Michael Rosenberg's Quotations List

Contact Michael at: msr@casbah.acns.nwu.edu

Take me back to loQtus!


The Quotations (by subject)



AMERICA

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

Unquestionably, there is progress.  The average American now pays out twice
as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
     H.L. Mencken

No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
     H. L. Mencken

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.   
     Gamel Nasser  
 
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world? 
     Richard M. Nixon

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without
civilization in between. 
     Oscar Wilde   

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
     Frank Lloyd Wright 

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America. 

America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one
dollar, and use it up in two weeks. 

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ART

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
     Stella Adler

I had always loved beautiful and artistic things, though before leaving
America I had had a very little chance of seeing any.   
     Emma Albani  
 
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into
his pictures.
     Henry Ward Beecher

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things,
and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
     Leonardo DaVinci

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and 
have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity then they really are.
     Henry Fielding

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe
to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only
art matters, I do belive in Art for Art's sake.
     E. M. Forster

Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom
     Robert Frost

Art is a collarboration between God an the artist, and the less the artist
does the better.
     Andre Gide

Art is either plagiarism or revolution. 
     Paul Guaguin

You're an actor, are you?  Well, all that means is:  you are irresponsible,
irrational, romantic, and incapable of handling an adult emotion or a
universal concept without first reducing it to something personal, material,
sensational -- and probably sexual!
     George Herman, "A Company of Wayward Saints"

The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.
     Jawaharial Nehru

But that's what being an artist _is_ -- feeling crummy before everyone else
feels crummy.
     The New Yorker

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.
     Kate Reid

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has
experienced.
     Leo Tolstoy

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of
immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
     Edith Warton

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always
to be out of step with his time.
     Orson Welles, 1966

A critic is a legless man who teaches running. 

What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.

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CHILDREN/YOUTH (See Marriage/Family)

Childhood:  The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of
infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes from the sin of manhood and
three from the remorse of age. 
     Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
 
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by
our children.
     Clarence Darrow

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. 

Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery? 

You can call her an outdoor girl if she has the bloom of youth on her cheeks
and the cheeks of youth in her bloomers. 

Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort
to teach them good manners. 

Children seldom misquote you.  In fact, they usually repeat word for word
what you shouldn't have said. 

*******************************************************************
COMPUTERS

If the automobile had followed the same development 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 Cringely/InfoWorld

To err is human--and to blame it on a computer is even more so.
     Orben's Current Comedy

Copmuters are useless.  They can only give you answers.
     Pablo Picasso

Computers aren't intelligent, they only think they are.

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least
until we've finished building it. 

*******************************************************************
CONSERVATIVE/LIBERAL

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
     Aristotle

The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with
a liberal.
     Peter Brimelow, National Review (2/1/93)

Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are
quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman.
     William F. Buckley, Jr. "The Wit and Wisdom of Vlad the Impaler"

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most
luxurious.  They are conservatives after dinner.
     Ralph Waldo Emerson

All conservatives are such from personal defects.  They have been effeminated
by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents,
and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.
     Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral
philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for
selfishness.
     John Kenneth Galbraith

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run. 
     Elbert Hubbard, "Epigrams"

What is conservativism?  Is it not the aherence to the old and tried against
the new and untried?
     Abraham Lincoln

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are
conservatives.
     John Stuart Mill

A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake, at the moment.
     Willis Player

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never learned
to walk.
     Franklin D. Roosevelt

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
     Leo C. Rosten

The man for whom law exists -- the man of forms, the Conservative, is a tame
man.
     Henry David Thoreau

A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the
first time.
     Alfred E. Wiggam

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without
changing a single idea.
     Robert Anton Wilson

A religious conservative is a fanatic about a dead radical.

A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.  A conservative is a liberal
who's been mugged.

*******************************************************************
DEATH

I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of
underwear.
     Woody Allen

Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.  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

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

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life
fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more.  For whatever the tortures of
hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.   
     Isaac Asimov   

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear
in children is increased by tales, so is the other.   
     Francis Bacon, "Of Death" 

I am ready to meet my Maker.  Whether my Maker is prepared for the great
ordeal of meeting me is another matter. 
     Winston Churchill 
  
Death is a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees.
     J.J. Furnas

I wouldn't mind dying -- it's the business of having to stay dead that scares
the shit out of me.
     R. Geis

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair.  And my advice to you is to have nothing
whatever to do with it.
     W. Somerset Maughm

When the Black Camel comes for me, I'm not going to go kicking and screaming
-- I am, however, going to try to talk my way out of it.  "No, no, you want
the other Walter Slovotsky."
     Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg

We who are about to die, are going to take one hell of a lot of the bastards
with us.
     Karl Cullinane, "The Silver Crown" by Joel Rosenberg

Death:  to stop sinning suddenly. 

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DECADENCE

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
     Tallulah Bankhead

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
     Ashleigh Brilliant 
 
Excess on occasion is exhilarating.  It prevents moderation from acquiring
the deadening effect of a habit. 
     W. Somerset Maugham 

Once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of
robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and
from that to incivility and procrastination.
     Thomas De Quincey

I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know
why I'll do it again.
     Bart Simpson

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose
from.
     Andres S. Tannenbaum

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty
sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
     Elizabeth Taylor

When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never
tried before. 
     Mae West 
 
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL. 
     Mae West 

I like the word 'indolence'.  It makes my laziness seem classy.
     Bern Williams

If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for tomorrow
morning, sleep late.
     Henny Youngman

The good die young - because they see it's no use living if you've got to be
good. 

Virtue is its own reward, but then so is sin! 

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DESIRE

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
     Walter Bagehot, "Biographical Studies" 1863

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

Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire
     William Blake

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp -- or what's a heaven for?
     Robert Browning

You know, sometimes a man just can't satisfy all of a woman's desires.  Which
is why God invented dental floss.
     Susanne Kollrack 

It's not peace I want, not mere contentment.  It's boundless joy and ecstasy
for me.
     Kugell 

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
     Charlie McCarthy

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I accomplish.
     Michelangelo

Those who flee temptation generally leave a forwarding address.
     Lane Olinghouse

I'm a simple man.  All I want is enough sleep for two normal men, enough
whiskey for three, and enough women for four.
     Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg

Whatever you want too much you can't have, so when you REALLY want something,
try to want it a little less.
     Walter Slovotsky, "The Sleeping Dragon" by Joel Rosenberg

There are two tragedies in life.  One is to lose your heart's desire.  The
other is to gain it.
     George Bernard Shaw

I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for
me do not tempt me.
     George Bernard Shaw

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
     Mae West

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
     Oscar Wilde

Help me to resist temptation, Lord, especially when I know no one is looking.

