Good Quotes

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Give us your favorite quotes!

"Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process." -E.B. White

"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt.

"Money can't buy life." - Bob Marley, speaking last words to son Ziggy.

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

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." --Sir Stephen Henry Roberts

"Religion is a beaurocracy between man and God." - Bill Maher

"The idea that the truth of God can be bound in any human system, by any human creed, by any human book, is almost beyond imagination for me. I mean, God is not a Christian! God is not a Jew or a Moslem or a Hindu or Buddhist! All of those are human systems, which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God." - John Spong

"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." - Bill Watterson

"Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." - Noam Chomsky

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James. D. Miles

"If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room." - Unknown

"When you confront an enemy you cannot beat in one aspect, combat them in a field you can control." - Anonymous, 4chan

"what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." - Christopher Hitchens

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick

"A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one." - J. P. Morgan

"I've come to learn that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake." - Anonymous

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Seneca the Younger

"Who created god? If your answer is he always was, then why can't you say the same for the universe?" - Unknown

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." - Guatama Buddha?

"[No], what makes somebody love, accept, and befriend their fellow man is letting go of a need to be better than others." - Dan Pearce

“I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.” - Neil DeGrasse

"Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." - Jesus

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves" - Edward R. Murrow

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.” - Carl Sagan

"Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived." - The Dalai Lama, upon being asked what surprised him most about humanity

“The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.” - John E. Southard

"We invented the scientific method because we are naturally terrible at explaining our own experiences. Without the scientific method, there is no way to know what causes simple, everyday things like thunder. Every explanation is as good as another, and if an explanation becomes culturally bound and passed down, that becomes the official explanation for millennia. Our natural tendency is to confirm our assumptions, but science tries to disconfirm our assumptions one by one until the outline of the truth begins to form. Once we realized that approach generates results, we went from horses and tobacco enemas to mapping DNA and walking on the moon in a few generations." - Dave McRaney

"It is a general truism of this world that anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united will surely divide." - Opening line of Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry." - Bertrand Russel

"God made men, but Samuel Colt made them equal." - Ad for Colt Manufacturing

"A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange arrays of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!" - Richard Feynman

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." — Marilyn Monroe

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced." - Albert Einstein

"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties — He integrates empirically." — Albert Einstein

“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” - Mark Twain

"The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it." - Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.

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

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." -Sun Tzu

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near." - Sun Tzu

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." - Sun Tzu

"The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you." - Sun Tzu

"Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many." - Machiavelli

@shau - your post is so long I think it pretty much covers ALL sayings! Still:

The greatness of a man is not measured by the boastful beauty of his words but the honest sum of his actions.

I liked this one the best. I've believed this thought always. I feel the same even about cave paintings, stone carvings, and petroglphs.

Ancient artists/authors had in mind to tell a story, preserve a memory, teach a lesson to their children's children's children. But just maybe a few of them intended to send the messages much further down the liine, much further into the future.

Here is a quote from Abraham Lincoln that I like...
"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."

Person 1: I went through hell and back, it's not been easy. I had to fight to get where I am today.
Person 2: I never knew you were in the army?
Person 1: I'm not in the army, I'm autistic. Going into war would be suicide.

Not quite.
Entering hyperpost special interest mode in:

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AGE

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
Robert Frost

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Mark Twain

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.
Don Marquis

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
Agatha Christie

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
Henry Ford

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?
Satchel Paige

I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.
Lauren Bacall

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.
Henri Frederic Amiel

Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair.
Sam Ewing

Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.
Bob Hope

No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift

Some people live more in 20 years than others do in 80. It's not the time that matters it's the person.
-Tenth Doctor

In youth we learn; in age we understand
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach






DEATH

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
W. Somerset Maugham

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.
Kahlil Gibran

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.
Edvard Munch

Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.
Erik H. Erikson

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.
Willa Cather

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

No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.
Euripides

Some people are so afraid do die that they never begin to live.
Henry Van Dyke

Suicide is man's way of telling God, "You can't fire me - I quit."
Bill Maher

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca






FORGIVENESS

A soft refusal is not always taken, but a rude one is immediately believed.
Alexander Chase

