You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.
-- Indira Gandhi "We have so little presumption that we should like to be known in the world, even to those who come after when we are no more. We have so little vanity that the esteem of five people, say six, amuses If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
-- Albert Einstein Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.
-- Jean de La Fontaine My Alma mater was books, a good library . . . . I could spend the rest of my life reading, just
satisfying my curiosity.
--Malcolm X Society and Culture Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
-- Simeon Strunsky For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-
knowing.
- Henry Louis Mencken No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.
-- Mignon McLaughlin Society and Culture
"Give me liberty or give me death." (Patrick Henry) A clever man commits no minor blunders.
- Goethe An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for
love is measured by fullness, not by reception.
-- Harold Loukes A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.
-- Martin H. Fischer A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. He sits on a hot stove for a
minute, it's longer than any hour. That is relativity.
-- Albert Einstein Society and Culture A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one.
-- Kin Hubbard Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can
only read the title.
-- Virginia Woolf "Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end." (William Shakespeare) Society and Culture
Hardly a year passes that fails to find a new, oft-times exotic, research method or technique
added to the armamentarium of political inquiry. Anyone who cannot negotiate Chi squares,
assess randomi In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves
beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
-- Al Rogers, Global SchoolHouse Netw "A wise man among the ignorant is as a beautiful girl in the company of blind men." (Saadi) Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage,
he'll fall asleep before you finish saying it.
-- Helen Roland In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
-- Albert Einstein Society and Culture "Great work is done by people who are not afraid to be great." (Fernando Flores) If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.
-- Pentagon official, on why US military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Society and Culture
It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
-- Aldous Huxley Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness.
-- Madame de Rieux 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 Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.
-- Anonymous Marriage is not just a having a wife, but also worries inherited forever. Society and Culture "I am a part of all that I have met." (Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892, English poet) Hell is other people.
- Jean-Paul Sartre I find television very educating. Every time sombody turns on the set, I go into the other room and
read a book.
-- Groucho Marx Society and Culture
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
-- Abraham Lincoln I don't know as much as God, but I know more than He did at my age.
-- Henry Kissinger "Where there's a marriage without love there will be love without marriage." (Benjamin Franklin) "Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships." (Sharon Stone) Research is the act of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
-- Plutarch Society and Culture University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
- Henry Kissinger "Club Secretary: I say, Lawrence. You are a clown!
Lawrence: We can't all be lion tamers." (Thomas Edward Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and
blows up the bonfire.
-- François de La Rouchefoucauld Society and Culture
"Hold the fort! I am coming!" (General William Tecumseh Sherman) "I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we've been voting for boobs
long enough."
-- Arizona senatorial candidate Claire Sargent, on women candidates Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
-- Mark Twain Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong
and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides; in heaven God watches. And destiny
is but th The nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort; yes, than the nation's life itself.
-- Woodrow Wilson Society and Culture More light!
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, dying words If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them
missionaries for dinner.
-- H. L. Mencken The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical
deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
-- Albert Einstein Society and Culture
For a male and female to live continuously together is...biologically speaking, an extremely
unnatural condition.
-- Robert Briffault "Pleasant words are a honeycomb, Sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." (Bible, Proverbs 16:24) The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are the more leisure we have.
-- William Hazlitt Marital Freedom: The liberty that allows a husband to do exactly that which his wife pleases.
-- Anonymous "In some ways, I never outgrew my adolescence. I wake up in the morning and think, 'Oh my God, I'm late for a math test!' But then I say, 'Wait a minute. I'm 40.'" (Daniel Clowes) Society and Culture "Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains." (Karl Marx) The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline
luggage.
-- Mark Russell "Do you know that places only yield up their secrets, their most profound mysteries, to those who are just passing through?" (Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh) Society and Culture
"I am not afraid of tomorrow, for i have seen yesterday and i love today!" (William Allen White) "I love to doubt as well as know." (Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321) "Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it." (Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 1872-1970) In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how
many can get through to you.
-- Mortimer J. Adler The crime bill passed by the Senate would reinstate the Federal death penalty for certain violent
crimes: assassinating the President; hijacking an airliner; and murdering a government poultry
inspe Society and Culture Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.
-- Aristotle The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.
-- Emerson, Ralph Waldo The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going
to make fun of you.
-- Woody Allen Society and Culture
Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.
-- Thornton Wilder The executive exists to make sensible exceptions to general rules.
-- Elting E. Morison Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.
-- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal anti-smoking
campaign Epperson's law:
When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably something his wife can beat him at. May you be blessed with a wife so healthy and strong, she can pull the plow when your horse drops dead. Society and Culture Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
-- Mark Twain If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model.
Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush...
-- Dawn French The real questions are the ones that obtrude upon your consciousness whether you like it or not,
the ones that make your mind start vibrating like a jackhammer, the ones that you 'come to terms
with Society and Culture
The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins.
-- Heywood Brown "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." (Groucho Marx) It takes two to speak truth --One to speak, and another to hear.
-- Henry David Thoreau Love matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn
themselves to a life of vinegar.
-- Countess of Blessington "When once you have tasted flight you will always walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward: for there you have been and there you will always be." (Henry Van Dyke) Society and Culture Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for the appointment by the corrupt few.
-- George Bernard Shaw "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) "In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself." (John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley) Society and Culture
"You exist only in what you do." (Federico Fellini) Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
-- Thomas Dekker Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
- George Eliot "I am the lizard king. I can do anything." (James Douglas Morrison, lead singer of The Doors) Society and Culture The only thing you take with you when you're gone is what you leave behind.
-- John Allston The trouble with children is that they are not returnable.
-- Quentin Crisp When a girl marries she exchanges the attention of many men for the inattention of one.
-- Helen Rowland Society and Culture