If you haven't all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't
have that you wouldn't want

What is my loftiest ambition?  I've always wanted to throw an egg at an
electric fan. 

*******************************************************************
ECONOMICS/MONEY/BUSINESS

What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel. 
     Frank Adams 
 
Isn't it strange?  The same people who laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take
economists seriously.
     Cincinnati Enquirer

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real
money.
     Everett Dirksen

Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers (six if one went
to Harvard).
     Edgar R. Fiedler

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

If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
     J. Paul Getty 

I'm proud of paying taxes.  The only thing is--I could be just as proud for
half the money. 
     Arthur Godfrey 
 
The market is not an invention of capitalism.  It has existed for centuries. 
It is an invention of civilization. 
     Mikhail Gorbachev (June 8, 1990) 
 
The trick is to stop thinking it as `your' money. 
     IRS auditor 
  
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do
the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone 
     Keynes 
 
The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs. 
     Karl Marx 
 
If Karl, instead of writing a lot about capital, had made a lot of it ... it
would have been much better. 
     Karl Marx's Mother

I am not an economist.  I am an honsest man!
     Paul McCracken

An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly,
but he always decides.
     John H. Patterson

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted
yesterday didn't happen today.
     Laurence J. Peter

When better business decisions are made, economists won't make them. 
     H. V. Prochnow 
 
I'd give $1000 to be a millionaire. 
     Lewis Timberlake 

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the
position.
     Mark Twain

Economists are people who work with numbers but don't have the personality
to be accountants. 
 
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as
afterward. 

Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover can in years. 

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. 

*******************************************************************
EDUCATION

Learning is finding out what you already know
     Richard Bach

Academy: A modern school where football is taught. 
     Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Education:  That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish
their lack of understanding.
     Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern
but impossible to enslave. 
     Baron Henry Peter Brougham 
 
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in
students.
     John Ciardi

The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects
on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these
things... 
     Richard Feynman 
 
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity
of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
     Anatole France

Genius without education is like silver in the mine. 
     Ben Franklin 

If you have both feet planted on level ground, then the university has failed
you.
     Robert F. Goheen
 
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
     Hellen Keller

I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor
or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority 
viewpoint--no matter how distasteful to the majority, provided. . .   
     Richard M. Nixon  
 
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
     Laurence J. Peter

Try not to have a good time...this is supposed to be educational.
     Charles Schulz

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

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

About all some parents accomplish in life is to send a child to Harvard. 

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep. 

I have never let my schooling interfere with my educations. 

The purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place to
spend one's leisure. 
 
The purpose of a liberal arts education is to learn that a person can like
both cats *and* dogs! 
 
The purpose of a liberal education is to make you philisophical enough to
accept the fact that you will never make much money. 

*******************************************************************
EGO

Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it. 
     Tallulah Bankhead 

An egotist is a person of low taste--more interested in himself than in me.
     Ambrose Bierce

Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space
     Diana Black

I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
     Ashleigh Brilliant 

Everyone wants to be Cary Grant.  Even I want to be Cary Grant.
     Cary Grant

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
     Henry Kissinger

Don't be so humble, you're not that great.
     Golda Meir

I'd probably be famous now if I wasn't such a good waitress
     Jane Siberry

I never loved another person the way I loved myself. 
     Mae West 

When science finally locates the center of the universe, some people will be
surprised to learn they're not it.

Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware
of it. 

*******************************************************************
EXPERIENCE

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of
youth for those of age.
     Ambrose Bierce

Experience is a great advantage.  The problem is that when you get the
experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it.
     Jimmy Connors

Experience is a good school, but the fees are high.
     Heinrich Heine

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake
when you make it again.
     F.P. Jones

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
     Oscar Wilde

Experience is a hard teacher.  She gives the test first and the lessons
afterwards.

Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.

Trouble brings experience, and experience brings wisdom.

Experience is what you got by not having it when you need it.

*******************************************************************
FOOLS

Silence is the virtue of fools.
     Francis Bacon

There's no fool like an old fool -- you can't beat experience. 
     Jacob Braude 
 
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain -- and most fools do.
     Dale Carnegie

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask reamins a
fool forever.
     Old Chinese saying

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool
may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
     Charles Caleb Colton

The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old
fools.
     Doug Larson

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenius.
     Edsel Murphy

There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.
     Niven's Law # 16 

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill
the world with fools.
     Herbert Spencer

As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty
may make a fool seem a man of sense.
     Jonathan Swift

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it. 

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage. 

To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools. 

*******************************************************************
FRIENDS/ENEMIES

Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as any other
fragile and precious thing.
     Randolph S. Bourne

True friendship is never serene.
     Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies.
     Oscar Wilde

We really don't have enemies.  It's just that some of our best friends are
trying to kill us.

Advice from your friends in like the weather, some of it is good, some of it
is bad.

Never speak ill of yourself;  your friends will always say enough on that
subject. 

With clothes the new are best, with friends the old are best. 

*******************************************************************
FUTURE

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

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
     Niels Bohr

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.
     Benjamin Disraeli

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to
give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are
like.  I have prepared one of my own.  I have placed some rather large
samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin.  My time capsule is set
to go off in the year 3000.  It will show them what we are really like.
     Alfred Hitchcock

The trouble with out times is that the future is not what it used to be.
     Paul Valery

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less
time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness
and respecting her seniority.
     E.B. White

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits
of science that it equips the future for its duties.
     Alfred North Whitehead

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HAPPINESS

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another
city. 
     George Burns 
 
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without
action.
     Benjamin Disraeli

He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
     H.H. Munro

Happiness is just an illusion caused by the temporary absence of reality.

Happiness:  An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
another. 

*******************************************************************
HERO/LEGEND/VALOR

Legend--a lie that has attained the dignity of age. 
     H. L. Mencken 
 
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and
a courageous person afterward.
     Jean Paul Richter

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.
     Will Rogers

I find that we all get more legendary as time goes by.  "Legend" means,
basically, "bullshit."
     Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg

Slovotsky's Law Number Thirty-One:  Get scared right away; avoid the rush.
     Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg

Nature abhors a hero.  For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of
energy.  For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the
fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be
creamed?
     Solomon Short

...the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is
before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet
it.
     Thucydides

Heroes have an infinite capacity for stupidity.  Thus are legends born! 

