Aphorisms:
“The important thing is to not stop questioning.”
-Albert Einstein
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it"
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
“I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village
garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by
any epaulet I could have worn.”
-Henry David Thoreau
"Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to
wonder at the secrets."
-Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.”
-Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862
“Two-thirds of what we see is behind our eyes.”
-Chinese Proverb
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
-Aristotle
“We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.”
-The Talmud
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of
genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
-Mozart
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
-Aristotle
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
-Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
-Theodosius Dobzhansky
“A hen is only an eggs way of making another egg.”
-Samuel Butler, 1835-1901
“The outside world is something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for
the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in
life.”
-Max Plank
“An intelligence which at a given instant comprehends all the relations of the entities of the
universe could predict their positions, motions and general affects at any time in the past or
future. So it is that we owe to the weakness of the human mind the science of chance and
probability.”
-Pierre Simon de Laplace
" The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- Alan Kay
“The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance
after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic
temper.”
-Aristotle
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
-Plato
“In taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior, for it
is a prince's part to pardon.”
-Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
-Marcus Aurelius
“We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies.”
-Voltaire [Francois-Marie Arouet]
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"We have art to save ourselves from the truth."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared
to it.
-Proverbs 8,11
“A steady man proves that fortune is powerless compared to him.”
-Niccolò Macchiavelli
“Fortune can take only what she gave us.”
-Italian proverb
“There are three things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond, and to know one’s self.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing; It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
-Voltaire [Francois-Marie Arouet]
“How little we should enjoy life if we never flattered ourselves!”
-La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
"I was taught very early that I would have to depend entirely upon myself; that my future lay in
my own hands."
- Darius Ogden Mills
“Narcissim, like selfishness, is an overcompensation for the basic lack of self-love.”
-Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941
“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their
own.”
-Benjamin Disraeli
The greatest reward lies in making the discovery; recognition can add little or nothing to that.
-Franz Ernst Neumann (1798-1895)
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
“Victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.”
-Count Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1938
“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”
-Paul Therouxm, in The Observer
“The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility; and he who knows most, knows
best how little he knows.”
-Thomas Jefferson, Writings
"I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which
we are ignorant.”
-Plato
“Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action, the most difficult thing
in the world.”
-Goethe 1749-1832
"Et nunc, reges, intelligite, erudimini, qui judicati terram." - And now, kings, understand; you who
decide the fate of the Earth, educate yourselves.
-Horatious
"Cogito, ergo sum." -I think therefore I am
-Rene Descartes
“Science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature
and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning.”
-Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 1958
“It is easier to preach virtue than to practice it.”
-La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
“Without doubt it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together.”
-Montaigne, Essays, 1588
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude
without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.”
-Nathanial Hawthorne, 1850
“We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done
them.”
-Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1867-1869
“None are so empty as those who are full of themselves.”
- Benjamin Whichcote
“Not only men forget the benefit they received, but they also hate those who benefitted them.”
-La Rochefocauld
“Procrastination is the thief of time.”
- Edward Young
”Sometimes ingratitude arises from the impossibility to return a favour.”
Honorè de Balzac
“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
-Aristotle
“An unlucky man would be dried even if you put him in a pot full of lard.”
-African proverb
“Bad luck doesn't take the initiative to come; it answers to man's call.”
-Chinese proverb
“Bees sting the face of those whom are always weeping.”
-Chinese proverb
“Those who are content with what they have meet no ill luck.”
-Chinese proverb
“The free expression by outward signs of emotion intensifies it. On the other hand, the
repression as far as possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions.”
-Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 1897
“The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1843
“Instances of longevity are chiefly among the abstemious.”
Arbuthnot
“If I have seen a little farther than others it is only because I stand on the shoulders of giants.”
- Sir Isaac Newton
"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)
"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat
“Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if
you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
- Nathanial Hawthorne
“You can never foretell what any man will do, but you can say with precision what an average
number will be up to. Individuals may vary but percentages remain constant.”
-Sherlock Holmes, in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, 1887
"God does not play dice."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"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)
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be.
Now put the foundation under them.”
-Henry David Thoreau
“It’s far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.”
- Judith S. Martin
“Pettiness is the tendency of people without large purposes.”
- George Will
“Lying is a most disgraceful vice; it first despises God, and then fears men.”
- Plutarch
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."
- Saint Augustine (354-430)
"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
“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”
-Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as true strength.
- Ralph Sockman
“The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are
happy or not.”
-George Bernard Shaw
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing
nothing.”
-George Bernard Shaw
"The full use of your powers along lines of excellence."
-definition of "happiness" by John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
"He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a
large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
-Albert Einstein
The great are great to us only because we are on our knees. Let us arise.
-Robert Collier
"Si vis pacem, para bellum." -If you want peace, prepare for war.