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde

For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
Adlai E. Stevenson

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy

Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.
Suzanne Somers

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.
Indira Gandhi

Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.
Dag Hammarskjold

Forgiveness is the final form of love.
Reinhold Niebuhr

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Mark Twain






LOVE

A baby is born with a need to be loved - and never outgrows it.
Frank Howard Clark

A hug is like a boomerang - you get it back right away.
Bil Keane

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.
Ingrid Bergman

A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years.
Rupert Brooke

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
Thomas Carlyle

A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven.
Boethius

A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.
George Jean Nathan

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
Henri B. Stendhal

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

All love shifts and changes. I don't know if you can be wholeheartedly in love all the time.
Julie Andrews

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.
Anais Nin

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.
- Miss Piggy

Few delights can equal the presence of one whom we trust utterly.
George MacDonald






PEACE

A people free to choose will always choose peace.
Ronald Reagan

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
Mohandas Gandhi

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.
Benjamin Franklin

I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and peace.
Muhammad Ali

I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war.
Georges Clemenceau

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.
Napoleon Bonaparte

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.
Andre Gide

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
Eleanor Roosevelt






WAR

He who joyfully marches to music 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

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
John Adams

John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov

The first casualty when war comes is truth.
Hiram Johnson

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Winston Churchill

An unjust peace is better than a just war.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

If we don't end war, war will end us.
H. G. Wells

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.
Herodotus

No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
James Madison

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
- William Shakespeare

Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.
- General Omar Nelson Bradley

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.
- Douglas MacArthur


Death is the winner in any war.
- Tuomas Lauri Johannes Holopainen






GOVERNMENT

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Douglas Adams

When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
- Kurt Vonnegut

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

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium (I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery )
Latin Phrase

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
- Edward Gibbon

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
- Bob Wells

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
- John F. Kennedy

The United States is like a giant boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate.
- Winston Churchill

He was just a little villain. An old-fashioned craftsman, making crimes one-off. The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present-they are real.
- Lois McMaster Bujold


A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
Benjamin Franklin

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
Charles de Montesquieu
Britain will be honoured by historians more for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it.
Lord Harlech

How is the Empire?
King George V

It does not seem to me to be sufficiently recognized everywhere among the officials that the existence or non-existence of our people and Empire is at stake.
Paul von Hindenburg

Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall.
Al Stewart

Makers of empire, they have fought for bigger things than crowns and higher seats than thrones.
Herbert Kaufman


The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose.
William Blake






TECHNOLGY

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.
Carl Sagan

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke

Bill Gates is a very rich man today... and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: versions.
Dave Barry

For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift.
Wernher von Braun

Gates is the ultimate programming machine. He believes everything can be defined, examined, reduced to essentials, and rearranged into a logical sequence that will achieve a particular goal.
Stewart Alsop

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.
Mitchell Kapor

I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface.
Jaron Lanier

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Ambrose Bierce

Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.
Linus Torvalds

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Emo Philips

Bill Gates is the pope of the personal computer industry. He decides who's going to build.
Larry Ellison

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Edsger Dijkstra

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

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
Andy Rooney

Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.
Nicholas Negroponte

Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.
Clifford Stoll

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.
Doug Larson

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
Isaac Asimov

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
Stephen Hawking

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
Nikola Tesla

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
Douglas Adams

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
John Gilmore






ART

A picture is a poem without words.
Horace

A good painting to me has always been like a friend. It keeps me company, comforts and inspires.
Hedy Lamarr

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

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.
Gertrude Stein

Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
Albert Camus

Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.
Marshall McLuhan

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.
John Ruskin

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.
Charles Horton Cooley

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
George Santayana


Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
- Elvis Costello






ACTION
Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
Albert Einstein

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.
Mother Teresa

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
Mark Twain

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.
Confucius

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.
Confucius

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
Thomas Jefferson

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.
William Shakespeare

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.
Aristotle

A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided.
Tony Robbins

Action is the foundational key to all success.
Pablo Picasso

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.
Theodore Roosevelt

Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.
Theodore Roosevelt

It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.
Zig Ziglar

You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.
Tony Robbins

Success comes from taking the initiative and following up... persisting... eloquently expressing the depth of your love. What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?
Tony Robbins