They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Naturally they became
heroes. 

*******************************************************************
HISTORY/PAST

Even God cannot change the past.
     Agathon

What is history but a fable agreed upon?
     Napolean Bonaparte

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

If you had your life to live over again--you'd need more money.
     Construction Digest

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.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. 
     Dwight D. Eisenhower 

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times
like these.
     Paul Harvey

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from
age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.   
     Aldous Huxley, "The Devils of Loudun"  
 
Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to
mathematics, in that it involves selective breeding.  The principal
difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former
breeds sheep or cows or such, and the latter breeds (assumed) facts.  The
husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future; the historian uses his to
enrich the past.  Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.
     Tom Robbins

Any event, once it has occurered, can be made to appear inevitable by a
competent historian.
     Lee Simonson

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable
must Man be of learning from experience
     George Bernard Shaw

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or
not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot
remember any but the things that never happened.  It is sad to go to pieces
like this but we all have to do it.
     Mark Twain

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
     Voltaire

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
     H.G. Wells  
 
History is made at night.  Character is what you are in the dark.
     Lord John Whorfin

We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history. 

Living in the past has one thing in its favor - it's cheaper. 

*******************************************************************
HUMOR

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
     Fred Allen

Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
     Victor Borge

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

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.
     Jean de La Bruyere

A joke is a very serious thing.
     Winston Churchill

Humor is a universal language.
     Joel Goodman

There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
     Heisenberg

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit
of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
     Herodotus

A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then
says them about other people.
     Peter McArthur

Humor is our greatest natural resource.
     James Thurber

Seven days without laughter makes one weak.
     Mort Walker

If you think before you speak the other guy gets its joke in first.  

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part
of his body - the wishbone. 

Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to
be amused.

The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement. 

*******************************************************************
IMMORTALITY

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

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on
a rainy Sunday afternoon. 
     Susan Ertz 

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
     John Kenneth Galbraith

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.
     Stephen King

When we are young
Wandering the face of the Earth
Wondering what our dreams might be worth
Learning that we're only immortal --
For a limited time
     "Dreamline" -- Rush

*******************************************************************
KNOWLEDGE/WISDOM (see Mind/Intelligence)

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking
up something and finding something else on the way.
     Franklin P. Adams

Even a fool knows you can't touch the stars, but it doesn't stop a wise man
from trying.
     Harry Anderson, "Night Court"

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can
solve them.   
     Isaac Asimov  
 
The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.
     Richard Cecil

Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance. 
     Confucius 
 
It takes a long time to understand nothing. 
     Edward Dahlberg 
 
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
     Albert Einstein

The little I know I owe to my ignorance.
     Sacha Guitry

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not
understand.
     Frank Herbert

Knowledge is of two kinds.  We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we
can find information on it.   
     Samuel Johnson  
 
Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune
     Nicholas Ling

A child of five would understand this.  Send someone to fetch a child of
five.
     Groucho Marx

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
     William G. McAdoo

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
     Montaigne

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in
it -- and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove
lid.  She will never sit on a hot stove lid again -- and that is well; but
also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
     Mark Twain

Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.
     Gene Wolfe

Your ignorance cramps my conversation. 

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people? 

The confidence of ignorance will always overcome indecision of knowledge. 

Dawn:  The time when men of reason go to bed.  Certain old men prefer to rise
at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach,
and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these
practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being
that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of
them.  The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has
killed all the others who have tried it. 

*******************************************************************
LANGUAGE

Language is a virus from outer space.
     William S. Burroughs

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

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

The more you say, the less people remember.  The fewer the words, the greater
the profit.
     Felelon

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

We are getting into semantics again.  If we use words, there is a very grave
danger they will be misinterpreted.
     H. R. Haldeman, testifying in his own defense. 

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
     Rudyard Kipling

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their
children to speak it.
     George Bernard Shaw

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.
     Herbert Spencer

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
     Lily Tomlin

A witty saying proves nothing
     Voltaire

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.  Language is
not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.
     Benjamin Whorf

Conversation is the slowest form of human communication. 

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. 

*******************************************************************
LAST WORDS

Thomas Jefferson--still surv... 
     John Adams 
 
Now comes the mystery.
     Henry Ward Beecher, March 8, 1887

Friends applaud, the Comedy is over.
     Ludwig von Beethoven

I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used. 
     Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian 
 
Goodbye, Everybody!
     Hart Crane, poet, who committed suicide by jumping overboard during a
     steamship voyage.

What is life?  It is the flash of a firefly in the night.  It is the breath
of a buffalo in the wintertime.  It is the little shadow which runs across
the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
     Crowfoot, Blackfoot warior and orator, 1890
 
Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing. 
     Georges Danton, to his executioner 

...the fog is rising
     Emily Dickinson's last words

The nourishment is palatable.
     Millard Fillmore

More light! 
     Goethe 
 
Dieu me pardonnera.  C'est son m‚tier.
(God will forgive me.  It's his job.)
     Heinrich Heine

And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the
latest in blood and guts, in living color, you're about to see another first
-- an attempted suicide.
     Chris Hubbock, who shot herself during a broadcast

This is the fourth? 
     Thomas Jefferson 
 
Go on, get out.  Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.
     Karl Marx to his housekeeper

Drink to me.
     Pablo Picasso

Why yes -- a bulletproof vest.
     James Rodges, murderer, on his final request before the firing squad

They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist---
     General John B. Sedgwick, 1864

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?
     Socrates 
 
What is the answer?  In that case, what is the question? 
     Gertrude Stein 

Don't let it end like this.  Tell them I said something.
     Pancho Villa

I still live.
     Daniel Webster 

Go away...I'm alright.
     H. G. Wells

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
     Oscar Wilde

*******************************************************************
LAW

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to 
sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.   
     Anatole France  
 
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
     Robert Frost

Justice is incidental to law and order. 
     J. Edgar Hoover

I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce. 
     J. Edgar Hoover
 
The illegal we do immediately.  The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
     Henry Kissinger

When I grow up, I want to be an honest lawyer so things like that can't
happen.
     Richard Nixon (young) on Teapot Dome scandal 
 
Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.
     Erik Pepke

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  
 
English Law prohibits a man from marrying his mother-in-law.  This is our
idea of useless legislation.

