back
All your strength is in your union, All your danger is in discord.
- Henry Wadsworth
Ray Milland as Don Birnam : It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It
pickles my kidneys, yeah. But what it does to the mind? It tosses the
sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the
ordinary. I'm competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls.I'm
one of the great ones. I'm Michaelangelo, moulding the beard of Moses.
I'm Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the
Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before movies got him by the
throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I'm
William Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer,
it's the Nile. Nat, it's the Nile and down it moves the
barge of Cleopatra.
-From Lost Weekend, The (1945)
"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
--Douglas Adams
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President
should on no account be allowed to do the job."
--Douglas Adams
"There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up
of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed
for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered
into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as
our success."
--George Matthew Adams
"The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses
a base ten counting system and likes round numbers."
--Scott Adams
"Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself
and his excreta."
--Brian Aldiss
"It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there
when it happens."
--Woody Allen
"The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people.
Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more."
--Woody Allen
"Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite.
This is a very comforting thought---particularly for people who
can never remember where they have left things."
--Woody Allen
"Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability
to stick to one thing till it gets there."
--Josh Billings
"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think."
--Niels Bohr
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the
opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
--Niels Bohr
"What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?"
--Bertolt Brecht
"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God-
-but to create him."
--Arthur C. Clarke
"If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking
'Do you want fries with that?'"
--John Cleese
"There are two types of people--those who come into a room and say,
"Well, here I am!" and those who come in and say, "Ah, there you are."
--Frederick L Collins
"Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it."
--Phillip K. Dick
"Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be a
bunch of bastards."
--R. A. Dickson
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely
when they have exhausted all other alternatives."
--Abba Eban
"The two most abundant things in the universe are
Hydrogren and stupidity."
--Harlan Ellison
"It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours
a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for
eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing
a man can do for eight hours is work."
--William Faulkner
"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful
job of thinking."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
"We do not inherit this land from our ancestors; we borrow it
from our children."
--Haida Indian saying
"It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer
than we imagine, is queerer than we CAN imagine."
--J.B.S. Haldane
"Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity,
and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them."
--Joseph Heller
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored"
--Aldous Huxley
"Technological progress has merely provided us with more
efficient means for going backwards."
--Aldous Huxley
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life.
The only completely consistent people are dead."
--Aldous Huxley
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human
existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness
of mere being."
--Carl Jung
"The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense
and nonsense, not between right and wrong."
--Carl Jung
"The cat could very well be man's best friend but would
never stoop to admitting it."
--Doug Larson
"The reason people blame things on previous generations
is that there's only one other choice."
--Doug Larson
"If people concentrated on the really important things in life,
there'd be a shortage of fishing poles."
--Doug Larson
"Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by
people not smart enought to know they were impossible."
--Doug Larson
"Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."
--Groucho Marx
"Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to
you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it."
--W. Somerset Maugham
"The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo."
--Desmond Morris
"Never fight an inanimate object."
--P. J. O'Rourke
"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental
ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles,
we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for
stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power."
--P.J. O'Rourke
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the
present controls the past."
--George Orwell
"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."
--Dan Stanford
"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over.
Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from
the center."
--Kurt Vonnegut
"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
to fit their views...which can be very uncomfortable if you happen
to be one of the facts that needs altering."
--Doctor Who
"What's another word for Thesaurus?"
--Steven Wright
"If a word in the dictionary were mispelled, how would we know?"
--Steven Wright
"If God dropped acid, would he see people?"
--Steven Wright
"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
--Steven Wright
"Anywhere is walking distance, if you've got the time."
--Steven Wright
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please
-- Mark Twain
It is a mistake to suppose that God is only, or even chiefly,
concerned with religion.
-- Archbishop William Temple
I read the book of Job last night - I don't think God comes
out well in it.
-- Virginia Woolf
All Bibles are man-made.
-- Thomas Edison
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
-- Muriel Rukeyser
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and
car keys to teenage boys.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
Half of the American people never read a newspaper.
Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
-- Gore Vidal
Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.
-- John Archibald Wheeler
God not only plays dice. He also sometimes throws the
dice where they cannot be seen.
-- Steven Hawkins
We must love one another or die.
-- W.H. Auden
-- "September 1, 1939"
Because he once wrote, "We must love one another or die,"
he can command me to follow him.
-- E.M. Forster
That's a damned lie! We must die anyway.
-- W.H. Auden
We must love one another and die.
-- W.H. Auden
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
-- Shelley
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
"'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take such a
time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'"
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
"There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know
what you'retalking about."
-- John von Neumann
"The basis for optimism is sheer terror."
-- Oscar Wilde
Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence;
conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear.
-- William Gladstone
"It is often asserted that discussion is only possible
between people who have a common language and accept
common basic assumptions. I think that this is a mistake.
All that is needed is a readiness to learn from one's partner
in the discussion, which includes a genuine wish to understand
what he intends to say. If this readiness is there, the
discussion will be the more fruitful the more the partner's
backgrounds differ."
Karl Popper
Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against
one's own despised and unwanted feelings.
-Alice Miller
"You can't say civilizations don't advance...in every war they kill
you in a new way."
- Will Rogers
"I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by
mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could
comprehend it."
- ?
More to follow.
Back: Quotations Page One
Back: Quotations Page Two
Back: Quotations Page Three
back