- Vegetius:
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common
than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone
are omnipotent. The slogan, 'Press on,' has solved and always will solve the problems of the
human race
-Calvin Coolidge
"Assassins!"
- Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) to his orchestra
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
"To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance."
- Buddha
"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."
- Rene Descartes (1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"
“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
Emotional sickness is avoiding reality at any cost. Emotional health is facing reality at any cost.
-M. Scott Peck
“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
-George Bernard Shaw
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you
were born in it.”
-George Bernard Shaw
"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with
doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
-Francis Bacon
“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and
truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”
-Marcus Aurelius
“One needs to cultivate the spirits of sacrificing the little me to achieve the benefits of the big
me.”
-Chinese Proverb
"Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed."
- George Burns (1896-1996)
"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero Roman statesman, scholar, orator
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
- Paul Erdos
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."
- Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more
approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
- Thomas Jefferson
"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting
it."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“Remember this -- very little is needed to make a happy life.”
-Marcus Aurelius
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as
though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near."
- Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
"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.)
"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
“The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.”
-Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
"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)
"If you are going through hell, keep going."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"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)
“Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.”
-Malcolm Cowley
“Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is
so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it; so fine that we are often on the line and do not
know it.”
-Elbert Hubbard
“Yesterday is a dream, tomorrow but a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a
dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore to this day.”
-Sanskrit Proverb
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
“Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life
is to live dangerously!”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting
me is another matter."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them."
- Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
"When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider
all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession,
the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the
important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of
our nature."
- Sigmund Freud
"Facts are the enemy of truth."
- Don Quixote - "Man of La Mancha"
"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of
the world."
- George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a
society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
-Albert Einstein
"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to
create it herself."
- Anais Nin (1903-1977)
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
“Love can turn the cottage into a golden palace.”
-German Proverb
“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”
-Albert Einstein
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."
- George Eliot (1819-1880)
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the
truth."
- Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)
“We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility.”
-Albert Einstein
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”
-Plato
“One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere”
-Voltaire [Francois-Marie Arouet]
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this
is true."
- James Branch Cabell
"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."
- John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)
“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing
stripes with plaid comes easy.”
-Albert Einstein
“A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.”
-Erin Majors
“In the Midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.”
-Deepak Chopra
“He who is ashamed of asking is ashamed of learning.”
--Danish Proverb
"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience
rightly considered."
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made
terrible
by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
- Umberto Eco
“Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.”
-Aristotle
"Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down."
- Jimmy Durante
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
"The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old
way."
- Richard Harding Davis
"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)
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
-Albert Einstein
"Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working."
- Albert Giacometti (sculptor)
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third,
it is accepted as being self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."
- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
- Frank Zappa
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”
-Albert Einstein
"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
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
- Carl Sagan
"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."
- G. B. Burgin
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
- Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger" by Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance"
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
- Jimi Hendrix
"A clever man commits no minor blunders."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours."
- Richard Bach
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said
to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.”
-Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
”We never desire passionately what we desire through reason alone.”
- La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678
"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
- Will Durant
“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the
hardest victory is over self.”
-Aristotle
"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
- Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
"It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.”
-Albert Einstein
"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend
to
know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means."
- Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
- Warren Zevon
"When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
“He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a
large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”
-Albert Einstein
“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. it's not a day when you lounge
around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do and you've done it.”
-Margaret Thatcher
"Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together."
- Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
“Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.”
-Voltaire [Francois-Marie Arouet]
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"Luck is the residue of design."
- Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
- Mel Brooks
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"Wit is educated insolence."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
“For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter.
And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained - and that's our present
universe.”
--Albert Einstein
“This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects for it redoubleth joy,
and cutteth griefs in half.”
-Francis Bacon
"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.)
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
"Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”
-Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
- Gore Vidal
"Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them."
- Samuel Palmer (1805-80)
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny."
- Guy Davenport
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured."
- Tacitus, "Agricola"
"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and
is not a conservative, has no brains."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may
well be another profound truth."
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
“I don't believe in mathematics.”
--Albert Einstein
"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
“A first-rate theory predicts; a second-rate theory forbids; and a third-rate theory explains after
the event.”
- Aleksander Isaakovich Kitaigorodskii
“It is easy to be wise after the event.”
- Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “The Problem of Thor Bridge”
"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the
problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
"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)
"I would have made a good Pope."
- Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
“The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love
shows itself.”
-Moliere (1622-1672)
“To find yourself jilted is a blow to your pride. Do your best to forget it and if you don't succeed,
at least pretend to.”
-Moliere (1622-1672)
"In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience."
- W.B. Prescott
No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying
emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the
human community.
-Sigmund Freud
"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state
of
sin."
- John von Neumann (1903-1957)
"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."
- chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game's opening position
“Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.”
-Winston Churchill
"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is
terribly
important."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
The great question that has never been answered and which I have not been able to answer....
is, What does a women want?