He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides. 

You are better off not knowing how sausages and laws are made.

Council for the defence was prepared to prove:  1) He shot in self defence,
2) The police did it and stuck the gun in his hand, and 3) He was 100 miles
away when it happened. 

*******************************************************************
LIFE

A life without cause is a life without effect
     Barbarella

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

Don't take life too seriously.  You'll never get out alive. 
     Bugs Bunny 
 
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity.  They seem
more afraid of life than death.
     James F. Byrnes

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a
shortage of fishing pole.
     Doug Larson

Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
     Fran Lebowitz

People find life entirely too time-consuming.
     Stanislaw J. Lec

Life is too serious to be taken seriously.
     Mike Leonard

If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of
myself. 
     Mickey Mantle 

In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular. 
     Kathy Norris 
 
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have
rushed through life trying to save.
     Will Rogers

Am I lightheaded because I'm not dead or because I'm still alive?
     Heidi Sandige

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner,
you have learned how to live.
     Lin Yutang

What is life, except excuse for death, or death but an escape from life. 

Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while. 

Live every day as if it were your last and then some day you'll be right. 
 
Like most endeavors, life is seriously over-advertised and under-funded

All of the animals except man know that the principal business of life is to
enjoy it.

There are more dead people than living.  And their numbers are increasing. 
The living are getting rarer. 

*******************************************************************
LOGIC/REASON

Logic:  The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with
the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.  
     Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

"Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if it
were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." 
     Lewis Carroll 
 
Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it,
she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.
     Goya

Only a brave person is willing to honestly admit, and fearlessly to face,
what a sincere and logical mind discovers.
     Rodan of Alexandria

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on
the unreasonable man.
     George Bernard Shaw

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon
to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
     Oscar Wilde

The decision doesn't have to be logical, it was unanimous. 

*******************************************************************
LOVE (See Sex)

To love is to suffer.  To avoid suffering one must not love.  But then one
suffers from not loving.  Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to
suffer; to suffer is to suffer.  To be happy is to love.  To be happy, then,
is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy.  Therefore, to be happy one
must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.
     Woody Allen

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

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love. 
     Charlie Brown 

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

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
     Albert Einstein

There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when
they no longer love each other.
     Francois, Duc de La Rouchefoucald

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of
his personality
     Victor Frankel

Love is an irresistable desire to be irresistably desired.
     Robert Frost

A man in love is incomplete until he is married.  Then he's finished.
     Zsa Zsa Gabor

Love is a hole in the heart.
     Ben Hecht

Love is like pi -- natural, irrational, and VERY important.
     Lisa Hoffman

People think love is an emotion.  Love is good sense.
     Ken Kesey

Love is only the dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the
species.
     W. Somerset Maugham, "A Writer's Notebook" 1949

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
     H. L. Mencken

Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the
recognition.
     Alexander Smith

Many a young lady does not realize just how strong her love for a young man
is until he fails to pass the approval test with her parents. 

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear. 

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal. 

*******************************************************************
MARRIAGE/FAMILY (See Children/Youth)

A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing. 
     Joey Adams 
 
Marriage is give and take.  You'd better give it to her or she'll take it
anyway.
     Joey Adams

I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you.
     Edward Albee

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.
     Honor‚ de Balzac, "The Physiology of Marriage" 1829

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: 
familiarity.
     Honor‚ de Balzac, "The Physiology of Marriage" 1829

Marriage is the result of the longing for the deep, deep peace of the double
bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue.
     Mrs. Patrick Campbell

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we ahd to stop or our marriage
would have been wrecked.
     Winston Churchill

Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests, since
they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
     Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" 

Marriage is a lottery, but you can't tear up your ticket if you lose. 
     F. M. Knowles 

There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic
banking.  It's called marriage.
     James Holt McGavran
 
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be
married too.
     H. L. Mencken

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and
those inside equally desperate to get out.
     Michel de Montaigne

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not
hereditary.
     Thomas Paine

Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children. 
     Mark Twain 

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has
a son who thinks he's wrong.
     Charles Wadsworth

Never try to guess your wife's size.  Just buy her anything marked `petite'
and hold on to the receipt. 
 
There may be some doubt as to who are the best people to have children, but
there can be no doubt that parents are the worst. 

Marriage is like the army.  Everybody complains, but you'd be surprised at
how many re-enlist.

Do you think your mother and I should have lived comfortably so long together
if ever we had been married? 

There is one thing more exasperating than a spouse who can cook and won't,
and that's a spouse who can't cook and will. 

In marriage, as in war, it is permitted to take every advantage of the enemy.

My notion of a wife at forty is that a man should be able to change her, like
a bank note, for two twenties. 

*******************************************************************
MATH

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

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics.  I can assure you mine
are still greater.
     Albert Einstein

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen:  whatever you say to them they translate
into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
     Goethe
 
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
     M.C. Reed

Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty -- a
beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
     Bertrand Russell

. . . it is certain that the real function of art is to increase our
self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of
what the universe in which we live really is.  And since mathematics, in its
own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming
but profoundly significant.  It is an art, and a great art.   
     John W.N. Sullivan  
 
The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not
early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles
blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.   
     James Joseph Sylvester  
 
Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery
of the finger of God.   
     Herbert Westren Turnbull  

Perhaps the purpose of categorical algebra is to show that which is trivial,
is trivially trivial. 

This makes sense.  This over here, this does not make sense.  That's why I
called it algebra.

Trying to solve differential equations is a yourful aberration that you will
soon grow out of.

Nature abhors secord order differential equations.

Sometimes it's useful to know how large your zero is.

