"Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know." (Gilbert Keith Chesterton) Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first
comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or
theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.
-- George Santayana But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near.
- Andrew Marvell Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.
-- Karl Wallenda Society and Culture He who awaits much can expect little.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez 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 "Avoid providing material for the drama that is always stretched tight between parents and children; it uses up much of the children's strength and wastes the love of the elders, which acts and warms Society and Culture
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
-- Alec Bourne, A Doctor's Creed "A man who flies from his fear may find he has only taken a shortcut to meet it." (John Ronald Reuel Tolkien) Where there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
-- Benjamin Franklin "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones." (William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar. Act iii. Sc. 2.) Society and Culture The marriage of Marxism and feminism has been like the marriage of husband and wife depicted
in English common law: Marxism and feminism are one, and that one is Marxism.
-- Heidi Hartmann, The Unha The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the
false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.
-- Salvador Dali 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 Society and Culture
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage, they are giving evidence at an
inquest.
-- H. L. Mencken And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.
-- The Beatles, The last lyric of their last song "The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all." (Harry S. Truman) Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
-- Gandhi Books had instant replay long before televised sports.
-- Bern Williams Society and Culture "Fake is as old as the Eden tree." (George Orson Welles) In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose
shoulders we stand.
-- Gerald Holton I like nonsense -- it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way
of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope...and that enables you to laugh at all Society and Culture
blah "Each friend represents a world in us; a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only in meeting them that a new world is born." (Anais Nin) "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." (James Madison) "There is no such thing as a person that nothing has happened to, and each person's story is as different as his fingertips." (Elsa Lanchester) God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at
the same time.
- Robin Williams, commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair Even a band of angels can turn ugly and start looting if enough angels are unemployed and
hanging around the Pearly Gates convinced that all the succubi own all the liquor stores in
Heaven.
-- P. J Society and Culture I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.
-- Oscar Wilde This is a test. It is only a test. Had it been an actual job, you would have received raises,
promotions, and other signs of appreciation.
-- Anonymous A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) Society and Culture
A man can't get rich if he takes proper care of his family.
-- Navaho saying Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
-- Herbert Hoover Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
-- Mark Twain "He who speaks of what he knows not only works hard to portray his ignorance." (Joseph Muchemi) Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to
be grateful.
-- Phyllis McGinley Society and Culture If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.
-- Kingsley Amis blah "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." (Steve Roland Prefontaine) Thomas Jefferson--still surv...
-- John Adams, dying words Society and Culture
"Goodwill is the only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy." (Mrshall Field, businessman and philanthropist) "Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it." (John Quincy Adams) The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may
well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can
decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen Marriage is a great institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
-- Marx Groucho, the film "Animal Crackers" Society and Culture In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
-- Albert Einstein "A friendship that exacts oneness of opinion and conduct is not worth much." (Mohandas Gandhi, In Search of the Supreme) Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you
get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a
Society and Culture
The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs." (Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol's Exposures, 1980) It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
- George Bernard Shaw Harpo, she's a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one.
-- Oscar Levant, to Harpo Marx upon meeting Harpo's fiancee "One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Society and Culture I was nauseous and tingly all over... I was either in love or I had smallpox.
-- Woody Allen "I have an unfortunate personality." (George Orson Welles) The nourishment is palatable.
-- Millard Fillmore, dying words Society and Culture
Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the
top.
-- Ed Abbey It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four
percent of the people.
-- Gore Vidal The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this
is true.
-- James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion "People expect a certain reaction from a business, and when you pleasantly exceed those expectations, you've somehow passed an important psychological threshold." (Richard Thalheimer, president, The "Crime like death is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims." (Charles Dickens, 1812-70, Oliver Twist) Society and Culture There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the
instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
-- Honore de Balzac 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 Society and Culture
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
-- Oscar Wilde "They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." (Andy Warhol) 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 "It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company." (George Washington) If ever I get married again it would have to be under an anaesthetic.
-- Marie Tonkin Society and Culture Ambition is not a vice of little people.
-- Michel de Montaigne Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open. You're able to
benefit from the unique viewpoints of others, without being crippled by your own judgment.
-- Ralph Mars "As is our confidence, so is our capacity." (William Hazlitt) Society and Culture
Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the
face of this earth.
-- Albert Einstein Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to
be grateful.
-- Phyllis McGinley Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do and I gave the
commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete
answer. In fact, women's total ins We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?
- Niels Bohr Always behave like a duck--keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil
underneath.
-- Jacob Braude Society and Culture Nuns: Women who marry God. If they divorce Him, do they get half the universe? "Dream as if you'll live forever; live as if you'll die tomorrow." (James Dean) "You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you remain always a pupil." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Society and Culture
I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.
-- Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, explaining why we should export toxic
wastes to Third Wo Marriage still confers one very special privilege - only a married person can get divorced. "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd." (Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 1872-1970) Love is shown in your deeds, not in your words.
-- Fr. Jerome Cummings The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
- Charles de Gaulle Society and Culture To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it more fit for its
prime function of looking forward.
-- Margaret Fairless Barber Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.
-- Mary Roberts Rhinehart Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
- Auric Goldfinger, in Goldfinger by Ian L. Fleming Society and Culture