-Sigmund Freud
"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
"There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that
there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there
are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
- C. A. R. Hoare
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
To be great is to be misunderstood
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity
--Thomas Henry Huxley
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What do you take me for, an idiot?"
- General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy
“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today.
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it
is, but the world as it will be...This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our
everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.”
-Isaac Asimov
“Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real
thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In
any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice.”
-Albert Einstein
“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look farther than you can see.”
-Sir Winston Churchill
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow
enormous benefits upon the world.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
“The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from domination of outside
conditions.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
“I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.”
-Mother Teresa
"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
“When it is time to die, let us not discover that we never lived.”
-Henry David Thoreau
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
-Henry David Thoreau
"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
“Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.”
-Mark Twain
“If actions are to yield all the results that they are capable of, there must be a certain
consistency between them and one’s intentions.”
- La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678
"Logic is in the eye of the logician."
- Gloria Steinem
"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person
nearest you.”
-Mother Teresa
"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
- Martin Fraquhar Tupper
“While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside
us.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
-Mark Twain
"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)
"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
“Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men
because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.”
-Albert Einstein
“Learn to be calm and you will always be happy”
-Paramhansa Yogananda
"In the end, everything is a gag."
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people."
- Lucille S. Harper
"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
- Yogi Berra
"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known."
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)
“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.”
-Mark Twain
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
--Albert Einstein
Philosophy is the science which considers truth.
--Aristotle
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
- Sacha Guitry
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
“Friendship is the only thing in this world, the usefulness of which all mankind are in agreement.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
“Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly
way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.”
-H. L. Mencken
“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on Simplicity.”
-Plato
"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)
“We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.”
-Ray Bradbury
"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking."
- Katherine Cebrian
"I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it."
- Steven Wright
“The part can never be well unless the whole is well.”
-Plato
"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."
- Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
"Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure."
- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)
“Joy is not in things! It is in us!”
-Benjamin Franklin
"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
- Mae West (1892-1980)
"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
"No Sane man will dance."
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
“Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon
compounds that crawl.”
-Mike Adams
“After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.”
-Henry Louis Mencken, on Shakespeare
"Hell is a half-filled auditorium."
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the
light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is
familiar with it.”
--Max Planck
“You can’t depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus.”
- Mark Twain
“Reason can answer questions but imagination has to ask them.”
- Ralph N. Gerard
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
-Mark Twain
"The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order
that your ideas will upset."
- Anthony D'Angelo
“Look at these cows and remember that the greatest scientists in the world have never
discovered how to make grass into milk.”
- Michael Pupin
"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."
- Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (Robert cited from the Bhagavad Gita, after witnessing
the first nuclear detonation)
"The gods too are fond of a joke."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"Men are not disturbed by things, but the view they take of things."
- Epictetus (55-135 A.D.)
"When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and
most transient of passions- They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited,
abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part."
-George Bernard Shaw
"There cannot be mental atrophy, in any person who continues to observe, to remember what
he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things."
-Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)
“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”
-Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
"Men have become the tools of their tools."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives."
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)
"To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me."
- Charles William Stubbs
“Knowledge belongs to the curious.”
- Juvenal
“Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.”
- Baltasar Gracian
"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
- George Santayana (1863-1952)
“It is disconcerting to reflect on the number of students we have flunked in chemistry for not
knowing what we later found to be untrue.”
- Robert L. Weber, Science With a Smile (1992)
“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over
and let the beautiful stuff out.”
-Ray Bradbury
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal
difference between a dog and a man.”
-Mark Twain
"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
- Emile Zola (1840-1902)
“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
-Psalm 30:5
"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are
capable of being.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
- Tom Stoppard
“I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them.”
-Pablo Picasso
“I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable sit still in a room.”
-Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
“I'd like to live like a poor man with lots of money.”
-Pablo Picasso
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
- Sun Tzu
"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."
- Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)
“Listen or your tongue will keep you deaf.”
- Native American Proverb
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
- E. Roosevelt
"Never mistake motion for action."
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains
that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
“For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Silence is argument carried out by other means."
- Ernesto"Che"Guevara (1928-1967)
"Well done is better than well said."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
“Be civil to all, sociable to many, familiar with few, friend to one, enemy to none.”
-Benjamin Franklin
"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
- Perelman
"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that
other is ready."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
“If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.”
-Mark Twain
“A person’s mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions.” --Oliver
Wendell Holmes
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only
love can do that."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah... didn't miss the boat.”
-Mark Twain
“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental
institution of the universe.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.”
--H. L. Mencken
“Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”
--H. L. Mencken
“Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain
quirks.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before
him.”
-Mark Twain
“Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
-Pablo Picasso
“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”
--Blaise Pascal
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every
difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
“None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" "
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."
- Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
“There is a difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him.”
-Benjamin Franklin
"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of
opportunity."
- Irving Kristol
“Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”
-Thomas Jefferson
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
"Human subtelty will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than
does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous."
- Leonardo DaVinci
"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."
- Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)
“Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.”
-Mark Twain
“The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow
on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.”
- Ferdinand Magellan
"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
- Tom Clancy
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"
"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
“The perpetuity of single emotion is insanity.”
-I. Taylor.
“Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce
happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.”
-Benjamin Franklin
"The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live
“The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a
few esteemed characters.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it.”
-Mark Twain
"The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny.
When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed."
- Alexis Carrel, "Reflections on Life"
“Nobody loves life like him that's growing old.”
-Sophocles
"There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not
a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to
comprehend the whole."
- Bill Wulf
“If we all told what we know of one another, there would not be four friends in the world.”
-Blaise Pascal
“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.”
-President Thomas Jefferson
“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained.”
-Mark Twain
“Reason is God's crowning gift to man.”
-Sophocles
“Experience is an asset of which no worker can be cheated, no matter how selfish or greedy his
immediate employer may be.”
- Napoleon Hill
"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly
right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"I criticize by creation - not by finding fault."
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
“Fear not death, for the sooner we die the longer we shall be immortal.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“The most beautiful thing that we can experience is the mysterious”
-Albert Einstein
“He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man
has need to be forgiven.”
- Thomas Fuller
“The measure of a truly great man is the courtesy with which he treats lesser men.”
- Anonymous
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
-Francis Bacon
“The old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot,
and ended by saying such a laugh was money in a man's pocket, because it cut down the
doctor's bills like anything.”
-Mark Twain
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor
and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his
religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever
he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing
both.”
- James A. Michener
“A man is not completely born until he is dead.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Do not wait; the time will never be ''just right.'' Start where you stand, and work with whatever
tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”
-Napoleon Hill
"Woman was God's second mistake."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
“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 down on a hot stove-lid
again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”
-Mark Twain
"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-
knowing."
-Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
“Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us; we regard every person
whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our
own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows.”
-Octavio Paz
“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get
hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any
justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at
bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
-Richard Dawkins
“…the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.”
-Steven Weinberg
"a tale told by an idiot, filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing."
-William Shakespeare (William used this tale as an allegory for life)
“ But what I want to guard against is people therefore getting nihilistic in their personal lives. I
don't see any reason for that at all. You can have a very happy and fulfilled personal life even if
you think that the universe at large is a tale told by an idiot.”
-Richard Dawkins
“Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered
there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.”
-Oprah Winfrey (1954-)
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
- Mahatma Gandhi
“Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment chop wood and carry
water.”
-Ancient Chinese Proverb
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and
begin slitting throats."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may
be so at the moment after death.”
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
“I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody.”
-Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"Whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if
even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world;
when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you
stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course. Whenever you laugh, gladness spreads
like the ripples in a pond; and whenever you're sad, no one anywhere can be really happy. And
it's much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole
world becomes that much richer."
- Norton Juster, "The Phantom Tollbooth"
"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), his response to Napoleon as to why there is no mention of God in
his works on celestial mechanics
“The average man does not know what to do with his life, yet wants another one which will last
forever.”
- Anatole France
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read
them."
-Mark Twain (1835-1910)
“No really great man ever thought himself so.”
- William Hazlitt
We have two kinds of viruses that have a lot in common--namely real biological viruses and
computer viruses. In both cases they are parasitic self-replicating codes which exploit the
existence of machinery that was set up to copy and obey that kind of code. So I then ask the
question, "What if there were a third kind of milieu in which a different kind of self-replicating
code could become an effective parasite?" Human brains with their powerful communication
systems seem to be a likely candidate. Then I ask, "What would it feel like if you were the victim
of a mind virus?" Well, you would feel within yourself this deep conviction that seems to come
from nowhere. It doesn't result from any evidence, but you have a total conviction that you know
what's true about the world and the cosmos and life. You just know it and you're even prepared
to kill people who disagree with you. You go around proselytizing and persuading other people
to accept your view. The more you write down the features that such a mind virus would have,
the more it starts to look like religion.
-Richard Dawkins
"The Soul is the voice of the body's interests."
- George Santayana, "The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense", 1906
“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.”
- Henry Ford
"Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do
instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at
the expense of the rest...."
- C. S. Lewis
“A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are
legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.”
- Sigmund Freud
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis,
we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
-Max Plank
"You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea."
- Medgar Evers
“The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
- Albert Einstein
-Albert Einstein
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it"
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
“I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village
garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by
any epaulet I could have worn.”
-Henry David Thoreau
"Each of us visits this Earth involuntarily, and without an invitation. For me, it is enough to
wonder at the secrets."
-Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.”
-Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862
“Two-thirds of what we see is behind our eyes.”
-Chinese Proverb
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
-Aristotle
“We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.”
-The Talmud
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of
genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
-Mozart
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
-Aristotle
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
-Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
-Theodosius Dobzhansky
“A hen is only an eggs way of making another egg.”
-Samuel Butler, 1835-1901
“The outside world is something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for
the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in
life.”
-Max Plank
“An intelligence which at a given instant comprehends all the relations of the entities of the
universe could predict their positions, motions and general affects at any time in the past or
future. So it is that we owe to the weakness of the human mind the science of chance and
probability.”
-Pierre Simon de Laplace
" The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- Alan Kay
“The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance
after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic
temper.”
-Aristotle
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
-Plato
“In taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior, for it
is a prince's part to pardon.”
-Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
-Marcus Aurelius
“We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies.”
-Voltaire [Francois-Marie Arouet]
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"We have art to save ourselves from the truth."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared
to it.
-Proverbs 8,11
“A steady man proves that fortune is powerless compared to him.”
-Niccolò Macchiavelli
“Fortune can take only what she gave us.”
-Italian proverb
“There are three things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond, and to know one’s self.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing; It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
-Voltaire [Francois-Marie Arouet]
“How little we should enjoy life if we never flattered ourselves!”
-La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
"I was taught very early that I would have to depend entirely upon myself; that my future lay in
my own hands."
- Darius Ogden Mills
“Narcissim, like selfishness, is an overcompensation for the basic lack of self-love.”
-Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941
“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their
own.”
-Benjamin Disraeli
The greatest reward lies in making the discovery; recognition can add little or nothing to that.
-Franz Ernst Neumann (1798-1895)
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
“Victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.”
-Count Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1938
“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”
-Paul Therouxm, in The Observer
“The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility; and he who knows most, knows
best how little he knows.”
-Thomas Jefferson, Writings
"I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which
we are ignorant.”
-Plato
“Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action, the most difficult thing
in the world.”
-Goethe 1749-1832
"Et nunc, reges, intelligite, erudimini, qui judicati terram." - And now, kings, understand; you who
decide the fate of the Earth, educate yourselves.
-Horatious
"Cogito, ergo sum." -I think therefore I am
-Rene Descartes
“Science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature
and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning.”
-Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, 1958
“It is easier to preach virtue than to practice it.”
-La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
“Without doubt it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together.”
-Montaigne, Essays, 1588
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude
without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.”
-Nathanial Hawthorne, 1850
“We do not love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done
them.”
-Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1867-1869
“None are so empty as those who are full of themselves.”
- Benjamin Whichcote
“Not only men forget the benefit they received, but they also hate those who benefitted them.”
-La Rochefocauld
“Procrastination is the thief of time.”
- Edward Young
”Sometimes ingratitude arises from the impossibility to return a favour.”
Honorè de Balzac
“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
-Aristotle
“An unlucky man would be dried even if you put him in a pot full of lard.”
-African proverb
“Bad luck doesn't take the initiative to come; it answers to man's call.”
-Chinese proverb
“Bees sting the face of those whom are always weeping.”
-Chinese proverb
“Those who are content with what they have meet no ill luck.”
-Chinese proverb
“The free expression by outward signs of emotion intensifies it. On the other hand, the
repression as far as possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions.”
-Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 1897
“The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1843
“Instances of longevity are chiefly among the abstemious.”
Arbuthnot
“If I have seen a little farther than others it is only because I stand on the shoulders of giants.”
- Sir Isaac Newton
"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)
"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat
“Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if
you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
- Nathanial Hawthorne
“You can never foretell what any man will do, but you can say with precision what an average
number will be up to. Individuals may vary but percentages remain constant.”
-Sherlock Holmes, in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, 1887
"God does not play dice."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"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)
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be.
Now put the foundation under them.”
-Henry David Thoreau
“It’s far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.”
- Judith S. Martin
“Pettiness is the tendency of people without large purposes.”
- George Will
“Lying is a most disgraceful vice; it first despises God, and then fears men.”
- Plutarch
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."
- Saint Augustine (354-430)
"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
“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”
-Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as true strength.
- Ralph Sockman
“The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are
happy or not.”
-George Bernard Shaw
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing
nothing.”
-George Bernard Shaw
"The full use of your powers along lines of excellence."
-definition of "happiness" by John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
"He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a
large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
-Albert Einstein
The great are great to us only because we are on our knees. Let us arise.
-Robert Collier
"Si vis pacem, para bellum." -If you want peace, prepare for war.
- Vegetius:
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common
than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone
are omnipotent. The slogan, 'Press on,' has solved and always will solve the problems of the
human race
-Calvin Coolidge
"Assassins!"
- Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) to his orchestra
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
"To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance."