*******************************************************************
MIND/INTELLIGENCE (see Knowledge/wisdom)

95% of this game is half mental. 
     Yogi Berra 
 
Since when was genius found respectable?   
     Elizabeth Barrett Browning  
 
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
     Arthur C. Clarke

It is no longer my moral duty as a human being to achieve an integrated and
unitary set of explanations for my thoughts and feelings.
     Bronwyn Davies

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.
     Thomas Dewar

There are only two truly infinite things, the universe and stupidity.  And
I am unsure about the universe.
     Albert Einstein

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
     Ralph Waldo Emerson

Intellectual brilliance is no guarentee against being dead wrong.
     David Fasold

George was a great dunce, but no matter for that:  all men do not thrive in
the world according to their learning.
     Henry Fielding

Don't play dumb.  You're not as good at it as I am.
     Colonel Flagg, MASH

That we can comprehend the little we know already is mindboggling in itself.
     Tom Gates 

Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity. 
     Remy De Gourmant  

Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
     Robert Graves

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original
dimensions. 
     Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
 
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye.  The more light you shine
on it, the more it will contract.
     Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
     Elbert Hubbard

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or
becomes true.
     John Lilly

Like most intellectuals, he is imensely stupid.
     Marquise de Merteuil

The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many
accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more.
     Ed Parker 

If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to
understand it.
     Emerson Pugh

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an
international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
     George Bernard Shaw 

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
     George Bernard Shaw

The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions
-- which time and mediocrity can solve.
     Hugh Trevor-Roper, "Men and Events"

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands:  not merely to grasp the
world, but to change it.
     Colin Wilson

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
     Woodrow Wilson

The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.  This means
that only left handed people are in their right mind.

The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its
limits.

Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in
the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office. 

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. 

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of
thinking. 

If we increase the size of the penguin until it is the same height as a man
and then compare the relative brain size, we know find that the penguin's
brain is still smaller. But, and this is the point, it is larger than it WAS!

Genius is the talent of a person who is dead. 

When a stupid person is doing something it is ashamed of, it always declares
that it is his job. 

*******************************************************************
MISC

Miscellaneous is always the largest category.
     Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg

That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life
forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid
meeting.
     Marvin, "Life, the Universe, and Everything" by Douglas Adams

I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating
a dead horse.
     Woody Allen              

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
     Aristotle

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
     Walter Bagehot

The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the
woman.
     Honor‚ de Balzac, "The Physiology of Marriage" 1829

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.
     Barbarella

...once can imagine the government's problem.  This is all pretty magical
stuff to them.  If I were trying to terminate the operations of a witch
coven, I'd probably seize everything in sight.  How would I tell the ordinary
household brooms from the getaway vehicles?
     John Perry Barlow

If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door. 
     Paul Beatty 

We have deep depth. 
     Yogi Berra 
 
We made too many wrong mistakes. 
     Yogi Berra 
 
You can observe a lot by just watching. 
     Yogi Berra 
 
A kiss is a rosy dot over the 'i' of loving.
     Cyrano de Bergerac

There are 4 kinds of Homicide:  felonious, excusable, justifiable, and
praiseworthy.
     Ambrose Bierce 

Belladonna: In Italian, a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. 
     Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you
do not entertain.
     Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Mayonnaise:  One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state
religion.
     Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from
you. 
      Ashleigh Brilliant 
 
Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is. 
      Ashleigh Brilliant 
 If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly. 
     Ashleigh Brilliant 
 
Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong
direction. 
     Ashleigh Brilliant 
 
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the
target. 
     Ashleigh Brilliant 

Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
     Ashleigh Brilliant

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

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

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

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

It's a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
     Winston Churchill

I'll play with it first and tell you what it is later. 
     Miles Davis 
  
Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.
     Charles G. Dawes

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead
of using it
     Gordon R. Dickson  
 
Get your cut throat off my knife
     Diane Diprima, "Nightmare Gallery"

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppresiion.  It is in such
twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight-
-lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
     W. O. Douglas

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

The important thing is not to stop questioning.  Curiosity has its own reason
for existing.
     Albert Einstein

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
     Albert Einstein

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities.  The
latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to
hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
     Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science.
     Albert Einstein

A signature always reveals a man's character--and sometimes even his name.
     Evan Esar
          
Only those who attempt the absurd...will achieve the impossible.  I think
...I think it's in my basement...Let me go upstairs and check.
     Escher

Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is.  How awful to
be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.
     Millicent Fenwick

There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the
tail and face the situation
     W. C. Fields 

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
     J. K. Galbraith

Expressing anger is a form of public littering.
     Willard Gaylin

A kiss:  the anatomical juxtaposition of 2 orbicularis oris muslces in a
state of contraction.
     Dr. Henry Gibbons

Lif is too short
     Bart Gold

The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors.  The first he does
not admit of -- the last he does not concern himself about.
     William Hazlitt

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. 
Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
     Robert Heinlein

Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems.  It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
     D. J. Hicks

There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea.  It is simple, tidy, and not
very incriminating.
     Alfred Hitchcock

The paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace the
hardcover book--it makes a very poor doorstop.
     Alfred Hitchcock

I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as
in what direction we are moving; To reach the port of heaven, we must sail
sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it--but we must sail, and not
drift, nor lie at anchor.
     Oliver Wendell Holmes

Hypocrisy is the lubricant of society.
     David Hull

A lady came up to me on the street and pointed to my suede jacket.  "You know
a cow was murdered for that jacket?" she sneered.  I replied in a psychotic
tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses.  Now I'll have to kill you
too."
     Jake Johanson

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous. 
     Brian W. Kernighan

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
     Martin Luther King, Jr.

Disclaimer:  If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared to
not only retract it, but also to deny under oath I ever said it.
     T. Lehrer

Nearly all men can stand adveristy, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
     Abraham Lincoln

It takes less time to do a thing right than explain why you did it wrong.
     Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct,
or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction
of a new order to things.
     N. Machiavelli 

Every once in a while a film comes along.  This is such a film.
     Mad Magazine

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
     H. L. Mencken

My loathings are simple:  stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
     Vladimir Nabokov

Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet
reminds you of someone else.
     Ogden Nash

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
     Nietzsche

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. 
And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
     Nietzsche

Believe me!  The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest
enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!
     Nietzsche

Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be acheinved
only through persistent exercise of real love.
     M. Scott Peck, M.D.

