Charade's Quote Collection: (last updated 07-23-1998)

       The precision and source of all of these quotes have not been confirmed in all cases. I do try to be accurate, and will remove or append quotes when presented with sufficient evidence that doing so will improve this list. To the best of my knowledge, the quotations on this page are accurate. However, it is incumbent upon the reader to verify the correctness and sources of these quotes if they wish to use them in any capacity where authenticity counts. I would appreciate being contacted by anyone with information that suggests that any of these quotes are either incorrectly stated, inappropriately attributed, or apocryphal. Some of the quotes (last section) are unattributed. If you know the proper source, please let me know. (And, thanks to all of those who helped improve this collection.) As much as I would like to be accurate with these quotes, this collection represents the efforts of my interest, and not my pursuit of scholarly excellence with respect to collecting quotes.

Links2 Go Key Resource - Dates and Quotations        The ideas and beliefs expressed in these quotations do not necessarily reflect my own views, though some do. I have selected quotes for many different reasons. Some were chosen not so much for what they said as how they said it. Others were chosen because I considered them thought provoking, though I may not agree with their content. Some are simply amusing and are selected for entertainment value; others perhaps because of the sense of irony conveyed in the knowledge of who made the quote. And of course, some were chosen because I feel they serve as an example of what to be wary of in others. I claim no copyright to this collection. I would ask, however, that if anyone distributes this quote collection as a whole, you indicate its source and include these disclaimers.

       The Quotations Page of my Useful Stuff Pages has more quote resources and a random quote generator.



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 The Mining Co. - A Cool Site I am the Neuroscience Guide at the Mining Co.
Stop by and visit my site.
A slipping sear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit.
- August 1993 issue of PS magazine, the Army's preventive maintenance magazine

Your food stamps will be stopped effective March, 1992, because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.
- From a letter to a dead person from the Greenville County (S.C.) Department of Social Services.

Students today can't prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend upon their slates which are more expensive. What will they do when the slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write!
- Teacher's Conference, 1703.
Students today depend upon paper too much. They don't know how to write on a slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They can't clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?
- Principal's Association, 1815.

Bereavement leave is limited to 3 days immediately following the death of the family member and must be scheduled in advance.
- from an employee handbook of a Pittsburgh (Oakland area) hospital.

The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words.
- From an article on the growth of federal regulations in the Oct. 24th issue of National Review

In this chapter, the present tense includes the past and future tenses, and the future, the present; the masculine gender includes the feminine, and the feminine, the masculine, and the singular includes the plural, and the plural the singular.
- Code of Dept. of Consumer Affairs, CA

The patriot must always be prepared to defend his country from his government.
- Ed Abbey

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
- Edward Abbey

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.
- Edward Abbey

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
- Dean Acheson

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
- Lord Acton

Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- First Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg - Acton

There is a theory that states: 'If anyone finds out what the universe is for it will disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable.' There is another theory that states: 'This has already happened....'
- Douglas Adams

In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea.
- Douglas Adams

Prohibition is an awful flop. We like it. It can't stop what it's meant to stop. We like it. It's left a trail of graft and slime It don't prohibit worth a dime It's filled our land with vice and crime, Nevertheless, we're for it.
- Franklin P. Adams, 1931, (newspaperman) in the New York World, following release of the report of the Wickersham Commission

There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.
- George Matthew Adams

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
- Henry Adams (1838-1918)

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
- Henry Adams

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
- Henry Brooks Adams

Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you.
- Joey Adams

As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.
- John Adams

There is but one element of government. and that is THE PEOPLE. From this element spring all governments.
- John Adams (1735-1826), Letter to John Taylor, 1814

It is not only [the trial juror's] right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.
- John Adams

I inhabit a week, frail, decayed tenement; battered by the winds and broken in on by the storms, and, from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair.
- John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848

Organic chemistry is the study of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
- Mike Adams

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
- Samuel Adams

When a man's willing and eager, the gods join in.
- Aeschylus

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
- Aesop

Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant or an enemy, must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves.
- Aesop

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
- African Proverb

Every great scientific truth goes through three stages: First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly, they say they always believed it.
- Jean Louis Agassiz (1807-1883)

Hold tenderly that which you cherish, for it is precious and a tight grip may crush it. Do not let the fear of dropping it cause you to hold it too tightly: the chances are, it's holding you, too.
- Bob Alberti

The man who has no imagination has no wings.
- Muhammad Ali

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
- Muhammad Ali (also see Robert Louis Stevenson)

Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you are free to live.
- Saul Alinsky

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
- Fred Allen

I didn't accept it. I received it.
- Richard Allen, National Security Advisor to President Reagan, explaining the $1000 in cash and two watches he was given by two Japanese journalists after he helped arrange a private interview for them with First Lady Nancy Reagan.

Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances of having a date on Saturday night.
- Woody Allen

I don't want to be immortal through my work. I want to be immortal through not dying.
- Woody Allen

If God does exist, I don't think he's vengeful; I just think he's an underachiever.
-Woody Allen

Life is a concentration camp. You're stuck here and there's no way out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors.
- Woody Allen

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
- Woody Allen

Masturbation, don't knock it, it's sex with someone you love.
- Woody Allen (b. 1935)

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
- Woody Allen

My success has allowed me to strike out with a higher class of women.
- Woody Allen

Today I saw a red-and-yellow sunset and thought, how insignificant I am! Of course, I thought that yesterday, too, and it rained.
- Woody Allen

Satire is great, but for Nazis you use baseball bats and broken bottles.
- Woody Allen

Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.
- Woody Allen

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

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

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

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
- Woody Allen

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
- Woody Allen

When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
- Woody Allen

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

There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network.
- Guy Almes

If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.
- Kingsley Amis

I can't take a well-tanned person seriously.
- Cleveland Amory

The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with an idea.
- ancient computer saying

I can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton.
- Ian Anderson

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
- Poul Anderson

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

Better to have bread and an onion with peace than stuffed fowl with strife.
- Arab proverb

The whisper of a pretty girl can be heard further than the roar of a lion.
- Arabian Proverb

You're aware the boy failed my grade school math class, I take it? And not that many years later he's teaching college. Now I ask you: Is that the sorriest indictment of the American educational system you ever heard? [pauses to light cigarette.] No aptitude at all for long division, but never mind. It's him they ask to split the atom. How he talked his way into the Nobel prize is beyond me. But then, I suppose it's like the man says, It's not what you know...
- Karl Arbeiter: former teacher of Albert Einstein

We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
- Apocryphal. Attributed to Petronius Arbiter, 210 BC. More likely from Robert Townsend, 'Up The Organization' 1970.

Give me a lever and place to stand, and I will move the world.
- Archimedes

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
- Aristophanes c. 450-385 BC, Knights [424]b.c.] l. 217

A proper wife should be as obedient as a slave... The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities - a natural defectiveness.
- Aristotle

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
- Aristotle

A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.
- Aristotle

Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not easy.
- Aristotle

Education is the best provision for old age.
- Aristotle

How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms?
- Aristotle

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Man is by nature a political animal.
- Aristotle

The gods too are fond of a joke.
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Wit is educated insolence.
- Aristotle

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
- Aristotle

Scientific apparatus offers a window to knowledge, but as they grow more elaborate, scientists spend ever more time washing the windows.
- Isaac Asimov

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
- Isaac Asimov

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm.... that's funny...'
- Isaac Asimov

The only thing I like about rich people is their money.
- Lady Nancy Astor

Though science can cause problems, it is not by ignorance that we will solve them.
- Isaac Asimov

University President: Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now the Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers . . . and the Department of Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers.
- Told by Isaac Asimov

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
- W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
- W.H. Auden, 'Shorts'

We are here to help others, but what the others are here for I cannot say.
- W.H. Auden

A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.
- St. Augustine

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.
- St. Augustine

To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.
- St. Augustine

I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.
- Jane Austen

You white people are so strange. We think it is very primitive for a child to have only two parents.
- Australian Aboriginal Elder

It's lots of fun to blow bubbles but it's wiser to prick them before someone else tries to.
- Oswald Avery

I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
- Theresa of Avila

The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.
- Bernard Avishai

You're born with intelligence, but not with ethics.
- Massad Ayoob

I resent 'experts' who have never faced deadly threat, yet who tell me - and you - that we should not consider a response of equal power against those who would threaten our lives.
- Massad Ayoob, 'The Truth About Self Protection'

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

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
- Richard Bach

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
- Francis Bacon

Knowledge itself is power.
- Francis Bacon

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
- Francis Bacon

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) Literary Studies

What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.
- Pearl Bailey

I can't stand this proliferation of paperwork. It's useless to fight the forms. You've got to kill the people producing them.
- Vladimir Bakaidze, General Director of Ivanovo Machine Building Works.

War would end if the dead could return.
- Stanley Baldwin

History does not repeat itself. Historians repeat each other.
- Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)

You know, it takes forever to get out of Texas. And then when you do, you're in Oklahoma.
- David Ball, country singer.

A politician is a person who can make waves and then make you think he's the only one who can save the ship.
- Ivern Ball

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.
- Honore de Balzac

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
- Tallulah Bankhead

Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work.
- Clive Barker, 'Jihad'

Somebody hits me, I'm going to hit him back. Even if it does look like he hasn't eaten in a while.
- Charles Barkley, after blatantly elbowing an Angolan basketball opponent in the Olympics

Television is the first truly democratic culture; the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
- Clive Barnes

How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?
- Last words of P.T. Barnum

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.
- Mildred Barthel

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
- Roy Baty (Nexus6, N6MAA10816, Combat) in 'Blade Runner'

To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.
- Bernard Baruch, 1870-1965

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.
- Basho

Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
- Louise Beal

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in their struggle for independence.
- Charles Austin Beard, American Historian, 1874-1948

In things pertaining to enthusiasm, no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
- H.W. Beecher

In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.
- Henry Ward Beecher

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
- Henry Ward Beecher

Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.
- Henry Ward Beecher

I value kindness to humans first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer.
- Brendan Behan