- Buddha
"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."
- Rene Descartes (1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"
“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
Emotional sickness is avoiding reality at any cost. Emotional health is facing reality at any cost.
-M. Scott Peck
“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
-George Bernard Shaw
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you
were born in it.”
-George Bernard Shaw
"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with
doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
-Francis Bacon
“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and
truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”
-Marcus Aurelius
“One needs to cultivate the spirits of sacrificing the little me to achieve the benefits of the big
me.”
-Chinese Proverb
"Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed."
- George Burns (1896-1996)
"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero Roman statesman, scholar, orator
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
- Paul Erdos
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."
- Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more
approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
- Thomas Jefferson
"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting
it."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
“Remember this -- very little is needed to make a happy life.”
-Marcus Aurelius
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as
though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near."
- Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
"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.)
"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
“The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.”
-Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
"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)
"If you are going through hell, keep going."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"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)
“Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.”
-Malcolm Cowley
“Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is
so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it; so fine that we are often on the line and do not
know it.”
-Elbert Hubbard
“Yesterday is a dream, tomorrow but a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a
dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore to this day.”
-Sanskrit Proverb
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
“Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life
is to live dangerously!”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting
me is another matter."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them."
- Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
"When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider
all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession,
the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the
important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of
our nature."
- Sigmund Freud
"Facts are the enemy of truth."
- Don Quixote - "Man of La Mancha"
"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of
the world."
- George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a
society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
-Albert Einstein
"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to
create it herself."
- Anais Nin (1903-1977)
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
“Love can turn the cottage into a golden palace.”
-German Proverb
“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”
-Albert Einstein
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."
- George Eliot (1819-1880)
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the
truth."
- Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)
“We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility.”
-Albert Einstein
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”
-Plato
“One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere”
-Voltaire [Francois-Marie Arouet]
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this
is true."
- James Branch Cabell
"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."
- John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)
“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing
stripes with plaid comes easy.”
-Albert Einstein
“A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.”
-Erin Majors
“In the Midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.”
-Deepak Chopra
“He who is ashamed of asking is ashamed of learning.”
--Danish Proverb
"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience
rightly considered."
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made
terrible
by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
- Umberto Eco
“Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.”
-Aristotle
"Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down."
- Jimmy Durante
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
"The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old
way."
- Richard Harding Davis
"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)
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
-Albert Einstein
"Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working."
- Albert Giacometti (sculptor)
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third,
it is accepted as being self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."
- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
- Frank Zappa
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”
-Albert Einstein
"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
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
- Carl Sagan
"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."
- G. B. Burgin
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
- Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger" by Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance"
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
- Jimi Hendrix
"A clever man commits no minor blunders."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours."
- Richard Bach
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said
to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.”
-Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
”We never desire passionately what we desire through reason alone.”
- La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678
"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
- Will Durant
“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the
hardest victory is over self.”
-Aristotle
"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
- Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
"It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.”
-Albert Einstein
"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend
to
know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means."
- Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
- Warren Zevon
"When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
“He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a
large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.”
-Albert Einstein
“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. it's not a day when you lounge
around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do and you've done it.”
-Margaret Thatcher
"Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together."
- Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
“Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.”
-Voltaire [Francois-Marie Arouet]
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"Luck is the residue of design."
- Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
- Mel Brooks
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"Wit is educated insolence."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
“For every one billion particles of antimatter there were one billion and one particles of matter.
And when the mutual annihilation was complete, one billionth remained - and that's our present
universe.”
--Albert Einstein
“This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects for it redoubleth joy,
and cutteth griefs in half.”
-Francis Bacon
"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.)
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
"Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”
-Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
- Gore Vidal
"Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them."
- Samuel Palmer (1805-80)
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny."
- Guy Davenport
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured."
- Tacitus, "Agricola"
"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and
is not a conservative, has no brains."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may
well be another profound truth."
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
“I don't believe in mathematics.”
--Albert Einstein
"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
“A first-rate theory predicts; a second-rate theory forbids; and a third-rate theory explains after
the event.”
- Aleksander Isaakovich Kitaigorodskii
“It is easy to be wise after the event.”
- Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “The Problem of Thor Bridge”
"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the
problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
"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)
"I would have made a good Pope."
- Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
“The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love
shows itself.”
-Moliere (1622-1672)
“To find yourself jilted is a blow to your pride. Do your best to forget it and if you don't succeed,
at least pretend to.”
-Moliere (1622-1672)
"In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience."
- W.B. Prescott
No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying
emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the
human community.
-Sigmund Freud
"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state
of
sin."
- John von Neumann (1903-1957)
"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."
- chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game's opening position
“Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.”
-Winston Churchill
"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is
terribly
important."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
The great question that has never been answered and which I have not been able to answer....
is, What does a women want?
