There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea...

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

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

It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear.

This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.

George 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.

Henry B. Adams

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

One friend in a life is much, two are many, three are hardly possible.

They know enough who know how to learn.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

Joey Adams

A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing.

 Marriage is give and take. You'd better give it to her or she'll take it anyway.

Samuel Adams

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Scott Adams , creator of Dilbert

The Dilbert Principle: People are idiots.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719)

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.

Alfred Adler (1870-1937) - Austrian psychiatrist

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder with the truth.

Mortimer Adler

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

Stella Adler

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.

Aeschylus

The wisest of the wise may err.

Aesop

Wealth unused might as well not exist.

Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything.

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.

The gods help them that help themselves.

Agathon

Even God cannot change the past.

Spiro T. Agnew, then Governor of Maryland

I don't believe that the answer to white racism is black racism.

Ama Ata Aidoo

She was back in Africa. And that felt like fresh honey on the tongue: a mixture of complete sweetness and smokey roughage. Below was home with its unavoidable warmth. Oh Africa! Crazy continent.

Senator George Aiken, on the Vietnam war, January 1966

I'm not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more owls.

Howard Aiken

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

Akhenaton

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.

Ben Joseph Akiba

The paper burns, but the words fly away.

Louisa May Alcott

Father asked us what was God's noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are.

"Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.

Brian Aldiss

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them; they show us the state of our decay.

Sholom Aleichem

You that have been through all this, and who know that such are our lives and that no amount of self-delusion can make them less so- you who have experienced fear, and humiliation, and despair, and defeat, and are aware that there is more yet to come- you to whom all this has happened and who still have been able to laugh- you, my friends, need no consolation, because you have already prevailed.

Barbara J. Alexander

How can we hope to remain economically competitive in a world in which... 90% of Dutch high-school students take advanced math courses and 100% of teachers in Germany have double majors, while the best we can say about our "pocket of excellence" is that 75% of [American] students have learned to "critique tactfully?"

Vittorio Alfieri, from Oreste

Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.

Muhammad Ali, in Time, 1978

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

 The man who has no imagination has no wings.

Gracie Allen

When I was born I was so surprised that I didn't talk for a year and a half.

Woody Allen

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.

I want to tell you a terrific story about oral contraception. I asked this girl to sleep with me and she said "no."

It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.

I don't think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib.

If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.

I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead -- not sick, not wounded -- dead.

(Referring to the KKK) I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats.

To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.

Gloria Allred, feminist attorney

(on Politically Incorrect, 1995) The more I know about men the more I like dogs.

Henri-Frederic Amiel

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.

 Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be outraged by silence.

Tori Amos

I could just pretend that you love me
The night would lose all sense of fear
But why do I need you to love me
When you can't hold what I hold dear?

Father says bow your head
Like the Good Book says
I think the Good Book is
Missing some pages...

I got enough guilt to start my own religion.

If the divine masterplan is perfection
maybe next I'll give Judas a try...

George K. Anderson, from The Legend of the Wandering Jew

What man has done to man is the saddest chapter in the history of the world. The story of the peoples of the earth is in large measure the tale of how the world whipped the nonconformist with its displeasure and visited upon him dishonor and ignominy, torture and death.

Hans Christian Anderson, from The True Story of My Life

Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.

Jeremy S. Anderson

There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.

Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
they think I'm telling lies.
I say, It's in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say, It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing of my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can't see.
I say, It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say, It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

The true republic: men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.

Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776.

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

Guillaume Apollinaire

"Come to the edge," he said.
They said, "We are afraid."
"Come to the edge," he said.
They came. He pushed them,
And they flew.

Applied Optics, vol. 11, A14, 1972

The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E) temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Give, expecting nothing thereof.

Arabic Proverb

All sunshine makes the desert.

Aristotle

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

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

 The gods too are fond of a joke.

 All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

 The high minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.

 What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

 Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

 Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

 I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

 Education is the best provision for old age.

 Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

Neil Armstrong

That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.

Matthew Arnold, from Self-Dependence

Resolve to be thyself: and know that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.

Roger Ascham

Charles V used to say that "the more languages a man knew, he was so many more times a man." Each new form of human speech introduces one into a new world of thought and life. So in some degree is it in traversing other continents and mingling with other races. As a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellence with one tongue.

Alan Ashley-Pitt

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.

Isaac Asimov

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

From my close observation of writers...they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm.... that's funny...'

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.

[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.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

Herbert Henry Asquith

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.

Lady Nancy Astor (1879-1964) - first woman member of the British Parliament

I married beneath me. All women do.

The Atlanta Journal

The 10 Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.

W. H. Auden

The glacier knocks in the cupboard
the desert sighs in the bed
and the crack in the teacup opens
a lane to the land of the dead.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Berthold Auerbach

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Saint Augustine

Tell us straight out that you do not believe in the Gospel of Christ; for you believe what you want in the Gospel and disbelieve what you want. You believe in yourself rather than in the Gospel.

The good Christian should beware the mathematican and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicans have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.

Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.

Sri Aurobindo

Life is life--whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.

Jane Austen

I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them.

Elinor agreed with it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.

Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in... The quarrels of popes and kings,with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.

All the privilege I claim for my own sex...is that of loving longest, when existence or hope is gone.

(first line of Pride and Prejudice, 1813) It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

A. J. Ayer, from Essay on Humanism

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.