...the myth of socialism is far stronger than the reality of capitalism. That is because capitalism is not really an ism at all. It is what people do if you leave them alone.
- Arnold Beichmen, Hoover Institute Fellow

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
- Alexander Graham Bell

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by then I was too famous.
- Robert Benchley

Eagles may soar but weasels aren't sucked into jet engines!
- John Benfield

I really don't deserve this, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.
- Jack Benny, upon receiving an award

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
- Thomas Berger

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
- Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)

Time is the best teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all its pupils.
- Hector-Louis Berlioz

One day the President and Mrs. Coolidge were visiting a government farm. Soon after their arrival they were taken off on separate tours. When Mrs. Coolidge passed the chicken pens she paused to ask the man in charge if the rooster copulates more than once each day. 'Dozens of times,' was the reply. 'Please, tell that to the President,' Mrs. Coolidge requested. When the President passed the pens and was told about the roosters, he asked, 'Same hen every time?' 'Oh no, Mr. President, a different one each time.' The President nodded slowly, then said, 'Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.'
- G. Bermant

The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from winch the virtues most valuable to investigators in physiology and medicine are derived.
- Claude Bernard, 'An Introduction to Experimental Medicine' 1865

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.
- Yogi Berra

Ninety percent of the game is half mental.
- Yogi Berra

We made too many wrong mistakes.
- Yogi Berra

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
- Yogi Berra

You can observe a lot just by watchin'.
- Yogi Berra

Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
- Ambrose Bierce, 'The Devil's Dictionary'

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
- Ambrose Bierce

Conservative, n. - A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
- Ambrose Bierce

Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
- Ambrose Bierce, 'The Devil's Dictionary'

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
- Ambrose Bierce

Lawyer, n. One skilled in the circumvention of the law.
- Ambrose Bierce

Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
- Ambrose Bierce, 'The Devil's Dictionary' (1911)

Saints: a dead sinner revised and edited.
- Ambrose Bierce, 'The Devil's Dictionary'

There's nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know.
- Ambrose Bierce

Once a python weighs more than half the weight of his keeper, the potential of dangerous constriction becomes very real; snakes of this size should not be handled alone. Once a python outweighs his keeper, fatal constriction is at the discretion of the python.
- "Big Snake Bites, Part II," The Vivarium, quoted in "LA Times"

I have no use for adventures. They're nasty disturbing things that make you late for dinner.
- Bilbo

I like my penis, but I do not think it requires boldface, capitalization, italics, or other forms of typographical emphasis.
- Eugene Bild, Chicago Reader

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
- Josh Billings

The best way to convince a fool he is wrong is to let him have his way.
- Josh Billings

An ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
- Augustine Birrell

A little caution outflanks a large cavalry.
- Bismarck

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 (b. 1928)

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
- William Blake

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
- William Blake

I do not like this word 'bomb.' It is not a bomb, it is a device which is exploding.
- Jacques Le Blanc, French ambassador to New Zealand speaking to the (NZ) National Press Club about French nuclear tests in the South Pacific; reported by NPR.

Dogs come when they are called; cats take a message and get back to you.
- Mary Bly

Your own happiness increases the more you give your happiness away.
- Bruce Bogaert

A physicist visits a colleague and notices a horseshoe hanging on the wall above the entrance. 'Do you really believe that a horseshoe brings luck?' he asks. 'No,' replies the colleague, 'but I've been told that it works even if you don't believe in it.'
- (Told by) Niels Bohrs

Never express yourself more clearly than you think.
- N. Bohr

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

You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.
- Neils Bohr to Albert Einstein

If you think education is expensive - try ignorance.
- Derek Bok

The grass is always greener over the septic tank.
- Erma Bombeck

Ability is nothing without opportunity.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

Glory is fleeting but obscurity is forever.
- Napolean Bonaparte

In politics an absurdity is not a handicap.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

People just don't know how to handle it if a woman uses smarts and brains rather than tits.
- Tracy Bonahm

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
- William H. Borah

Guidelines for bureaucrats: 1) When in charge ponder 2) When in trouble delegate 3) When in doubt mumble.
- James H. Boren

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

Sometimes I fear that, if Harvard does not give up trying to turn itself from an Institution of Learning into an Educational Institution, we may have a generation of professors whose duty it will be to disseminate information which they have not the time to acquire.
- Edwin G. Boring, from the preface of "Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology"

If you are not an idealist by the time you are twenty you have no heart, but if you are still an idealist by the time you are thirty, you don't have a head.
- Randolph Bourne

The function of Science Fiction is not to predict the future, but to prevent it.
- Ray Bradbury

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.
- F.H. Bradley

The most important political office is that of private citizen.
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Our government...teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
- Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Dissenting, Olmstead v. U.S., 277 US, 438 (1928)

Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
- Dick Brandon

We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so, we dilute the freedom this cherished emblem represents.
- Justice William Brennan

My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

Inform all the troops that communications have completely broken down.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.
- Peter Brimelow

