If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn
fool about it.
-W.C. Fields

I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth, even if it costs them their jobs. 
- Sam Goldwyn

"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." -- George Bernard
Shaw

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.
- Henry L. Mencken

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.
-- Sir Winston Churchill

"How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.”
-- Oscar Wilde

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable." 
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Money can't buy love, but it improves your bargaining position.
-- Christopher Marlowe

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.
-- Joseph Stalin

Liberal institutions straightaway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established; once this is attained no more grevious and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
-- Nathaniel Borenstein

The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec.
-- Marcus Dolengo

Perl - The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
-- Keith Bostic

If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.
-- Robert Sewell

I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.
-- Rob Pike, commenting on the X Window System.

There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
-- Jeremy S. Anderson

I do not know the American gentleman, god forgive me for putting two such words together.
-- Charles Dickens

The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing.
-- Gamal Abdel Nasser

In America sex is an obsession; in other parts of the world it is a fact.
-- Marlene Dietrich

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
-- King Edward VIII

In America, the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
-- Oscar Wilde

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
-- Albert Einstein

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual intervention of civilization.
-- George Clemenceau

The French think they're better than us [Americans]. And in many ways, they are. But they're also shits. 
-- Mel Galun

The Germans are like women, you can scarcely ever fathom their depths — they haven't any.
-- Friedriech Nietzche, Ecce Homo

...allow neither rich men nor beggars. These two estates, which are naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the common good; from the one come the friends of tyranny, and from the other tyrants. It is always between them that public liberty is put up to auction; the one buys, and the other sells.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
-- Albert Einstein.

You don't have to be crazy to be a Zionist, but it certainly helps.
-- Chaim Weizmann

Some people like Jews and some do not; but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has ever appeared in the world.
-- Winston Churchill

The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.
-- John Adams

How can you be expected to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?
-- Charles De Gaulle

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in an argument.
-- Robert Frost

Love alone dominates fear.
-- Zohar, Exodus

We are even more anxious to hide our love than our hatred.
-- Boerne, Denkrede auf Jean Paul

Men do not sacrifice their lives for reasonable things. They move mountains only under the imperative of love.
-- Baron, In Quest of Integrity

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
-- W. H. Auden

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fire.
-- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

Don't knock masturbation — it's sex with someone I love.
-- Woody Allen

The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it. 
- Woody Allen

"Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it's one of the best." -- Woody Allen 

"God created sex. Priests created marriage." -- Voltaire 

"Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions."
   -- Woody Allen

"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 
      
   "Sex between a man and a woman can be absolutely wonderful - provided you get between the right man and the right woman."
   -- Woody Allen 

"The important thing in acting is to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. If I have to laugh, I think of my sex life."
   -- Glenda Jackson
   
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
-- Oscar Wilde

If all the girls who attended the Harvard-Yale game were laid end to end, I wouldn't be surprised.
- Dorothy Parker




DEATH
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
-- Woody Allen

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
-- Sir Winston Churchill

It's not that I'm afraid to die. It's just that I don't want to be there when it happens.
-- Woody Allen

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" — a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-- Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
-- Mark Twain

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
    Sir Winston Churchill, on the eve of his 75th birthday

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
-- Henry Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams


EGOTISM
I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
-- George Bernard Shaw

The people is dead - Up with me!
-- Max Stirner, German nihilist, The Ego and His Own

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-- Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." 
-- Winston Churchill 

"There are many players, but they don't play chess they move pieces," 
-- Garry Kasparov

It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.
-- Muhammad Ali 



CRITICISM AND INSULTS
The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
-- D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
-- Dorothy Parker

"If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim." 
-- Margaret Thatcher

Once you've put one of his books down, you simply can't pick it up again.
-- Mark Twain 

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." 
-- T. S. Eliot 

"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger." 
-Franklin Jones 

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
    Sir Winston Churchill

I didn't like the play but then I saw it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up.
- Groucho Marx

The covers of this book are too far apart.
- Ambrose Bierce

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.
- Mark Twain

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken 

From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx

The problem with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
-- George Bernard Shaw

"She had a face of such immovable stupidity that it amounted to a sort of strange beauty." 
-- Muggeridge on Rosa Luxemborg

Mr Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has much to be modest about.
-- Sir Winston Churchill