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where
you heard it.
     Laurence J. Peter

It is always preferable to visit home with a friend.  Your parents will not
be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves and
because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like mature
human beings...
     Playboy, January 1983

A woman is like a tea bag--you can't tell how strong she is until you put her
in hot water.
     Nancy Reagan

Plato had slaves...George Washington had slaves...So, do I feel intrinsically
better than these two men?  Of course I do!  They're dead!
     Todd Andrew Reid

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
     L. Rochefoucauld

Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am
the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.
     Karl Cullinane "The Silver Crown" by Joel Rosenberg

There just isn't any pleasing some people.  The trick is to stop trying.
     Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg

Man tends to root for the underdog, because he fears that he will find
himself in that same position far too often.
     Michael S. Rosenberg

If you are going to do something wrong at least enjoy it.
     Leo Rosten

However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
manner...sulking and nausea.
     Tom K. Ryan

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
     George Santayana

I often quote myself, it adds spice to my conversation.
     George Bernard Shaw

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing
     George Bernard Shaw

Finally, in conclusion, let me say just this.
     Peter Sellers

A kiss:  To a young girl, faith; to a married woman, hope; to an old maid,
charity.
     V.P. Skipper

All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height. 
     Casey Stengel 
 
We are in such a slump that even the ones that aren't drinkin' aren't
hittin'. 
     Casey Stengel 
 
I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
     Lily Tomlin

When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear. 
     Mark Twain 
 
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. 
     Mark Twain 
 
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to
read.
     Mark Twain

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
     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

Since the mind is specific biocomputer it needs specific instruction and
directions.  The reason most people never reach their goals is that they
don't define them, learn about them, or even seriously consider them as
believable or achievable.  Winners can tell you where they are going, what
they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with
them.
     Denis Waitley

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist
in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
     Alan Watts

Most people are other people.  Their thoughts are someone else's opinions,
their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
     Oscar Wilde

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. 
     Oscar Wilde 
 
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
     Oscar Wilde

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that
is not being talked about.
     Oscar Wilde

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on.  It is never any use to
oneself.
     Oscar Wilde

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely
fatal.
     Oscar Wilde

In any closet, you can find it, if it is too small, or out of style, or there
is just one of it where there should be two.    

People can travel faster than sound, yes, but not nearly so fast as rumor!
 
A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes
a fool of him in twenty minutes. 

...If I seem to give a damn, please tell me. I would hate to be giving the
wrong impression.

Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith. 

About the only thing we have left that actually discriminates in favor of the
plain people is the stork. 

Some men are discovered; others are found out. 

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. 

In place of infinity we usually put some really big number, like 15.
     Anonymous Computer Science professor

The most difficult part of attaining perfection is finding something to do
for an encore. 
 
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.

A guy has to get fresh once in a while so the girl doesn't lose her
confidence.

It's a useless but absolutely vital precaution. 

If you want to commit suicide you can use my razor; it's electric, but you
can hang yourself with the cord. 

...an eternity with Beelzebub and all his hellish instruments of death shall
be a picnic compared to five minutes with me...and this pencil.  

Never send a monster to do the work of an evil genius. 

All the sex and twice the violence... HARSH realm.

I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading one, so
I woke up from sheer boredom. 

Eat a live frog, every morning, and nothing worse will happen to you all day.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

*******************************************************************
MUSIC

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  

In the first movement alone, I took note of six pregnancies and at least four
miscarriages.
     Sir Thomas Beecham -- on Bruckner's 7th symphony

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
     Sir Thomas Beecham

I see music as the augmentation of a split second of time.
     Erin Cleary

These are bagpipes.  I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired
when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. 
Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound
achieved by the pig.
     Alfred Hitchcock

Without music life would be a mistake
     Friedrich Nietzsche

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
     Gioacchino Rossini

Wagner's music is better than it sounds
     Mark Twain

Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art. 

*******************************************************************
OPTIMISM/PESSIMISM

What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.
     Raymond Aron, "The Opium of the Intellectuals" 1957

Optimism:  The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly,
everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. ...
It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.
     Ambrose Bierce 

I don't believe in pessimism.  If something doesn't come up the way you want,
forge ahead.  If you think it's going to rain, it will.
     Clint Eastwood

The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
     Havelock Ellis

Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an
optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of
events.   
     Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"  
 
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds.  The pessimist
fears it is true. 
     Robert Oppenheimer

A pessimist is someone who has had to listen to too many optimists

*******************************************************************
POLITICS

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

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

Diplomacy --- the art of saying "Nice doggie" 'til you can find a stick. 
     Wynn Catlin 

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of givernment except all
the others that have been tried.
     Winston Churchill

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

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
     John Kenneth Galbraith

Politics is not the art of the possible.  It consists in choosing between the
disastrous and the unpalatable.
     John Kenneth Galbraith
 
The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that
would be clearly understood.
     Alexander Haig

We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex--but
Congress can.
     Cullen Hightower

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. 
     Abbie Hoffman 
  
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the
headline that afternoon would read:  PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM
     Lyndon B. Johnson

In political discussion heat is in inverse proportion to knowledge.   
     J.G.C. Minchin  
 
In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
     Napoleon

Nothing would please the Kremlin more than to have the people of this country
choose a second rate president.
     Richard M. Nixon

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men
in national government too. 
     Richard M. Nixon

If Communism goes, I've still got the U.S. House of Representatives.
     Robert Novak

No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.  He won it by making
other bastards die for their country.
     George Smith Patton

Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will
get the blame.
     Laurence J. Peter

I belong to no organized party.  I am a Democrat.
     Will Rogers

I don't make jokes.  I just watch the government and report the facts. 
     Will Rogers 

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
working for you.
     Will Rogers

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week. 
     Will Rogers 
  
I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts.  After all, we've
been voting for boobs long enough.
     Clarie Sargent, Arizona senatorial candidate

Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud
what the country could do under first-class management.
     Senator Soaper

Our elections are free--it's in the results where eventually we pay. 
     Bill Stern 
 
A leader in the Democratic Party is a boss, in the Republican Party he is a
leader. 
     Harry Truman 

No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in
session.
     Judge Gideon J. Tucker

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly
American criminal class except Congress.
     Mark Twain

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

I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen
more of them who were paralyzed in the head.
     George Wallace  

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a congressperson can. 

A radical is a person with both feet firmly planted in the air. 

Lighthouse: A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains
a lamp and the friend of a politician. 

With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law; and every time they
make a law it's a joke. 

This last Presidential election was something like the sex life of many
people. They had to settle for what they could get.    
  
There is a certain inevitability to a couple of things.  Death and taxes come
to mind. However, death doesn't get worse every time the legislators come
together. 
   
Republicans employ exterminators.  Democrats step on bugs. 
 
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress. 

Don't vote, it only encourages them. 