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
- Mel Brooks

I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.
- Pierre-Paul Broca

Whenever people say we mustn't be sentimental, you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And, if they add, we must be realistic, they mean they are going to make money out of it.
- Brigid Brophy

Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.
- Dr. Joyce Brothers

Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.
- Henry Peter Brougham

If you can't return a favour, pass it on.
- A.L. Brown

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
- A. Whitney Brown

There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you.
- A. Whitney Brown, _The Big Picture_

You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners.
- Rita Mae Brown

Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.
- Rita Mae Brown

If the world were a logical place, men would ride sidesaddle.
- Rita Mae Brown

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
- Rita Mae Brown

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977

Think it more satisfactory to live richly than die rich.
- Sir Thomas Browne

Take away the right to say 'fuck' and you take away the right to say 'fuck the government.'
- Lenny Bruce

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
- Giordano Bruno (1548- burned at the stake, 1600)

No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
- William F. Buckley, Jr.

I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies.
- William F. Buckley

Believe nothing merely because you have been told it... Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings -- that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
- Buddha

If a viper lives in your room and you wish to have a peaceful sleep, you must first chase it out.
- Buddha (B.C. 568-488)

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.
- Buddha

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
- Buddha (B.C. 568-488)

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
- Buddha (B.C. 568-488)

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
- Warren Buffet, Washington Post

Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies.
- Bill Bulko

Horn broken. Watch for finger.
- Bumper Sticker

I brake for no apparent reason.
- Bumper Sticker

There's no government like no government.
- Bumper sticker, seen in Berkeley, CA

Your kid may be an honors student, but you're still an idiot.
- Bumper Sticker

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.
- Luther Burbank (1849-1926) born on Mar 7; U.S. naturalist

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

Comedy is tragedy plus time.
- Carol Burnett

I think it's beautiful the way the sun lights up the hair in your ears.
- Frank Burns on M.A.S.H.

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.
- Sir Richard F. Burton

A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.
- Robert Burton

I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell my children that, they just about throw up.
- Barbara Bush

People must be free to work, to save, to own their own home, to take risks, to invest in each other and, in essence, to control their own lives.
- George Bush

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
- Vannevar Bush

L'amour vient de l'aveuglement, l'amitie de la connaissance. (Love comes from blindness, friendship from knowledge.)
- Comte de Bussy-Rabutin

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.
- Comte de Bussy-Rabutin

Beware of the fool whose volume of words is as that of ten men, a hundred arrows shot and each one wide of the target. If thou art wise, shoot one and that one straight.
- Bustan of Sadi

I wouldn't ever set out to hurt anybody deliberately unless it was, you know, important - like a league game or something.
- Dick Butkus, Chicago Bears Linebacker

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
- James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) 'The Silver Stallion' (1926)

San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and never was.
- Herb Caen

The trouble with born-again christians is that they are a bigger pain the second time around.
- Herb Caen

Veni, vidi, vici. (I came, I saw, I conquered.)
- Gaius Julius Caesar (c. 102-44 BC)

Even granting that the genius subjected to the test of critical inspection emerges free from all error, we should consider that everything he has discovered in a given domain is almost nothing in comparison with what is left to be discovered.
- Santiago Ramón y Cajal

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
- Simon Cameron

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
- Joseph Campbell

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me, and just be my friend.
- Albert Camus

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
- Albert Camus

No, but they gave one to me anyway.
- LA Lakers rookie Elden Campbell, when asked if he earned a degree at Clemson University

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
- Al Capone (1899-1947)

In order to learn, one must change one's mind.
- Orson Scott Card

You can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
- Dale Carnegie

There exists a curious lot of witless or perhaps psychopathic characters who love to run over box turtles on the roads to hear them pop, and there is probably nothing more that can be done about these people except to hope they skid.
- Carr, 'Handbook of Turtles' 1952.

Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, nature immediately comes up with a better mouse.
- James Carswell

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.
- President Jimmy Carter, Aug. 2, 1977

I'm not cynical about marriage or romance. I enjoyed being married. And although being single was fun for a while, there was always the risk of dating someone who'd owned a lunch box with my picture on it.
- Shaun Cassidy, married at 21, divorced at 33.

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
- Dick Cavett, mocking the TV-violence debate. San Jose Mercury News, 5/4/94

If (O.J. Simpson) is acquitted, I will renounce my citizenship. And if I converse with him at a cocktail party, I will say, 'Well, there are so many people here who haven't murdered anyone. I think I'll go talk to them.' I'll also riot.
- Dick Cavett.

I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and they never believe me.
- Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour

All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.
- Cecil

Be slow of tongue and quick of eye.
- Cervantes

The world's costliest coffee, at $130 a pound, is called Kopi Luwak. Essentially, it is the droppings from a type of marsupial that eats only the very best coffee beans. Plantation workers track them and scoop their precious poop.
- Irena Chalmers, 'The Great Food Almanac'

American stuntmen are smart -- they think about safety. When they do a jump in a car, they calculate everything: the speed, the distance... But in Hong Kong, we don't know how to count. Everything we do is a guess. If you've got the guts, you do it. All of my stuntmen have gotten hurt. I say, 'Do it! Camera, action, jump!' Boom! Ambulance! Hospital! Next stuntman!
- Jackie Chan, actor, director, and stuntman.