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The ancestor of every action is a thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Action is the real measure of intelligence.
Napoleon Hill

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.
Bruce Lee

Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.
Will Rogers

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.
Norman Vincent Peale








WISDOME

It's fun to do the impossible
Walt Disny

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
Douglas Adams

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
Douglas Adams

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Non are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
Douglas Adams

If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Paul Valery

“Not all those who wander are lost.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.
Italian Proverb

To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
John le Carre

He was no more real than an equation, and no less so than God
Fredrik Pohl

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
Marie Curie

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Samuel Johnson

No cause is lost if there is but one fool left to fight for it.
Will Turner, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
Benjamin Disraeli

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.
Abraham Lincoln

I think it would be a good idea.
Mahatma Gandhi

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.
George Bernard Shaw

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.
Jane Wagner

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
- Voltaire

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
- Stephen King

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
- William James

People fear what they don't understand and hate what they can't conquer.
Andrew Smith

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
- Walter Bagehot

You don't get anything clean without getting something else dirty.
- Cecil Baxter

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

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
George Bernard Shaw

You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.
- Warren Beatty

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
- John Ruskin

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
- Oscar Wilde

Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.
- James Thurber

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
- T. S. Eliot

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.
- Herbert Agar

There are no limits. There are plateaus, and you must not stay there; you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you.
- Bruce Lee

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.
Bruce Lee

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.
Bruce Lee

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
Bruce Lee

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.
Bruce Lee

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
Bruce Lee

As you think, so shall you become.
Bruce Lee

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
G. K. Chesterton

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

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde

Cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays
Sun Tzu

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.
Marie Curie

The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?
Zhuangzi

He is poor who does not feel content.
- Japanese proverb

Do first what you dread the most.
- Anonymous

No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
- John Calvin Coolidge

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
-Miles Kingston

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
-Albert Einstein
DREAMS
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
William Faulkner

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
Elias Canetti


Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Edgar Allan Poe

Dream and give yourself permission to envision a You that you choose to be.
Joy Page

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Dreaming men are haunted men.
Stephen Vincent Benet

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.
Erma Bombeck

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
Anais Nin

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.
Harriet Tubman

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
Douglas Adams

I close my eyes, then I drift away, into the magic night I softly say. A silent prayer, like dreamers do, then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you.
Roy Orbison

I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night.
Bill Watterson

I was always a dreamer, in childhood especially. People thought I was a little strange.
Charley Pride

I'm a dreamer. I have to dream and reach for the stars, and if I miss a star then I grab a handful of clouds.
Mike Tyson

I've always said that one night, I'm going to find myself in some field somewhere, I'm standing on grass, and it's raining, and I'm with the person I love, and I know I'm at the very point I've been dreaming of getting to.
Drew Barrymore

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
Erma Bombeck


Man is a genius when he is dreaming.
Akira Kurosawa


My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.
Joseph Campbell

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.
Jesse Jackson


One of the most adventurous things left us is to go to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams.
E. V. Lucas

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
Christopher Reeve

Sometimes, the only realists are the dreamers.
Paul Wellstone

Strivers achieve what dreamers believe.
Usher Raymond

That's what keeps me going: dreaming, inventing, then hoping and dreaming some more in order to keep dreaming.
Joseph Barbera

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul Valery

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.
George Santayana

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.
Sarah Ban Breathnach

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
Robert Kennedy

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
Anatole France

We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.
Jesse Owens

Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.
- Ludwig van Beethoven






CANDLES
How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
William Shakespeare

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.
Buddha

Religion is a candle inside a multicolored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but the candle is always there.
Mohammed Naguib

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Buddha






FLIGHT
The most beautiful dream that has haunted the heart of man since Icarus is today reality.
Louis Bleriot