*******************************************************************
PROBLEM/SOLUTION

I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem. 
     Ashleigh Brilliant 
 
When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty.  I think only how
to solve the problem.  But when I have finished, if the solution is not
beautiful, I know it is wrong.
     Richard Buckminster Fuller

For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong.
     H. L. Mencken

The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.
     Alan Saporta

*******************************************************************
PROCRASTINATION

By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely
overwhelm me. 
     Ashleigh Brilliant 

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
     Don Marquis

Procrastination is the thief of time.
     John Dos Pasos

The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up.

Nothing is really work unless you'd rather be doing something else.
 
*******************************************************************
RELIGION

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

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"
      
An apology for the devil:  it must be remembered that we have heard one side
of the case.  God has written all the books.
     Samuel Butler 

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create
him.
     Arthur C. Clarke

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

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with
our frail and feeble mind. 
     Albert Einstein 

I want to know all Gods thoughts...all the rest are just details.
     Albert Einstein

I could prove God statistically. 
     George Gallup 

Who says I am not under the special protection of God?
     Adolf Hitler

God is the tangential point between zero and infinity. 
     Alfred Jarry 

In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him.
     "Aqualung" - Jethro Tull

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world
ugly and bad.
     Nietzsche

If a person wants to be atheistic it's his God-given right to be an atheist
     Michael Patton

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
     Alan J. Perlis, "Epigrams of Programming"

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and
denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their
human interests.
     George Santayana

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
     George Bernard Shaw

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

I believe in god, I just don't like him.

Religions revolve madly around sexual questions. 

The churches must learn humility as well as teach it. 

*******************************************************************
SANITY

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness. 
     Aristotle 

Mad, adj:  Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
     Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

It's good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full
responsibility for me.
     Ashleigh Brilliant

Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
     Heinrich Heine  

It's great to be young and insane.
     Michael Keaton, "Dream Team"

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
     Ursula K. LeGuin

You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond resonable doubt.
     Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always
worked for me.
     Hunter S. Thompson

Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.
     Henrik Tikkanen

*******************************************************************
SCIENCE

Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.  Biochemistry is the
study of carbon compounds that crawl. 
     Mike Adams
  
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I've found it!), but "That's funny..."
     Isaac Asimov

When the lay public rallies round to an idea that is denounced by
distinguished by elderly scientists and supports the idea with great fervour
and emotion, the distinguished but elderly scientests are then, after all,
right.
     Isaac Asimov

The chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane
impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons
and poverty, yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly, that may
I die if I would change places with the Persian King.   
     Johann Becher  
 
Inventor:  A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and
springs, and believes it civilization.
     Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

May every young scientist remember... and not fail to keep his eyes open for
the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give
consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important
discovery.   
     Patrick Blackett  
 
God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday,  Thursday, and
Saturday.
     Sir William Bragg

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to
discover new ways of thinking about them.
     Sir William Bragg

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
mihgt as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the
mathematics of probability.
     Vannevar Bush

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise,
human science is at a loss.
     Noam Chomsky

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
     Robert R. Coveyou

It has been a bitter moritification for me to digest the conclusion that the
'race is for the strong' and that I shall probably do little more but be
content to admire the strides others made in science.
     Charles Darwin

The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one
graveyard to another.
     J. Frank Dobie, "A Texan in England" 1945

Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it.  Feed it.
     Aubrey Eben 

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

....I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. 
     Thomas Edison 

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
     Robert Heinlein

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the
later only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit:  and its methods
differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and
thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
     Thomas Henry Huxley

The great tragedy of Science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an
ugly fact.
     Thomas Henry Huxley

Scientists are the easiest to fool.  They think in straight, predictable,
directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines.  The only world they know is
the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they
appear to be.  Children and conjurors -- they terrify me.  Scientists are no
problem; against them I feel quite confident.
     Zambendorf, "Code of the Lifemaker" by James P. Hogan

Science is organized knowledge.  Wisdom is organized life.
     Immanuel Kant

Science when well digested is nothing but good sense and reason.
     Stanislaw I Leszczynski
 
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise
require harder thinking.
     Jerome Lettvin

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. 
     Lazarus Long 

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open
the way to the next better one. 
     Konrad Lorenz 
 
I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh
my commitment to science.   
     Heinz Pagels, "The Dreams of Reason"

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.
     Louis Pasteur

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
     E. Rutherford

Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.
     Carrie P. Snow

Science is organized knowledge.
     Herbert Spencer

Discovery consits in seeing what everone else has seen and thinking what no
one else has thought.
     Albert Szent-Gyorgi

No doubt, a scientist isn't necessarily penalized for being a complex,
versatile, eccentric individual with lots of extra-scientific interests.  But
it certainly doesn't help him a bit.   
     Stephen Toulmin  
 
There is something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
     Mark Twain

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a
torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an
oracle, is inborn in us.
     Paul Vale'ry, 1895

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
     Wernher von Braun

One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast
to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists,
a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also
just stupid.   
     James Watson  
 
Gyroscope, n.: 
     A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to
rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each other and the axis
of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpendicular axes
results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning
and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on
the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the
axis of spin. 
     Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary 

Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and
longer to train a physicist.  It is taking so long, in fact, to train a
physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems
that he is already too old to solve them.   
     Eugene Wigner  
  
Entropy isn't what it used to be. 

Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature,
humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases. 
  
*******************************************************************
SELF

Argue for your limitations and sure enough they're yours
     Richard Bach

Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good. 
     Ashleigh Brilliant 
 
Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of
lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
     Montaigne

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
     Kurt Vonnegut

Do, or do not.  There is no try.
     Yoda

*******************************************************************
SEX (see Love)

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

Sex alleviates tension.  Love causes it.
     Woody Allen

I don't mind where people make love, so long as they don't do it in the
street and frighten the horses.
     Mrs. Patrick Campbell

Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you wont either.
     Joseph Fischer 

I know nothing about sex because I was always married.
     Zsa Zsa Gabor

There's nothing better than good sex.  But bad sex?  A peanut butter and
jelly sandwich is better than bad sex.
     Billy Joel

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.
     Samuel Johnson 

Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. . . the other eight are
unimportant.
     Herny Miller

A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you.
     Francoise Sagan

Slovotsky's Law number Twenty-Three:  Trouble with you Jewish girls is that
your desire to DO is in inverse proportion to your willingness to TALK about
it.
     Walter Slovotsky, "The Sleeping Dragon" by Joel Rosenberg

Sex is not the answer.  Sex is the question.  "Yes" is the answer.
     Swami X

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
     Voltaire

If you are ever in an S&M relationship, make damn sure you are the S.
     Someone's mother to them

There is no remedy for sex but more sex.  
 