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
- Coco Chanel

In the end, everything is a gag.
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

Home is wherever my books are.
- Charade

Have an adequate day.
- Charade

I new a girl that almost stole my heart; she was an Aztec priestess.
- Charade

I don't believe in atheism.
- Charade

It's not the cold, it's the lack of humidity.
- Charade

So you say you're a hypochondriac. How do you know you just don't think you're a hypochondriac?
- Charade

Learning is acquired by reading books; but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading man, and studying all the various editions of them.
- Lord Chesterfield

Ridicule is the best test of truth.
- Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Without education, we are in the horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
- G.K. Chesterton

One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.
- G. K. Chesterton

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The word good has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
- Chesterton

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.
- Chesterton

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

To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable. The highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by strategy.
- Ancient Chinese Warlord

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
- Chinese Proverb

Behind an able man there are always other able men.
- Chinese Proverb

Do not employ handsome servants.
- Chinese Proverb

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.
- Chinese Proverb

Enjoy yourself - it's later than you think.
- Chinese Proverb

He who sacrifices his conscience to ambition burns a picture to obtain the ashes.
- Chinese Proverb

If you bow at all, bow low.
- Chinese Proverb

If you stand straight, do not fear a crooked shadow.
- Chinese Proverb

If you suspect a man, don't employ him, and if you employ him, don't suspect him.
- Chinese Proverb

If you wish your merit to be known, acknowledge that of other people.
- Oriental Proverb

If your strength is small, don't carry heavy burdens. If your words are worthless, don't give advice.
- Chinese Proverb

In shallow waters, shrimps make fools of dragons.
- Chinese Proverb

Judge not the horse by his saddle.
- Chinese Proverb

Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
- Chinese Proverb

Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come.
- Chinese Proverb

Never be boastful; someone may come along who knew you as a child.
- Chinese Proverb

Never write a letter while you are angry.
- Chinese Proverb

One should be just as careful in choosing one's pleasures as in avoiding calamities.
- Chinese Proverb

Raise your sail one foot and you get ten feet of wind.
- Chinese Proverb

The palest ink is better than the best memory.
- Chinese Proverb

Talk does not cook rice.
- Chinese Proverb

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.
- Chinese Proverb

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.
- Chinese Proverb

The wise man learns more from his enemies than a fool does from his friends.
- Chinese Proverb

There is no economy in going to bed early to save candles if the result is twins.
- Chinese Proverb

Use power to curb power.
- Chinese Proverb

Water floats a ship Water sinks a ship.
- Chinese Proverb

What is told in the ear of a man is often heard a hundred miles away.
- Chinese Proverb

When you drink the water, remember the spring.
- Chinese Proverb

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
- Chinese Proverb

When you want to test the depths of a stream, don't use both feet.
- Chinese Proverb

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
- Avram Noam Chomsky

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
- Chang-tzu

If you say, "Would there were no wine" because of the drunkards, then you must say, going on by degrees, "Would there were no steel," because of the murderers, "Would there were no night," because of the thieves, "Would there were no light," because of the informers, and "Would there were no women," because of adultery.
- St. John Chrysostom: Homilies, c. 388

If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
- Chuang Tzu

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

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last.
- Winston Churchill

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill

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

I like a man who grins when he fights.
- Winston Churchill

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

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.
- Sir Winston Spencer Churchill 1874-1965, Roving Commission: My Early Life [1930]

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
- Winston Churchill

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

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
- Winston Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) _Address at Harrow School [October 29, 1941]

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the other forms which have been tried from time to time.
- Sir Winston Churchill

The Americans will always do the right thing... after they've exhausted all the alternatives.
- Winston Churchill

The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. Ignorance may deride it. But in the end, there it is.
- Winston Churchill

There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
- Winston Churchill

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill

They are just jealous because they don't have three wise men and a virgin in the whole organization.
- Mayor Vincent J. Ciarci, on the ACLU's suit to have a city nativity scene removed.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero

No sane man will dance.
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
- Cicero

The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero

The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperament of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.
- E.M. Cioran

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke, 'Profiles of the Future' 1962 (Clarke's Third Law)

But the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
- Arthur C. Clarke, 'Profiles of the Future' 1962 (Clarke's Second Law)

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
- Arthur C Clarke

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is a frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.
- Arthur C. Clarke

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- Arthur C. Clarke, 'Profiles of the Future' 1962 (Clarke's First Law)

(and he continues further) Perhaps the adjective `elderly' requires definition. In physics, mathematics, and astronautics it means over thirty; in the other disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties. There are, of course, glorious exceptions; but as every researcher just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty are good for nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory!
- Arthur C. Clarke, 'Profiles of the Future' 1962

(but, in rebuttal) When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion - the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.
- Isaac Asimov, 'Fantasy & Science Fiction' 1977

The shortest distance between two points is through Hell.
- Brian Clark

The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.
- Carl von Clausewitz

The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them.
- William Clayton

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
- Georges Clemenceau

Now, what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.
- Samuel Longhorn Clemmons (a.k.a. Mark Twain)

I don't believe The American people want a gelding in the White House.
- Grover Cleveland, then Presidential candidate when the news came out before the election of 1884 that he was supporting a 10-year-old illegitimate son.

