Quotes and Sayings

A closed mouth gathers no feet.

Anonymous

You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.

Giovanni Boccaccio, Leitch, Vincent B. ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001.

Prefer loss to the wealth of dishonest gain the former vexes you for a time the latter will bring you lasting remorse.

Chilo

When spiders unite they can tie down a lion.

Ethiopian Prove

Honesty is being able to tell the truth without hurting anyone.

Federico Fellini, 8 1/2

If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name.

A. A. Milne

Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Concern should drive us into action, not into a depression.

Karen Horney

The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government.

George Washington

I want to find a voracious, small - Minded predator and name it after the IRS.

Robert Bakker, paleontologist

Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouthTame the dragon and the gift is yours.

Noela Evans

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

A. A. Milne

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.

Samuel Johnson

They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything.

Joseph Conrad

Criticism is the disapproval of people, not for having faults, but having faults different from your own.

Author Unknown

I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them though life against the shafts of impartial evidence.

Bertrand Russell, "Why I am Not a Christian".

to be yourself in a world that is doing its best, day and night to make you like everybody else - - Is to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight.

E. e. cummings

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929) ch. 5

Never let yesterday use up too much of today.

Will Rogers

Lakes, rivers, streams... all are water and all travel to the same destination. So it is with religion.

Muhammed Ali, in a television interview

A mother is not a person to lean on but person to make leaning unnecessary.

Dorothy Fishe

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

It is with our passions, as it is with fire and water, they are good servants but bad masters.

Aesop

Live to learn... forget... and learn again.

Brian

Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.

Joseph Addison

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

Zell Mille

Every law is an infraction of liberty.

Jeremy Bentham

The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.

John Von Neumann

The agenda of the roadblock is the philosophy of the stop sign.

George W. Bush, Speech (2005)

I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.

Max Lerne

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.

George Moore

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness. - Epistulae ad Lucilium.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Wise men talk because they have something to say fools, because they have to say something.

Plato

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

Goethe

In a time of universal deceit - Telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

George Orwell

Everything is changeable, everything appears and disappears there is no blissful peace until one passes beyond the agony of life and death.

Buddha

Life is like a sewer... what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

Tom Lehre