"An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened, Atlee got out"
-- Sir Winston Churchill

Murray has no head - his neck just haired over.
- John L. Lewis, on Philip Murray

One could not even dignify him with the name of stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air.
- George Orwell, on Stanley Baldwin

When they circumcised Herbert Samuel, they threw away the wrong bit. 
- David Lloyd George, on Herbert Samuel 

He has no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.
- Louise Lamprey, on William McKinley

We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.
- Winston Churchill, on Ramsay MacDonald

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. So we were very often angry at each other.
- Charles DeGaulle


EDUCATION
"A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students."
   -- John Anthony Ciardi 

"Every man should have a college education in order to show him how little the thing is really worth."
   -- Elbert Hubbard 

"Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed."
   -- Robert Green Ingersoll 
   
"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." 
-- Oscar Wilde 

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-- Mark Twain 

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."
-- George Bernard Shaw 


HUMAN NATURE
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

There is scarcely a man sufficiently aware to know all the evil he does.
-- Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflexions ou Maximes Morales

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. 
-- Albert Einstein

"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on." 
-- Winston Churchill 

"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits."
 -- Albert Einstein 

"I believe I have found the missing link between animals and civilized man. It is us." 
-- Konrad Lorenz

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.
- Bertrand Russell




PRIDE
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo Galilei

The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, and it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.
-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan upon the passage of the Zionism Equals Racism resolution.

I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger.
-- Muhammad Ali

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.
-- William Gladstone, Speech on the Second Reform Bill

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. 
-- Winston Churchill




VIRTUE AND VICE
There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more. 
- Woody Allen

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
-- Mark Twain

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
-- Mark Twain 

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
    Sir Winston Churchill

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
-- Mark Twain 

"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed." 
-Mark Twain 

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
-- Rene Descartes, Le Discours de la Methode

All evils are equal when they are extreme.
-- Pierre Corneille, Horace

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.
-- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims


BITTERNESS
Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out.
-- Anton Chekhov

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
-- Albert Camus

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats." 
-- H. L. Mencken 

"Hell is other people." 
-- Jean-Paul Sartre 

True friends stab you in the front.
- Oscar Wilde

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
-- George Bernard Shaw


RELIGION
"God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh." 
-- Voltaire 

Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
-- Edward Gibbon

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
-- Oscar Wilde

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
   -- H. L. Mencken 
   
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
- Woody Allen

Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary.
- Oscar Wilde

If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
- Woody Allen

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
- George Bernard Shaw


UNCATEGORIZED
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
-- Joseph Stalin

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.
-- Voltaire

History is just one damned thing after another. 
-- Henry Ford

... it is important to realize that any lock can be picked with a big enough hammer.
-- Sun System & Network Administration Manual

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
-- Albert Einstein.

Woman is unspeakably more wicked than man, also cleverer. Goodness in woman is really nothing more than a form of degeneracy.
-- Friedrich Nietzche, Ecce Homo

Thought: Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.
-- Woody Allen

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded: dead.
-- Woody Allen.

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
-- e. e. cummings

A man must properly pay the fiddler. In my case it so happened that a whole symphony orchestra had to be subsidized.
-- John Barrymore

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
    Sir Winston Churchill

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.
-- Sir Winston Churchill 

There is a one line proof...if we start sufficiently far to the left.
-- Attributed to peter@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
-- Betrand Russell

Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.
- Rita Rudner

If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it.
- W.C. Fields

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
- Woody Allen





MARK TWAIN
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
-- Mark Twain 

When angry, count a hundred; when very angry, swear.
-- Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calender (March)

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
-- Mark Twain 

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
-- Mark Twain 

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.
-- Mark Twain 

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
-- Mark Twain 

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right.
-- Mark Twain 

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
-- Mark Twain 

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
-- Mark Twain 

No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.
-- Mark Twain 

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
-- Mark Twain 

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
-- Mark Twain 

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
-- Mark Twain 

They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
-- Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with copper, and beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him. 
-- Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
-- Mark Twain 

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
-- Mark Twain 

Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain

A verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when its all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they put German.
-- Mark Twain, Address to the Nineteenth Century Club

Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
-- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?
-- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-- Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.
-- Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

It can probably be shown through facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
--Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calender

