"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise." (Alice Walker) America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a
chair.
-- Arnold Toynbee "Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." (George Washington) The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to
passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are . . .
grand The only thing that holds a marriage together is the husband bein' big enough to keep his mouth
shut, to step back and see where his wife is wrong.
-- Archie Bunker, character on "All in the Family, Society and Culture If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience.
- W.B. Prescott There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.
-- Fred Hoyle Society and Culture
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
-- Jilly Cooper "Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong." (Muhammad Ali) "The order of the world is always right - such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin." (Jean Baudrillard) Fine art and pizza delivery: what we do falls neatly in between.
-- David Letterman A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman
is one who can find such a man.
-- Lana Turner Society and Culture The promises of maniacs, like those of women, are not safely relied upon.
-- Joseph Heller, God Knows He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful.
-- Sydney Smith, referring to Macaulay Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw Society and Culture
"He who speaks of what he knows not only works hard to portray his ignorance." (Joseph Muchemi) Now is the time for all good men to come to.
-- Walt Kelly "The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?" (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles) Fighting is essentially a masculine idea; a woman's weapon is her tongue.
-- Hermione Gingold Say goodbye to the oldies, but goodies, because the good old days weren't always good and
tomorrow aint as bad as it seems.
-- Billy Joel Society and Culture "There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it." (Christopher Darlington Morley) "In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) 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 Society and Culture
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 Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in
opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.
-- Sydney Smith Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera.
- James Stephens It depends on your definition of asleep. They were not stretched out. They had their eyes closed.
They were seated at their desks with their heads in a nodding position.
-- John Hogan, Commonwealth "Commit yourself to quality from day one ... it's better to do nothing at all than to do something badly." (Mark McCormack) Society and Culture Our own heart, and not other men's opinions form our true honor.
-- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor If a man does his best, what else is there?
- General George S. Patton If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.
-- Francis Bacon Society and Culture
When in 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 H What if it was cats who invented technology... would they have tv shows starring rubber sqeak
toys?
-- Douglas Coupland The theory used to be you marry an older man because they are more mature. The new theory is
that men don't mature. So you might as well marry a younger one.
-- Anonymous If your professor wrote it, it's as near to the truth as you ever need to get.
-- John Watson, University of Canterbury The only thing worse than a man you can't control is a man you can.
-- Margo Kaufman Society and Culture Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive.
-- Anaïs Nin Someday is not a day of the week.
-- Anon. My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the
slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional
convi Society and Culture
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.
-- Clarence Darrow "Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.
-- Diane Ackerman If I tell a lie it's only because I think I'm telling the truth.
-- Phil Gaglardi, Minister of Highways, British Columbia, Canada If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.
-- Scott Adams Society and Culture "Give me liberty or give me death." (Patrick Henry) Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas
doctors rob you and kill you too.
-- Anton Chekhov Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche Society and Culture
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
-- Lucille S. Harper "One of the good things about low self-esteem is never having rain hit you in the face." (John A. Simone Jr.) The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.
- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and
begin slitting throats.
- Henry Louis Mencken If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed
-- Kate Halverson Society and Culture There are only two things a child will share willingly communicable diseases and his mother's
age.
-- Modern Maturity Joy is but the sign that creative emotion is fulfilling its purpose.
-- Charles Du Bos "One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Society and Culture
To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it;
whenever you're right, shut up.
-- Ogden Nash The democratic theory is that if you accumulate enough ignorance at the polls, you produce
intelligence.
-- Philo Vance What's another word for "Thesaurus?"
-- Steven Wright The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.
- Henry Kissinger "I was a total loner, not by self-design. I just didn't know what the hell to say to people. I was so shy. I used to stammer and lisp and dribble at the mouth." (Sir Anthony Hopkins, on his youth) Society and Culture "If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change." (John A. Simone Sr.) As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
-- Proverbs 23:7 "I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats." (Woody Allen, in regard to the KKK) Society and Culture
"A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." (James Joyce) Mary had a little lamb and the doctor fainted.
-- Anonymous Always behave like a duck--keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil
underneath.
-- Jacob Braude "The perception of beauty is a moral test." (Henry David Thoreau) Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
--Anon. Society and Culture Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.
-- Baskins Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.
-- Dr. Karl Menninger When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with
the buttered side down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the 2 will hover,
Society and Culture
"Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts." (Henry B. Adams) You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true.
-- Richard Bach Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does
not change his mind.
-- Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks The English country gentleman galloping after a fox--the unspeakable in full pursuit of the
uneatable.
-- Oscar Wilde In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
- Martin Luther King Jr. Society and Culture "If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world." (Blaise Pascal) While we are postponing, life speeds by.
- Seneca (3BC - 65AD) Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards.
-- Benjamin Franklin Society and Culture
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works." (Michael Douglas, as Gordon Gekko, Wall Street, 1987) "Small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas." (Anonymous) The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
-- Winston Churchill Considering the flames and intolerance, shouldn't USENET be spelled ABUSENET?
-- Michael Meissner Society and Culture Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of
sin.
-- John Von Neuman "Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain." (Johann Christian Friedrich von Schiller, 1759-1805, The Maid of Orleans. Act iii. Sc. 6.) "Things do not change, we change." (Henry David Thoreau) Society and Culture