It is better to be defeated standing for a high principle than to run by committing subterfuge.
- President Grover Cleveland

Honor lies in honest toil.
- Grover Cleveland

We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans...
- President William Jefferson Clinton, USA TODAY 11 Mar 1993

This is by far the largest group of radio and television correspondents ever assembled this far from a Los Angeles courtroom.
- President Clinton, surveying the crowd of 1,600 at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner (3/20/95).

It's like The Knack and The Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath.
- Kurt Cobain, lead singer and guitarist of Nirvana describing their group's musical style.

Everybody wants to see justice done, to somebody else.
- Bruce Cockburn

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
- Jean Cocteau

It is the worst oppression, that is done by colour of justice
- Lord Coke

If you would be well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of you; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable opinion of himself.
- Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834)

Every man has one thing he can do better than anyone else - and usually it's reading his own handwriting.
- G. Norman Collie

A man is as old as he's feeling. A women as old as she looks.
- Mortimer Collins, 1827-1876

I have never been hurt by anything I didn't say.
- Calvin Coolidge

You are not going to 'go forth.' You are going to take that damn hat off and you're going to get a job.
- Bill Cosby, Entertainer at a commencement Speech at Southern Methodist University, May 20th, 1995

We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money.
- Colonel David Crockett, Member of Congress from 1827-1935

Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.
- James B. Conant (1893-1978)

He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.
- Confucius.

Hear and you forget; see and you remember; do and you understand.
- Confucius

If we don't know life, how can we know death?
- Confucius

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.
- Confucius, Analects, VIII, c. 500 B.C

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
- Confucius

One hundred women are not worth a single testicle.
- Confucius

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.
- Confucius

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
- Confucius

Study the past if you would divine the future.
- Confucius (B.C. 551-479)

The end of the day is near when small men make long shadows.
- Confucius

The superior man is distressed by the limitation of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability he has.
- Confucius

To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.
- Confucius (B.C. 551-479)

Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.
- Confucius

If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.
- Confucius (B.C. 551-479)

Confucius say too much.
- Recent Chinese proverb

Sylvia's skin was exquisite, soft and pretty; Leonard loved the way it looked tacked up on his wall.
- Cynthia Conyers

Love may not make the world go round, but I must admit that it makes the ride worthwhile.
- Sean Connery

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
- Joseph Conrad

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
- Joseph Conrad

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
- Constitution of the United States of America

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
- Rich Cook

When large numbers of men are unable to find work, unemployment results.
- Calvin Coolidge

You can't know too much, but you can say too much.
- Calvin Coolidge

I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.
- Gary Cooper, on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind.

It's not fear of striking out that makes me reluctant to step up to the plate. It's the fear of getting hit in the head by a 90 mph fastball, the pitcher coming off of the mound to stomp me with her cleats while I am down, the rest of the opposing team rushing out of the dugout hurling insults as they kick me and spit on me, while all along the crowd in the stands is cheering them on and laughing at my failure. So, no, it's not the fear of striking out that keeps me from stepping up to the plate.
- Jim Copeland

What a fool cannot learn he laughs at, thinking that by his laughter he shows superiority instead of latent idiocy.
- M. Corelli

Once I was stoned.
- Corinthians 11:25

The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
- Norman Cousins

Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.
- Jacques Cousteau, 'Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence'

While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions.
- Stephen Covey

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.
- Frank Crane

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.
- Joan Crawford

Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
- Cree Indian Prophecy

No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good.
- Mandell Creighton (1843-1901)

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.
- Francis H.C. Crick

When the war finally came to an end I was at a loss as to what to do... I took stock of my qualifications. A not-very-good degree, redeemed somewhat by my achievements at the Admiralty. A knowledge of certain restricted parts of magnetism and hydrodynamics, neither of them subjects for which I felt the least bit of enthusiasm. No published papers at all... Only gradually did I realize that this lack of qualification could be an advantage. By the time most scientists have reached age thirty they are trapped by their own expertise. They have invested so much effort in one particular field that it is often extremely difficult, at that time in their careers, to make a radical change. I, on the other hand, knew nothing, except for a basic training in somewhat old-fashioned physics and mathematics and an ability to turn my hand to new things... Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice...
- Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit, Basic Books, New York, 1988, pp 15-16.