There is no sport equal to that which aviators enjoy while being carried through the air on great white wings.
Wilbur Wright

You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky.
Amelia Earhart






FAMILY

A man should never neglect his family for business.
- Walt Disney

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
- George Bernard Shaw

Family is the most important thing in the world.
- Princess Diana

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.
- Richard Bach

I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family. We were a family that would have killed for each other - and we still are.
- Richard Branson

No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?
- Lee Iacocca

The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family.
- Lee Iacocca

The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
- George Santayana

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.
- Andre Maurois






LONELINESS

It's better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone, so far.
- Marilyn Monroe

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
- John Lennon

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.
- Audrey Hepburn

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
- Helen Keller

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
- Helen Keller

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
Henry Miller






OTHER
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
Douglas Adams

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

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
William Shakespeare

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exhilaration.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Oscar Wilde

Imitation is the sincerest form of television. - Fred Allen

The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
Jilly Cooper

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
Noel Coward

I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
- Gilda Radner

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

The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren't any space aliens. We can't be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we're not all there is. If so, we're in big trouble.
- Ellen DeGeneres

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand
- Kurt Vonnegut

The best doctor in the world is the veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what is the matter-he's got to just know.
- Will Rogers

Everything you can imagine is real.
Pablo Picasso

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Groucho Marx

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
Lily Tomlin

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

You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.
Scott Adams

If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
John A. Wheeler

No man ever listened himself out of a job.
Calvin Coolidge

Write what you know.
Mark Twain

Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a
delusional,illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an
unscrupulous mainstream media,which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
-2007 winning entry from an annual contest at Texas A&M University calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Beautiful! Beautiful! Magnificent desolation.
- Edwin E. Aldrin

There's a sucker born every minute - P. T. Barnum

Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to a family and clan, whose blood is in your own veins.
Charles Alexander Eastman

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein


A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
Aesop

Life is an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
Carl Sandburg

If you’re looking for friends when you need them…it’s too late.
Mark Twain

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
Douglas Adams

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

No one can be free who does not work for the freedom of others.
Anonymous

Mankind's greatest contribution to the absurd, the thermonuclear bomb
- John Crichton, Farscape, episode 82 "We're So Screwed (Part 2): Hot to Katratzi”

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Kahlil Gibran

"Dream not of today."
Professor Richard Galen From Star Trek: The next Generation episode 20 “The Chase”

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
-Lewis Carroll

If your number one goal is to make sure that everyone likes and approves of you, then you risk sacrificing your uniqueness and, therefore, your excellence.
-Anonymous

Every successful enterprise requires three men - a dreamer, a businessman, and a son of a b***h.
Peter McArthur

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.
Mohandas Gandhi

In life, as in chess, forethought wins.
Charles Buxton


Wit is a treacherous dart. It is perhaps the only weapon with which it is possible to stab oneself in one's own back.
Geoffrey Bocca

Today you are you
that is truer than true
There is no one alive
Who is youer than you
- Dr. Seuss

An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.
- Elbert Green Hubbard

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
- Douglas Adams

Smooth seas do not make for a skillful sailor.
- African Proverb

"No, [I can't always hear my daemon]. But, I learned long ago that it's best to wait until you do. When your daemon says nothing, he usually means no." -Rudyard Kipling

"For every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree." -Alan Watts

"When you don't have red, use blue." -Unknown

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." -Henri Bergson

""Two men looked out through prison bars; one saw mud, the other, stars." -James Allen

"Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor reject having been deaf. For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things, And you shall bless darkness as you would bless the light." -The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran)

These are just a few of my favorite quotations. I used to write any quote that inspired me in a little notebook but I haven't been keeping up with that.

What a marvelous quote. The rest of them made sense, but this one just says absolutely nothing beyond a school child's understanding of playground warfare. A friend of mine invented quotes that were just as silly. Example:
"You must meet them with equal to overwhelming force" - on military strategy when outnumbered. Usually, the best thing you can hope for when outnumbered is finding a bottle neck, not suddenly being stronger.