Sex is like snow... You never know how many inches you're going to get or
how long it will last. 
 
What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick. 
 
Love is a matter of chemistry, but Sex is a matter of physics. 

The thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount
of trouble is sex. 

Pizza is a lot like sex.  When it's good, it's really good.  When it's bad,
it's still pretty good.

Just because a dress is red satin doesn't mean it will come off easily. 

*******************************************************************
SEXIST

How is it . . . that some feminists still feel able to draw on biological
determinist arguments . . . to claim that women are naturally, biologically,
innately superior to men? . . . There is no uniquely feminine essence,
existing above and beyond social conditioning, that makes us creative,
empathetic, intuitive, nurturant, non-violent, and at one with Mother Earth. 
     Celia Kitzinger  
 
Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed.  If I fail, no
one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes."  They will say, "Women don't
have what it takes."
     Clare Boothe Luce

Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing, they marry
later; for another thing they die earlier.
     H. L. Mencken

I expect Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.
     George Meredith

I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.
     Marilyn Monroe

If a woman seeks education it is probably because her sexaul apparatus is
malfunctioning.
     Nietzsche

If you go to see the woman, do not forget the whip.
     Nietzsche

Women's virtue is man's greatest invention.
     Cornelia Otis Skinner

If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a
woman.
     Margaret Thatcher

Leave it to a girl to take the fun out of sex discrimination.
     Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
     Virginia Woolf

*******************************************************************
STATISTICS

I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first
lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of
infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was
Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political
statistic.
     Winston Churchill 
 
There are three kinds of lies:  Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
     Benjamin Disraeli

If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of
ten it will.
     Paul Harvey News, 1979 
 
Statistics are like bikinis.  What they reveal is suggestive, but what they
conceal is vital.
     Aaron Levenstein

50% of this country's schoolchildren have IQ's below average.  Under our
education policy, we can turn that around!
     New Zealand National Pary candidate's campaign statement

49% of all statistics . . . are wrong.
     Statistics Canada 1985

Numbers are like people; torture them enough and they'll tell you anything.

50% of the high school graduates in this country graduated in the bottom half
of their class.

50% of the citizens of this country have a below average understanding of
statistics.

49% of the U.S. population belongs to some minority group.

82.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

*******************************************************************
SUCCESS/FAILURE

My play was a complete success.  The audience was a failure.
     Ashleigh Brilliant

Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be.
     Charles Brower

If A equals success, then the formula is: 
   A= X + Y + Z 
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. 
     Albert Einstein 

The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that you've got it
made.
     Jean Gieraudoux

If you wish to be a sucess in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.
     Napoleon

It's not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.
     Gore Vidal

Nothing succeeds like -- failure. 

*******************************************************************
TIME

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
     Woody Allen

Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women
pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
     Wernher von Braun

Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.
     Jon Lithgow

There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want
     Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson

Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.

*******************************************************************
TRUTH

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
     Matthew Arnold

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to
allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.
     Peter Bechmann

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

Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure I'll never find out the
truth. 
      Ashleigh Brilliant 
 
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
     Winston Churchill

It is always good policy to tell the truth unless of course you are an
exceptionally good liar.
     Jerome K. Jerome

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
     Stephen King

It is a puzzling thing.  The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away,
I'm looking for the truth.' and so it goes away.  Puzzling.
     Robert M. Pirsig

I never give them hell.  I just tell the truth and they think it's hell. 
     Harry Truman 
 
Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an
honest man.
     Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin

Telling the truth to people who misunderstand you is generally promoting a
falsehood, isn't it? 

Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is done by
children. 

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a person of some sense to know
how to lie well.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all. 

My way of joking is to tell the truth; it's the funniest joke in the world. 

Liar:  One who tells an unpleasant truth. 

*******************************************************************
UNIVERSE/NATURE

There is a theory that state:  "If anyone finds out what the universe is for
it will disappear and be replaced by something more bizzarly inexplicable."
There is another theory that states:  "This has already happened..."
     Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

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

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
     Albert Einstein 

God does not play dice with the universe.
     Albert Einstein

It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who
want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to
do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no
matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
     Galileo Galilei

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
     Jules de Gaultier

It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine,
is queerer than we CAN imagine.
     J.B.S. Haldane

My goal is simple.  It is complete understanding of the universe, why it as
it is and why it exists as all.
     Stephen Hawking

The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it unfriendly.  It is simply
indifferent.
     Rev. John H. Holmes

The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe,
the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.  The player on the
other side is hidden from us.  We know that his play is always fair, just and
patient.  But we also know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake,
or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
     Thomas Henry Huxley

The farther it gets from the bench it was worked on, the more real the real
world becomes.
     Todd Johnson

The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind
to correlate all its contents. 
     H. P. Lovecraft

You don't fuck around with the infinite
     Mean Streets

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything
else in the universe.
     John Muir (1838-1914)

For after all what is man in nature?  A nothing in relation to infinity, all
in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and
infinitely far from understanding either.  The ends of things and their
beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret.  He
is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and
the infinite in which he is engulfed.
     Blaise Pascal

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that
lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the
grace of tragedy.
     Steven Weinberg

Reality is good for you...in small doses. 

The universe is laughing behind your back. 

*******************************************************************
WORDS

Aischbedellazouchecastleabbe
     -title of song (Ash forest by the bridge next to the Castle Abbe)

Artiformologicalintactitudinarianisminist
     -one who studies 4-5 letter latin prefixes and suffixes

Humuhumunukunukuapua'a
     -the state fish of Hawaii (Reef Trigger Fish)

Kardivilliwarrakurrakurrieapparlandoo
     -name of a lake in Northern Australia

Regnant populi. (The people rule.) 
Pregnant ropuli. (The snake will soon lay eggs.) 
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WRITING

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested
solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that
writing didn't require any.
     Russell Baker

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which
the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost
all sense and meaning.
     Winston S. Churchill

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a
lamppost how it feels about dogs.
     Christopher Hampton

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

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. 



Take me back to loQtus!