Life
Life, the Universe, and all that Jazz.
Quotes (194)
"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries."
"The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking."
"Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves."
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
"Nothing that NASA does now, nothing the president does, or anybody else, is going to change the inexorable motion of human beings off this planet and out into the universe."
"Our friends went to Vietnam. We were facing the unknown. Nobody had done it before, but I'd rather face the unknown than be shot."
"What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?"
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction
between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent
illusion."
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving and existing one.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
"Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population."
"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."
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
"...These things I ponder as the kettle sings and the good oak burns to red coals on white ashes."
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
"At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas."
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
"What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out."
"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it."
"In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at
heart."
"We make war that we may live in peace."
"To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence."
"It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
"Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope."
"There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think."
-
Ayn Rand
"Many men die at twenty-five and aren't buried until they are seventy-five."
"Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose."
"What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
"Censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but unlike charity, it should end there."
"No good deed goes unpunished."
There are no dumb ideas. Just dumb people.
"Killing virus writers would reduce the seeming need that exists in this country to kill people for other crimes. Perhaps if we let a certain former Texas governor order the killing of virus writers, he might refrain from killing retarded adults, people who committed their crimes as juveniles, truly repentant offenders who'd happily spend the rest of their lives behind bars giving church services, a disproportionate number of people from ethnic minority groups, and the occasional potentially innocent person."
Everything in moderation, especially moderation.
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
"Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation."
"Lack of will power has caused more failure than lack of intelligence or ability."
It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.
"I feel sorry for people who don't drink, because when they wake up, that's as good as they're gonna feel all day."
"Art is about making something out of nothing and selling it."
A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
"You see things and say 'Why?'; but I dream things that never were and I say 'Why not?'"
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That's the essence of inhumanity."
"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth."
"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
"The way the world operates, anyone who told us that it was good to treat each other nicely was killed. Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, The Kennedy Brothers. If you told people, "Be nice to each other," that was the end of you."
"They call it the American Dream. Why? Because you have to be asleep to believe in it."
"The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded."
"It's a uniquely American prudishness. You can write the most detailed, vivid description of an axe entering a skull, and nobody will say a word in protest. But if you write a similarly detailed description of a penis entering a vagina, you get letters from people saying they’ll never read you again. What the hell? Penises entering vaginas bring a lot more joy into the world than axes entering skulls."
"Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity."
"No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous."
"It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all."
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison."
"Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life."
"It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof."
"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."
"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."
"There is nothing permanent except change."
"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."
"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place."
"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good."
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.
"Now is the time for drinking, now the time to beat the earth with unfettered foot."
-
Horace
"Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled."
-
Horace
"You have played enough; you have eaten and drunk enough. Now it is time for you to depart."
-
Horace
"A criminal is a person with predatory instincts without sufficient capital to form a corporation."
"It is when we play that we are most imaginative and also the most open to new ideas."
"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."
There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.
"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
"If the doctor told me I had only six months to live, I'd type a little faster."
-I want to marry a girl,- I told them, -so I can rest my soul with her till we both get old. This cant go on all the time, all this franticness and jumping around. Weve got to go someplace, find something.- -Aw now, man,- said Dean, -Ive been digging you for years about the home and marriage and all those fine wonderful things about your soul.- It was a sad night; it was also a merry night.--
"I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference."
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."
"Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today."
Time to write and sing, to laugh, to listen, to discover, to cry, to love music.
"Once the war has touched your home, disrupted your life, once you share the sacrifice of those nameless soldiers, it is your war as well."
"Fuck positive."
"Here, I'm not giving you enough shit today, have a salad."
"The world just wants to fuck with me today"
"Whats a Bigguy that can't run?"
"You only live once- but if you work it right, once is enough."
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.
"Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind."
"We need men who can dream of things that never were."
"Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends."
"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost."
"Being a cult figure in one's own lifetime, I am afraid is not at all pleasant. In my case at any rate it makes me feel extremely small and inadequate."
"Nice guys can't write."
"We are what we pretend to be."
"All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental."
"Scum of the Earth as some may be in their daily lives, they can all be saints in emergencies."
"How nice- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."
"Without accountability, they will be stupid or evil; and without transparency, there's no way to tell the difference."
"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
"If you want to be happy, be."
"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
-
Mae West
"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err."
"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."
"If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now."
"If I die tomorrow it will have been useless to have been afraid today."
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
"Never part with your illusions. Without dreams you may continue to exist, but you have ceased to live."
"Truth is more of a stranger than fiction."
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
"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."
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
"Put no trust in the benefits to accrue from early rising, as set forth by the infatuated Franklin."
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted."
There's no crime in being ignorant. Problems arise when people who don't know they're ignorant rise to power.
For the rational study of the law the blackletter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics. It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
"The basis of optimism is sheer terror."
"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written"
"I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means."
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."
"Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these."
-
Ovid
"It's so annoying that I get so easily annoyed."
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something."
-
Plato
"Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself."
-
Plato
"The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us."
If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
"The reward for a thing well done is to have done it."
"Always do what you are afraid to do."
"What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."
"I wouldn't mind dying -- it's the business of having to stay dead that scares the shit out of me."
-
R. Geis
Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize.
Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation.
"I get a top of the line phone, but imitation wheat thins."
"The victory of human kind over Nature is not that of brute force alone, but also that of the spirit."
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea
that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the
public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged
with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing
circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is
supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or
individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock
of history be stopped, or turned back."
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday, but never remembers her age.
"It is in games that many men discover their paradise."
"Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance."
"Friendship is like money, easier made than kept."
"Certainty is a poor guide to truth"
Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.
"Success is dependent on effort."
"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
"Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended in Action alone."
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
"It is safe to say that objects, as we understand them, are relatively stable, whereas ideas are definitely unstable, they not only can be misused, they invite misuseand the better the idea the more volatile it is."
"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature."
"When a good idea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision, it not only comes out reduced in scale and value but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally was intended."
"The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea but with the people who are attracted to it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and, most importantly, sense of humor, to maintain it in the spirit it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road."
"Tunnel vision is a disease in which perception is restricted by ignorance and distorted by vested interest."
"Humankind cannot bear very much reality"
"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
"Death sneaks up on you like a windshield sneaks up on a bug."
-
Unknown
"If the rich could hire people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living."
"Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something."
"Your ignorance cramps my conversation."
-
Unknown
"A pessimist is someone who has had to listen to too many optimists."
-
Unknown
"Happiness is just an illusion caused by the temporary absence of reality."
-
Unknown
"It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent."
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
-
Voltaire
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
-
Voltaire
"When it comes to money, we're all of the same religion."
-
Voltaire
"A witty saying proves nothing."
-
Voltaire
There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.
"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else."
"Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."
"She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit."
"It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent."