Quotes

Various Quotes I find amusing or meaningful in some way

Romulan Commander: I regret that we meet in this way. You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend.

Kirk: What purpose will it serve to die?

Romulan Commander: We are creatures of duty, Captain. I have lived my life by it. Just one more duty to perform.

Star Trek, Balance of Terror, Episode Number 14 First Aired December 15, 1966

If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.

Albert Einstein

 

Imagination is more important than knowledge...

Albert Einstein

 

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

Albert Einstein

 

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

 

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

Mark Twain

 

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Mark Twain

 

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Mark Twain

 

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

Mark Twain

 

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.

Mark Twain

 

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Oscar Wilde

 

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Oscar Wilde

 

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

Oscar Wilde

 

I am not young enough to know everything.

Oscar Wilde

 

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

Oscar Wilde

 

"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."

- A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)

 

"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."

- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat

 

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

 

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

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

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

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

- Galileo Galilei

 

"This book fills a much-needed gap."

- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review

 

"Give me a museum and I'll fill it."

- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

 

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."

- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

 

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."

- Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')

 

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

- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

 

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."

- Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

 

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."

- Plato (427-347 B.C.)

 

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

 

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

 

"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must."

- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

 

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."

- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

 

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."

- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

 

"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."

- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

 

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

- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

 

"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."

- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

 

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

- Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)

 

"Black holes are where God divided by zero."

- Steven Wright

 

"We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time."

- Vince Lombardi

 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."

- James Branch Cabell

 

"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."

- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

 

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."

- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

 

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

- Antoine de Saint Exupery

 

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

- Isaac Asimov

 

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance"

- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

 

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."

- Will Durant

 

"It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion."

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

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

- Mel Brooks

 

"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher."

- Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

 

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."

- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."

- Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

 

"Grove giveth and Gates taketh away."

- Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with software demands

 

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."

- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

 

"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."

- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

 

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it."

- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

 

"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."

- Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

 

"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people."

- Lucille S. Harper

 

"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."

- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

 

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."

- General George Patton (1885-1945)

 

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."

- Voltaire (1694-1778)

 

"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."

- Mae West (1892-1980)

 

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."

- Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

 

"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."

- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

 

"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."

- Gloria Leonard

 

"Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure."

- Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)

 

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

 

"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."

- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

 

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."

- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

 

" The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

- Alan Kay

 

"Well done is better than well said."

- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

 

"A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted."

- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

 

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."

- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

 

"A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood."

- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)

 

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."

- Tom Clancy

 

"There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

 

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

"God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time."

- Robin Williams, commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair

 

"Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."

- Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.

 

"We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction."

- General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)

 

"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."

- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.

 

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."

- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

 

Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.

Aristotle

 

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle

 

Death is not the worst than can happen to men.

Plato

 

Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.

Plato

 

Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

Plato

 

It is equally offensive to speed a guest who would like to stay and to detain one who is anxious to leave.

Homer

 

A generation of men is like a generation of leaves; the wind scatters some leaves upon the ground, while others the burgeoning wood brings forth - and the season of spring comes on. So of men one generation springs forth and another ceases.

Homer, The Iliad

 

Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of - for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

Socrates

 

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.

J. R. R. Tolkien

 

It's a job that's never started that takes the longest to finish.

J. R. R. Tolkien

 

The Hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their imagination.

J. R. R. Tolkien

 

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

 

It's a dangerous business going out your front door.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring