes, or was it
pure ignorance?
-- Holbrook Jackson To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to
finish without knowing what you have written.
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau Society and Culture People say "I want peace." If you remove I {ego}, and your want {desire}, you are left with peace.
-- Satya Sai Baba "Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." (John Benfield) They gave me a book of checks. They didn't ask for any deposits.
-- Joe Early, Congressman (D-Mass), at a press conference to answer questions about the
House Bank scandal Society and Culture
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to
take away.
- Antoine de Saint Exupery "Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man." (Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855) "This is slavery, not to speak one's thought." (Euripides) More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
-- John Donne "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." (George Bernard Shaw) Society and Culture He who awaits much can expect little.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987 No one finds life worth living; he must make it worth living.
-- Anon. Society and Culture
When making public policy decisions about new technologies for the Government, I think one
should ask oneself which technologies would best strengthen the hand of a police state. Then, do
not allow There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the tools to attain, nor any power
so secure that the naked ape will not abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards - only physics Marriage is bliss. Ignorance is bliss. Ergo...
-- Anonymous When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is
when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped.
-- Marcel Achard We didn't send you to Washington to make intelligent decisions. We sent you to represent us.
-- Kent York, Baptist minister to US Rep. Bill Sarpalius Society and Culture The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change
it.
-- Colin Wilson Education is an admirable thing, but nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
-- Oscar Wilde No, that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful." (Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms) Society and Culture
It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out next morning it was
someone else.
-- Rogers The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by
trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by l To be able to say how much love, is love but little.
-- Petrarch Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down.
- Jimmy Durante I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it by not dying!
-- Woody Allen Society and Culture "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." (Thomas Jefferson, to Archibald Stuart, 1791) It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
-- Alec Bourne, A Doctor's Creed "For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?" (John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley) Society and Culture
Propel, propel, propel your craft softly down liquid solution. Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically,
ecstatically, Existence is simply illusion.
-- Fred Rogers, parody of "Row, row, row your boa Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the
moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future
generations "I don't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." (John Cage) However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my usual manner...sulking and nausea.
-- Tom K. Ryan The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only
way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste
time Society and Culture Many a man that could rule a hundherd millyon sthrangers with an ir'n hand is careful to take off
his shoes in the front hallway whin he comes home late at night.
-- Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley O Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted.
-- Albert Einstein Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle
enough of them.
-- Flannery O'Connor Society and Culture
If you want to recapture your youth, just cut off his allowance.
-- Al Bernstein Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
-- Wynn Catlin, also attributed to Will Rogers Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies.
- Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan. Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.
-- Grover Cleveland Marital Freedom: The liberty that allows a husband to do exactly that which his wife pleases.
-- Anonymous Society and Culture Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important.
-- Lisa Hoffman I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.
-- Oscar Wilde There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a
natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend Society and Culture
Question: Ted Kennedy: "Where was George?"
Answer: Dry, sober, and at home with his wife Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on Earth. -- John Lyly I tried a mail order bride, once, but she was damaged in the mail, and I had to return the unused part for my full refund. One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby
see only a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney and continue on their way.
-- Vincent Van Gogh "Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?" (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Society and Culture A narcissist is someone better-looking than you are.
-- Gore Vidal If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
-- Abraham Lincoln "A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it." (Claude Rains, as Mr. Dryden, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) Society and Culture
A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever, and generally
stopping before it gets there.
-- Agnes Repplier "Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
-- Aesop "In fact, most deaths are not tragic. Few people die because of a flaw in character, which is the essential element of tragedy. They just die." (John Chancellor, The News Business) "I don't believe people die. They just go uptown. To Bloomingdales. They just take longer to get back." (Andy Warhol) Society and Culture The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.
- Henry Kissinger As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are
certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein "Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to t Society and Culture
When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home.
-- Betty Bender Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes
unpunished.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences." (Isadora Duncan) "Defeat the fear of death and welcome the death of fear." (G. Gordon Liddy) Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous
and dreadful.
-- Samuel Johnson Society and Culture In the spider-web of facts, many a truth is strangled.
-- Paul Eldridge "Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." (Edger Allen Poe) There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.
-- Fred Hoyle Society and Culture
"Some people wear their heart up on their sleeve. I wear mine underneath my right pant leg, strapped to my boot." (Ani Difranco) "Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper." (Larry Flynt) However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my usual manner...sulking and nausea.
-- Tom K. Ryan When you don't know that you don't know, it's a lot different than when you do know that you
don't know. He knows now that he doesn't know. Last year, he didn't know that.
-- Bill Parcels, New Engla We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
-- Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, Chap. x. 1., Translated by O. W. Wight Society and Culture "Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department
store and he asked for my autograph.
-- Shirley Temple Black I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years.
-- Sam Kinison Society and Culture