I've checked, these haven't been said yet

"Don't dismiss a good idea simply because you don't like the source.” - Unknown.
“Just because you're offended, doesn't mean you're right.” - Ricky Gervais.

In capitalism man exploits man, in socialism it`s exactly the opposite.
(Ben Tucker,comedian)

@Titangeek, you are a God man, I have added many of those quotes to my collection!

The quote came from a discussion about rugby, not war. The match being discussed had two teams, the Wallabies, and the All Blacks. The All Blacks had been putting up an indomitable defensive line the whole game, which the Wallabies just couldn't seem to break through in order to score a try. However, it became apparent quite quickly that the Wallabies had the stronger scrum game happening (They were winning practically all of them). So basically what you had was the All Blacks doing everything they could to keep the match out of scrums, and the Wallabies doing vice-versa. The guy wrapped up his entire commentary on the match with "When you confront an enemy [The All Blacks] you cannot beat in one aspect [field defense], combat them in a field you can control [scrums]."

I thought it was a brilliant piece of advice, that had general applications in all realms of life, especially competitive sports such as League of Legends. I'm sorry my friend, but you have probably greatly misunderstood that quote. Perhaps it needs more context?

Last edited by Shau on 25 Jul 2012, 7:02 am, edited 3 times in total.

God? Ha, I am Ceiling cat!

Time is nothing, the desire to love is everything. (Michel de Nostradamus -1503–1566)

A man travels the world in search of what he needs, returns home and finds it. ( George Moore-1852-1933 )

Even with that explanation, I think it's not a good quote. It's not something worth saying.
It's something everyone should know, and the people who don't shouldn't be able to be financially independent.

Apparently it needs to be said more often, given the state of modern rugby! And you'd be pretty pissed off at how well-paid some of these apparently oblivious Rugby players are. They've been smashing against the indomitable defense of the All Blacks for decades to no avail.

But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.
If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in.
— Raymond Chandler, from "The Simple Art of Murder"


"Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one — and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
"How?" demanded Fafhrd. Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
— Fritz Leiber


It is an odd thing that the words hero and heroine have in their constant use in connection with literary fiction entirely lost their meaning. A hero now means merely a young man sufficiently decent and reliable to go through a few adventures without hanging himself or taking to drink.
— G. K. Chesterton


Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods?"
— Macaulay


And they ask, "What is a Hero?"
though the answer's very clear,
He's the one who faces danger
when the darkness hovers near.

He will face the fiercest foe
when another needs his aid,
He will dare to defy Death
even though he is afraid,
He works not just for glory
and he does it not for gain,
But because he knows that others
will be spared a greater pain.

He won't always follow orders,
for he dares to answer, "Why?"
And unless he likes the reason,
he refuses to comply,
He will brave the battle boldly
even though he may not win,
He will face his fate unflinching,
for he is a Paladin.

And they ask "What is a Hero?"
though the answer's evident,
He's the one who faces death
knowing that his life's well spent.
— Quest for Glory II: Trial By Fire


Price Lir: Then what is magic for? What use is wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?
Shmendrik: That's what heroes are for.
— The Last Unicorn


"I remember when you were young and I used to tell you stories about your father; what was it you'd say to me?"

"Teach me to be a Hero!"
— Walter Beck & The Hero, Fable 3


True Heroism is alike positive and progressive.It sees in right the duty which should dominate and in truth the principle which should prevail.And hence it never falters in the faith that always and everywhere Sin must be repressed and Righteousness exalted.
— John McClellan Holmes


"I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh. I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes dim and cold. I am hero."
— Marathon 2: Durandal


Someone’s looking for a lead

In his duty to a king or to a creed

Protecting what he feels is right

Fights against wrong with his life
—Robert Palmer, Every Kinda' People


"If the lake should disappear, they must find the hole through which the water ran. But it would be useless to try to stop it by any ordinary means. There was but one effectual mode.—The body of a living man could alone stanch the flow. The man must give himself of his own will; and the lake must take his life as it filled. Otherwise the offering would be of no avail. If the nation could not provide one hero, it was time it should perish."
— George MacDonald, The Light Princess