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
- Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld

Never keep up with the Jones. Drag them down to your level.
- Quetin Crisp

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"
- Quentin Crisp

When you go to court, you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
- Norm Crosby

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
- e. e. cummings

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
- Marie Curie

Numerical superiority is of no consequence. In battle, victory will go to the best tactician.
- G.A. Custer

People often mistake what I say for what I am thinking. .
- Idi Amin Dada

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
- John E.E. Dalberg, Lord Acton (1834-1902), "The History of Freedom in Antiquity"

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
- Salvador Dali

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 (5/11/1904-1989)

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.
- Salvador Dali (5/11/1904-1989)

The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
- Salvador Dali

The Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide conversation. The government may not, through the [Communications Decency Act], interrupt that conversation... As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion... The government, therefore, implicitly asks this court to limit both the amount of speech on the Internet and the availability of that speech. This argument is profoundly repugnant to First Amendment principles.
- U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell, 1996

Act so in the valley that you need not fear those who stand on the hill.
- A Danish proverb

The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.
- Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

He didn't say that. He was reading what was given to him in a speech.
- Richard Darman, director of OMB, explaining why President Bush wasn't following up on his campaign pledge that there would be no loss of wetlands.

Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails.
- Clarence Darrow

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
- Clarence Seward Darrow

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.
- Clarence Darrow

I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it.
- Clarence Darrow

Some day I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.
- Clarence Darrow (4/18/1857-1938)

To think is to differ.
- Clarence Darrow

When I was a boy, I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it.
- Clarence Darrow

A man who dares to waste an hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
- Charles Darwin

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
- Charles Darwin

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.
- Charles Darwin

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
- Charles Darwin

Criticizing lawyers for lawsuits is like criticizing linebackers for knocking people down. - Dale Dauten, Newspaper columnist

Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward

- Bill Davidsen

If you attack Stupidity you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life.
- Robertson Davies

Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines-- not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.
- Robertson Davies

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.
- Robertson Davies

Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone, but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
- Bette Davis

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.
- Miles Davis (5/25/1926-1991)

The rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million.
- Eugene V. Debs, US labor leader. (Note: Debs received one million votes in 1920 as candidate for US President, while serving a 10-year jail sentence for having said in June 1918: "Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder...the master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.")

We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
- Decca Recording Co., rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

It does not matter whether the cat is black or white. So long as it catches the mouse, it is a good cat.
- Deng Xiaoping

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.)
- Daniel Dennett, 'Consciousness Explained,' p. 177

There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.
- Daniel Dennett

A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
- Descartes

Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.
- Rene Descartes, 'Discours de la Methode'

Quite a number of people also describe the German classical author, Shakespeare as belonging to the English literature, because - quite accidentally born at Stratford-on-Avon, he was forced by the authorities of that country to write in English.
- 'Deutshcer Weckruf und Beobachter' 1940

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
- John Dewey, 1859-1952

If you aren't open minded, you aren't trying.
- DFL

Things that are expensive are good.
- Di

Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
- Phillip K. Dick

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
- Gordon R. Dickson

Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards.
- R.A. Dickson

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

Computer Science is not about computers, any more than astronomy is about telescopes.
- Edgar W. Dijkstra

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
- Edgar W. Dijkstra

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
- Phyllis Diller

I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.
- David Dinkins, New York City mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.

Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.
- Dionysius the Elder

Every woman should marry, and no man.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Justice is truth in action.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for truth.
- Benjamin Disraeli

Never complain and never explain.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
- Benjamin Disraeli

The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.
- Disraeli (1804-1881)

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
- Benjamin Disraeli

You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that.
- J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs

If there are no stupid questions, then what sort of questions do stupid people ask?
- Dogbert

I used to think that seniority was a terrible thing when I didn't have any.
- Senator Robert Dole, in interview on CNBC.

Confound those who have said our remarks before us.
- Aelius Donatus

Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea.
- Lou Dorfsman

Always remember, that someone, somewhere, is making a product that will make your product obsolete.
- Georges Doriot, founder of American R & D.

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
- Fedor Dostoevsky

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on Earth.
- Fedor Dostoevsky

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the roar of the ocean without the roar of its many waters.
- Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895)

This country is a one-party country. Half of it is called Republican and half is called Democrat. It doesn't make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians.
- Hugh Downs Co-host ABC-TV's 20/20, March 31, 1997

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
- Arthur Conan Doyle

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.
- Arthur Conan Doyle

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
- Will Durant

History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living.
- Lawerence Durrell

Something is either done or it is not done.
- Dwarven Proverb

Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
- Dykstra

They gave me a book of checks. They didn't ask for any deposits.
- Congressman Joe Early (D-Mass) at a press conference to answer questions about the House Bank Scandal.