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.
-- Mark Twain 

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
-- Mark Twain 

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
-- Mark Twain 


















Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.
- George Bernard Shaw

Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
- G. K. Chesterton

The House Beautiful is The Play Lousy.
- Dorothy Parker, on the play 'The House Beautiful'

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
- Henry L. Mencken

We must remember that for every instance of the government's demonstrating the intelligence of a yam, there is also an instance of the government's rising to the level of a far more complex vegetable, such as the turnip.
- Dave Barry

Calvin Coolidge didn't say much, and when he did, he didn't say much.
- Will Rogers, on Calvin Coolidge

How can they tell?
- Dorothy Parker, on hearing of Calvin Coolidge's death

If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone pulled him out, it would be a calamity.
- Benjamin Disraeli, on William Gladstone

I was raised in the Jewish tradition, taught never to marry a Gentile woman, shave on a Saturday night and, most especially, never to shave a Gentile woman on a Saturday night.
- Woody Allen

Does the Honorable Lady remember that she was an egg herself once: and very many members of all sides of this House regret that it was ever fertilized.
- Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, on Edwina Currie

The best thing about this group of candidates that only one of them can win.
- Will Rogers

The dirty work at political conventions is almost always done in the grim hours between midnight and dawn. Hangmen and politicians work best when the human spirit is at its lowest ebb.
- Russell Baker

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Yes, if every other form of persuasion fails.
- W.C. Fields, when asked if he believed in clubs for women

When I want to play with a prick, I'll play with my own.
- W.C. Fields, on being invited to play golf with someone he didn't like

Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
- Dave Barry

I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
- Dave Barry

Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children.
- Samuel Johnson, when asked whether any man of their own time could have written the poems of Ossian

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think that university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. 
- Flannery O'Connor

I think it would be a good idea.
- Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

It destroys one's nerve to be amiable every day to the same human being. 
- Benjamin Disraeli

A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp. 
- Joan Rivers

I’ve tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic and the others give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.
- Talullah Bankhead 

I was on stage last night talking. I said, "You know the diaphragm is a pain in the ass." Someone yelled out, "You are putting it in the wrong place."
- Carole Montgomery

As she lay there dozing next to me, one voice inside my head kept saying, "Relax...you are not the first doctor to sleep with one of his patients," but another kept reminding me, 'Howard, you are a veterinarian.'"
- Dick Wilson 

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
-- Sir Winston Churchill 

The fire which seems extinguished often slumbers beneath the ashes.
-- Pierre Corneille, Rodogune

[The] MacOS is like a dominatrix, if it sees PPC all it's thinking is 'you're an impotent son of a bitch and I'm putting a rubber band on you to cut off blood.'
-- Nick Denholm

Zool: So what's wrong with your fonts?
P-Gary: Don't ask me, ask Mr. Gates. While you're at it, you can ask him why Windows 95 found four new audio cards just because I reinstalled IE4.

Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
-- Anon.

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.
-- Steve Wozniak

A program is a spell cast over a computer, turning input into error messages.
-- Anon.

Real Programmers don't write in COBOL. COBOL is for wimpy applications programmers.

Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies.

Real Programmers don't write in PASCAL, or BLISS, or ADA, or any of those pinko computer science languages. Strong typing is for people with weak memories.

Real Programmers don't write specs - users should consider themselves lucky to get any programs at all and take what they get.

Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room.
-- Unknown 

If builders built buildings they way computer programmers write programs, the first woodpecker that came along would have destroyed all civilization.
-- Weinberg's Law

I don't understand all these theories all this economic blah blah blah.
-- President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana

Be cheerful while you are alive.
-- Ptahhotpe, The Maxims of Ptahhotpe

A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.
-- Guy Fawkes

The man who dies...rich dies disgraced.
-- Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth

"There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the
influence of imagination."
-Edmund Burke 

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however." 
-Richard Bach 

"Sex is the Tabasco Sauce which an adolescent national palate sprinkles on every course in the menu."
   -- Mary Day Winn 
   
"This might be like being in the essay finals against Hemmingway, or a paint-off against Picasso."
- Curt Schilling on pitching against Roger Clemens in the World Series

"Communism is like one big phone company." -- Lenny Bruce 

"When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros
and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should
come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life,
we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature."
-Sigmund Freud 