-Sigmund Freud
"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
"There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that
there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there
are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
- C. A. R. Hoare
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
To be great is to be misunderstood
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity
--Thomas Henry Huxley
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What do you take me for, an idiot?"
- General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy
“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today.
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it
is, but the world as it will be...This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our
everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.”
-Isaac Asimov
“Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real
thing. The theory yields a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In
any case I am convinced that He doesn't play dice.”
-Albert Einstein
“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look farther than you can see.”
-Sir Winston Churchill
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow
enormous benefits upon the world.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
“The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from domination of outside
conditions.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
“I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.”
-Mother Teresa
"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
“When it is time to die, let us not discover that we never lived.”
-Henry David Thoreau
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
-Henry David Thoreau
"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
“Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.”
-Mark Twain
“If actions are to yield all the results that they are capable of, there must be a certain
consistency between them and one’s intentions.”
- La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678
"Logic is in the eye of the logician."
- Gloria Steinem
"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person
nearest you.”
-Mother Teresa
"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
- Martin Fraquhar Tupper
“While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside
us.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
-Mark Twain
"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)
"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
“Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men
because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.”
-Albert Einstein
“Learn to be calm and you will always be happy”
-Paramhansa Yogananda
"In the end, everything is a gag."
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people."
- Lucille S. Harper
"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
- Yogi Berra
"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known."
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)
“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.”
-Mark Twain
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
--Albert Einstein
Philosophy is the science which considers truth.
--Aristotle
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
- Sacha Guitry
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
“Friendship is the only thing in this world, the usefulness of which all mankind are in agreement.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
“Well, I tell you, if I have been wrong in my agnosticism, when I die I'll walk up to God in a manly
way and say, Sir, I made an honest mistake.”
-H. L. Mencken
“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on Simplicity.”
-Plato
"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)
“We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.”
-Ray Bradbury
"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking."
- Katherine Cebrian
"I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it."
- Steven Wright
“The part can never be well unless the whole is well.”
-Plato
"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."
- Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
"Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure."
- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)
“Joy is not in things! It is in us!”
-Benjamin Franklin
"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
- Mae West (1892-1980)
"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
"No Sane man will dance."
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
“Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon
compounds that crawl.”
-Mike Adams
“After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.”
-Henry Louis Mencken, on Shakespeare
"Hell is a half-filled auditorium."
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the
light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is
familiar with it.”
--Max Planck
“You can’t depend on your eyes if your imagination is out of focus.”
- Mark Twain
“Reason can answer questions but imagination has to ask them.”
- Ralph N. Gerard
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
-Mark Twain
"The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order
that your ideas will upset."
- Anthony D'Angelo
“Look at these cows and remember that the greatest scientists in the world have never
discovered how to make grass into milk.”
- Michael Pupin
"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."
- Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (Robert cited from the Bhagavad Gita, after witnessing
the first nuclear detonation)
"The gods too are fond of a joke."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"Men are not disturbed by things, but the view they take of things."
- Epictetus (55-135 A.D.)
"When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and
most transient of passions- They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited,
abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part."
-George Bernard Shaw
"There cannot be mental atrophy, in any person who continues to observe, to remember what
he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things."
-Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)
“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”
-Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
"Men have become the tools of their tools."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives."
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)
"To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me."
- Charles William Stubbs
“Knowledge belongs to the curious.”
- Juvenal
“Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.”
- Baltasar Gracian
"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
- George Santayana (1863-1952)
“It is disconcerting to reflect on the number of students we have flunked in chemistry for not
knowing what we later found to be untrue.”
- Robert L. Weber, Science With a Smile (1992)
“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over
and let the beautiful stuff out.”
-Ray Bradbury
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal
difference between a dog and a man.”
-Mark Twain
"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
- Emile Zola (1840-1902)
“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
-Psalm 30:5
"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are
capable of being.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
- Tom Stoppard
“I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them.”
-Pablo Picasso
“I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable sit still in a room.”
-Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
“I'd like to live like a poor man with lots of money.”
-Pablo Picasso
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
- Sun Tzu
"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."
- Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)
“Listen or your tongue will keep you deaf.”
- Native American Proverb
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
- E. Roosevelt
"Never mistake motion for action."
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains
that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
“For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Silence is argument carried out by other means."
- Ernesto"Che"Guevara (1928-1967)
"Well done is better than well said."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
“Be civil to all, sociable to many, familiar with few, friend to one, enemy to none.”
-Benjamin Franklin
"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
- Perelman
"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that
other is ready."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
“If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.”
-Mark Twain
“A person’s mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions.” --Oliver
Wendell Holmes
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only
love can do that."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah... didn't miss the boat.”
-Mark Twain
“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental
institution of the universe.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.”
--H. L. Mencken
“Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”
--H. L. Mencken
“Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain
quirks.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before
him.”
-Mark Twain
“Every child is an artist, the problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
-Pablo Picasso
“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”
--Blaise Pascal
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every
difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
“None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" "
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."
- Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
“There is a difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him.”
-Benjamin Franklin
"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of
opportunity."
- Irving Kristol
“Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”
-Thomas Jefferson
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
"Human subtelty will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than
does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous."
- Leonardo DaVinci
"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."
- Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)
“Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.”
-Mark Twain
“The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow
on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.”
- Ferdinand Magellan
"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
- Tom Clancy
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"
"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
“The perpetuity of single emotion is insanity.”
-I. Taylor.
“Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce
happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.”
-Benjamin Franklin
"The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live
“The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a
few esteemed characters.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“Happiness is a Swedish sunset; it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it.”
-Mark Twain
"The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny.
When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed."
- Alexis Carrel, "Reflections on Life"
“Nobody loves life like him that's growing old.”
-Sophocles
"There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not
a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to
comprehend the whole."
- Bill Wulf
“If we all told what we know of one another, there would not be four friends in the world.”
-Blaise Pascal
“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.”
-President Thomas Jefferson
“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained.”
-Mark Twain
“Reason is God's crowning gift to man.”
-Sophocles
“Experience is an asset of which no worker can be cheated, no matter how selfish or greedy his
immediate employer may be.”
- Napoleon Hill
"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly
right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"I criticize by creation - not by finding fault."
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
“Fear not death, for the sooner we die the longer we shall be immortal.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“The most beautiful thing that we can experience is the mysterious”
-Albert Einstein
“He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man
has need to be forgiven.”
- Thomas Fuller
“The measure of a truly great man is the courtesy with which he treats lesser men.”
- Anonymous
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
-Francis Bacon
“The old man laughed loud and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot,
and ended by saying such a laugh was money in a man's pocket, because it cut down the
doctor's bills like anything.”
-Mark Twain
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor
and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his
religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever
he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing
both.”
- James A. Michener
“A man is not completely born until he is dead.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Do not wait; the time will never be ''just right.'' Start where you stand, and work with whatever
tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”
-Napoleon Hill
"Woman was God's second mistake."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
“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 down on a hot stove-lid
again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”
-Mark Twain
"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-
knowing."
-Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
“Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us; we regard every person
whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our
own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows.”
-Octavio Paz
“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get
hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any
justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at
bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
-Richard Dawkins
“…the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.”
-Steven Weinberg
"a tale told by an idiot, filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing."
-William Shakespeare (William used this tale as an allegory for life)
“ But what I want to guard against is people therefore getting nihilistic in their personal lives. I
don't see any reason for that at all. You can have a very happy and fulfilled personal life even if
you think that the universe at large is a tale told by an idiot.”
-Richard Dawkins
“Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered
there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.”
-Oprah Winfrey (1954-)
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
- Mahatma Gandhi
“Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment chop wood and carry
water.”
-Ancient Chinese Proverb
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and
begin slitting throats."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may
be so at the moment after death.”
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
“I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody.”
-Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"Whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if
even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world;
when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you
stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course. Whenever you laugh, gladness spreads
like the ripples in a pond; and whenever you're sad, no one anywhere can be really happy. And
it's much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole
world becomes that much richer."
- Norton Juster, "The Phantom Tollbooth"
"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), his response to Napoleon as to why there is no mention of God in
his works on celestial mechanics
“The average man does not know what to do with his life, yet wants another one which will last
forever.”
- Anatole France
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read
them."
-Mark Twain (1835-1910)
“No really great man ever thought himself so.”
- William Hazlitt
We have two kinds of viruses that have a lot in common--namely real biological viruses and
computer viruses. In both cases they are parasitic self-replicating codes which exploit the
existence of machinery that was set up to copy and obey that kind of code. So I then ask the
question, "What if there were a third kind of milieu in which a different kind of self-replicating
code could become an effective parasite?" Human brains with their powerful communication
systems seem to be a likely candidate. Then I ask, "What would it feel like if you were the victim
of a mind virus?" Well, you would feel within yourself this deep conviction that seems to come
from nowhere. It doesn't result from any evidence, but you have a total conviction that you know
what's true about the world and the cosmos and life. You just know it and you're even prepared
to kill people who disagree with you. You go around proselytizing and persuading other people
to accept your view. The more you write down the features that such a mind virus would have,
the more it starts to look like religion.
-Richard Dawkins
"The Soul is the voice of the body's interests."
- George Santayana, "The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense", 1906
“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.”
- Henry Ford
"Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do
instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at
the expense of the rest...."
- C. S. Lewis
“A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are
legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.”
- Sigmund Freud
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis,
we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
-Max Plank
"You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea."
- Medgar Evers
“The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
- Albert Einstein
| Organization for the Advancement of Interdisciplinary Learning |
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