I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.
- Clint Eastwood

I've got a firm policy on gun control. If there's a gun around, I want to be the one controlling it.
- Clint Eastwood

There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again.
- Clint Eastwood

I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.
- Clint Eastwood

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other alternatives.
- Abba Eban

Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.
- Abba Eban

People will inevitably associate me with my father, but I would not have anyone believe that I am trading on the name Edison. I would rather have you know me merely as the result of one of my father's earlier experiments.
- Charles Edison (son of the inventor), During his campaign for governor of New Jersey in 1940

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Thomas Alva Edison

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
- Thomas Alva Edison

Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work
- Thomas Alva Edison

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Edison

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison

What used to be called a prejudice is now called a null hypothesis.
- A.W.F. Edwards, Nature, 9th March 1971

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.
- Albert Einstein

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
- Albert Einstein

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

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.
- Albert Einstein

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
- Albert Einstein, (1879-1955)

Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

I am convinced that He does not play dice.
- Albert Einstein

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 (1879-1955)

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

I never thought that others would take them so much more seriously then I did.
- Albert Einstein, about his theories

If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber.
- Albert Einstein

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ... I get most joy in life out of music.
- Albert Einstein, (1879-1955)

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?.
- Albert Einstein

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
- Albert Einstein

It is the theory that decides what we can observe.
- Albert Einstein, quoted in Bruce Gregory 'Inventing Reality: Physics as Language'

Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.
- Albert Einstein

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
- Albert Einstein

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.
- Albert Einstein

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
- Albert Einstein

The prestige of the government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.
- Albert Einstein, 'My first impression of the U.S.A.' an interview for 'Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant' 1921. Appeared in 'Berliner Tageblatt' July 7, 1921. Reprinted in 'Ideas and Opinions' published by Bonanza Books.

The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The strength of the constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.
- Albert Einstein

[There is] a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens...
- Albert Einstein

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.
- Albert Einstein

Watch the stars, and from them learn. To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.
- Albert Einstein, (translation by Dave Fredrick)

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

When the solution is simple, God is answering.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
- Albert Einstein

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
- Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

When you appeal to force, there's one thing you must never do - lose.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Humankind cannot stand very much reality.
- T.S. Eliot

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
- T.S. Eliot

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

My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand.
- T.S. Eliot

Television is a medium of entertainment that permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time - and yet remain lonesome.
- T.S. Eliot

The two most common elements in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
- Harlan Ellison

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be and not seem.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of somebody's enthusiasm.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Society and Solitude' 1870

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The less government we have the better.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

The louder he talks of honour, the faster we count our spoons.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only sin we never forgive each other is difference of opinion.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

The only way to have a friend is to be one.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
- English Professor, Ohio University

Scitum est inter caecos luscum regnare posse. (It is well known, that among the blind the one-eyed man is king.)
- Gerard Didier Erasmus (c. 1465-1536)

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
- P. Erdos

The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.
- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
- Susan Ertz (1894-1985) British novelist

I don't use drugs; my dreams are frightening enough.
- M.C. Escher

When spiders unite they can tie down a lion.
- Ethiopian proverb

Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.
- Euripides

You know what it's like to be dead. It's just like it was before you were born. Remember what it was like before you were born?
- Evan

When a woman behaves like a man, why can't she behave like a nice man?
- Dame Edith Evans

Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.
- Michael Faraday

In a Russian tragedy, everybody dies. In a Russian comedy, everybody dies too. But they die happy.
- Barry Farber, in the 'Journal of Petroleum Technology'

Don't worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it starts avoiding you.
- The Farmer's Almanac

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
- Farmer's Almanac, 1995

It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.
- William Faulkner

Just because information has been published doesn't mean it shouldn't be classified.
- Lincoln D. Faurer, NSA director

One of the indictments of civilization is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.
- William Feather

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
- James Feibleman

Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?
- Jules Feiffer

I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged.) Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But, I have a great vocabulary.
- Jules Feiffer

The big mistake that men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen and all of a sudden they've reached puberty, they believe that they like women. Actually, you're just horny. It doesn't mean you like women any more at twenty-one than you did at ten.
- Jules Feiffer (cartoonist)

If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!
- Ma Ferguson, Governor of Texas

I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
- Richard Feynman

I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring.
- The last words of Richard P. Feynman

It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong, and an even bigger one to keep his mouth shut when he's right.
- Jim Fiebig

A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.
- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies

If you're a real good kid, I'll give you a piggy-back ride on a buzz-saw.
- W.C. Fields

The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato chip market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food market and is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of panty hose.
- James Finke, President, Commodore International Ltd. (1982)

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
- Martin H. Fischer

As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don't.
- Carrie Fisher

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Writers aren't exactly people...they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
- Gustave Flaubert

A fool and his money are soon parted. What I want to know is how they got together in the first place.
- Cyril Fletcher, BBC radio program 28 May 1969

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much happiness.
- Fontenelle (1657-1757)

The words, 'penalty,' 'restrict' and 'violate' appeared more times in President Clinton's health care reform bill than in his crime bill.
- Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr.

The price of liberty is, always has been, and always will be blood: the person who is not willing to die for his liberty has already lost it to the first scoundrel who is willing to risk dying to violate that person's liberty. Are you free?
- Andrew Ford

25 states allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy. However, 4 out of 5 US murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who is crazy?
- Andrew Ford

Life is a series of experiences, each of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.
- Henry Ford

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

I want to keep fighting because it is the only thing that keeps me out of the hamburger joints. If I don't fight, I'll eat this planet.
- George Foreman, 1990, Quoted in London Times

I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
- E.M. Forster

The primary purpose of the Data statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable Pi can be given that value with a Data statement and used instead of the longer form of the co