Soap and education are not as sudden as massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
-- Mark Twain, The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation

This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put.
-- Winston Churchill

"Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought to be prohibited;
when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them."
- Plato, The Republic, Book IV

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
-- Dr. Johnson 

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
-- Alfred Hitchcock

The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.
-- Fredrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." -- John Kenneth Galbraith 

"God is dead, but fifty thousand social workers have risen to take his place." -- J. D. McCoughey 

"Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists." -- John Kenneth Galbraith 

"An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex."
   -- Aldous Huxley 
   
"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable." 
-Seneca 

"Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." -- Gore Vidal 

"In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from." -- Peter Alexander Ustinov 

Every woman adores a fascist.
-- Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who wore fur boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him.
-- Anton Chekov

"Television is to news as bumperstickers are to philosophy." -- Richard M. Nixon 

To whom can I speak today?
I am heavy laden with trouble
Through lack of an intimate friend.
-- Anonymous, The Man Who Was Tired of Life

"A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought." -- Dorothy Leigh Sayers 

"Age is a high price to pay for maturity." -- Tom Stoppard 

"I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is - I could be just as proud for half the money."
   -- Arthur Godfrey 
   
When force is necessary, one should make use of it boldly, resolutely, and right to the end. But it is as well to know the limitations of force; to know where to blend force with manoeuvre, assault with conciliation.
-- Lev Trotsky, Was nun?

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy, the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.
-- John Galsworthy, Over the River

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of they friends of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occassions

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Bose

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book — what everyone else does not say in a whole book.
-- Friedrich Nietzche, The Twilight of the Idols

I was a-trembling because I'd got to decide forever betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied for a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, "All right, then, I'll go to hell."
-- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"Imagine the Creator as a stand up comedian - and at once the world becomes explicable." 
-H. L. Mencken 

You think its a conspiracy [by] the networks to put bad shows on TV. But the shows are bad because that's what people want. It's not like Windows users don't have any power. I think they are happy with Windows, and that is an incredibly depressing thought.
-- Steve Jobs

The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. I don't mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their products. I have no problem with their success — they've earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.
-- Steve Jobs

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.
-- Aristotle, Politics

"Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same."
- Scott Adams

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines." 
-- Frank Lloyd Wright 

The love of justice in most men is simply fear of suffering injustice.
-- Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
-- Sir Winston Churchill

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Frohliche Wissenschaft

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing." -- Oscar Wilde 

"Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again."
   -- Franklin P. Jones 
   
Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.
-- E.M. Forster, Howard's End

Oh how large the world is in the brightness of lamps! How small the world is in the eyes of recollection!
-- Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

But two people never dream the same dream, even if they are husband and wife.
-- Tomas Eloy Martinez, Santa Evita

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols

All this buttoning and unbuttoning.
-- 18th Century suicide note

"I writhe with the blows you put upon me...This is a poor man's freedom; the more he is beaten, 
the more he implores, and he prostrates himself as he goes down in the struggle, so that he may 
come back a little with his teeth."
Juvenal, Satires, III, 289-90, 299-301

"Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative." 
-Oscar Wilde 

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
-- G. K. Chesterton

Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned.
-- Heinrich Heine.

"In war there is much to be said for magnanimity in victory. But not before victory." 
-- Margaret Thatcher, "The Downing Street Years" (1993).

"Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled." -- William Blake 

"There are times when you have to choose between being a human and having good taste. " -- Bertolt Brecht 

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." 
-- Winston Churchill 

"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."
-- Max Weinreich 

There is no other way of guarding oneself against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

There is something terrible in the sacred love of the fatherland; it is so exclusive as to sacrifice everything to the public interest, without pity, without fear, without respect for humanity.
-- Saint-Just

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
- George Bernard Shaw

It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt.
- Thomas Paine, on John Adams

A man may be a fool and not know it - but not if he is married.
- Henry L. Mencken

He has the lucidity which is the byproduct of a fundamentally sterile mind.
- Aneurin Bevann, on Neville Chamberlain

Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.
- George Burns

To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable.
-- Edgar Bronfman

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for
happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
-- Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880)
    
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
-- Oscar Levant


A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
-- Gian Vincenzo Gravina (1664 - 1718)