Bernard Moitessier, The Long Way: "One very fine night, a taïcong fisherman told me why the stars announce the wind when they twinkle strongly. It is because there is wind up there, and it blows on the little flames of the stars, just as one would on a candle. So the stars flicker. The wind then blows with all its might, but can't blow them out, so it gets angry and comes down to the sea in revenge for being unable to blow out a single star, even the lowest ones close to the horizon. There, the stars could not resist the wind, which can blow very hard when it really gets angry. But there is a god close to the horizon to protect the low stars."
Captain Jack Sparrow: "That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and hull and a deck and sails. That's what a ship needs. But what a ship is... is freedom." (from Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl)
The Flying Karamozov Brothers: "Wherever you go, there you are."
The Flying Karamozov Brothers: "Time is what keeps everything from happening at once."
George Carlin: "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Albert Einstein: "Everything should be as made as simple as possible but no simpler."
Walt Kelly: "Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent."
T.H. White, The Once and Future King: "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
Emo Phillips: "Probably one of the toughest times in anyone's life is when you have to kill someone you love because they're the Devil."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery Wind, Sand and Stars: Perfection is reached not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery Wind, Sand and Stars: If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love: "Never try and teach a pig to sing: it's a waste of time, and it annoys the pig."
In A Brief History of Time (Bantam Books, 1988), Stephen Hawking: tells the story of an elderly woman who confronted Bertrand Russell at the end of a lecture on orbital mechanics, claiming she had a theory superior to his. "We don't live on a ball revolving around the Sun," she said, "we live on a crust of earth on the back of a giant turtle." Wishing to humor the woman Russell asked, "And what does this turtle stand on?" "On the back of a second, still larger turtle," was her confident answer. "But what holds up the second turtle?" he persisted, now in a slightly exasperated tone. "It's no use, young man," the old woman replied, "it's turtles all the way down."
Walt Kelly: "Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent."
Anonymous: Heu, vitam perdidi, operose nihil agendo. "Alas, I have wasted my life, industriously doing nothing."
Seneca, Epistolae, VII,7: Homines dum docent discunt. "Men learn while they teach."
Blaise Pascal: "I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short."
William Safire's Rules for Writers: "Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives."
Gilbert K. Chesterson: "The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid."
J. P. McEvoy: "Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming."
George Burns: "If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few people die past the age of a hundred."
Dwight D. Eisenhower: "I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."
Anonymous: "God grant me the senility to accept the things I cannot change, The frustration to try to change things I cannot affect, and the wisdom to tell the difference."
Henrik Ibsen: "You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Oscar Wilde: "Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."
Mark Twain: "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
Petronius Arbiter, 210 BC: "We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized ... I was to learn later in life that we meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."
John Ciardi: "A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of the idea."
William Blake: "To generalize is to be an idiot."
Doug Larson: "Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none."
Theodore H. White: "The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment."
J.D. Hildebrand: "I once had a therapist tell me in confidence that he didn't really believe in change. I think he's right--people don't change. Sometime very early in life you are given the keys to a great big house. One room is full of learning, another full of patience, there's a closet full of mechanisms that turn frustration into anger, whatever your personality is. As you go through life, you have the opportunity to spend more time in some rooms than others. But you're stuck with that house. There's no remodeling, no real change."
Lao Tzu: "A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."
Andre Gide: "It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not."
Walt Kelly (Pogo): "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Walt Kelly: "Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ..."
Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby): "If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we'd all be millionaires."
Picasso: "Everything you can imagine is real."
James Thurber: "You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."
William Blake: "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955): "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."
Lily Tomlin: "Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then--we elected them.
Oscar Wilde: "As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular."
P. J. O'Rourke: "The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop."
Mae West (1892-1980): "He who hesitates is a damned fool."
Glaser and Way: "The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase it."
Henry Ford: "You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."
Publius Syrus: "Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing '72: "He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope of ever behaving 'normally.'"
Anonymous: "Some men are discovered; others are found out."
Mark Twain: "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
Pablo Picasso: "I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Richard Feynman: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
Will Rogers (1879-1935): "Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects."
Mark Twain (1835-1910): "My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."
Clarence Darrow: "I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it."
John D. Rockefeller: "I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure."
Russell Baker: "Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things."
UPI Stylebook: "A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a journalist, you are expected to know the difference."
Voltaire (1694-1778): "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."
Carl Sandburg: "I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way."
Paul Valery: "God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through."
George Wald: "A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms."
Frederick L Collins: "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.'
James Thurber: "You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward."
Abraham Lincoln: "'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."
Gandhi: "I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."
Sam Brown, Washington Post, 1977: "Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance."
Lily Tomlin: "We're all in this alone."
Carl Sandburg: "...Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come."
Anonymous: "Two wrongs do not make a right, it usually takes three or more."
Vice President Dan Quayle: "We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to go forward."
Mark Twain (1835-1910): "It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
W.C. Fields: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again. Then quit. There's no sense being a damn fool about it."
Alvin Toffler: "Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it."
Lyle Alzado: "I don't really trust a sane person."
Lily Tomlin: "Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs."
James Thurber: "It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
Kin Hubbard: "Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men."
G. H. Hardy: "It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that."
Thomas Berger: "Why do writers write? Because it isn't there."
Carolyn Wells: "Actions lie louder than words."
Abraham Lincoln: "If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee."
John Kenneth Galbraith: "If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."
Ben Hecht: "Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock."
e e cummings: "I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
Antoinne de Sant Exupery, The Little Prince: "If someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists."
Bernard Berenson: "Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."
Ashleigh Brilliant: "I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it."
Woody Allen: "Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?"
Jack Benny (1894-1974): "I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either."
John Kenneth Galbraith: "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): "It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
Bill Hoest: "I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
Wilson Mizner: "Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up."
Janet Long: "Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy."
Bertrand Russell: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969): "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money."
Douglas Adams: "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."
Jeff Marder: "We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police."
Herman Wouk: "Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today."
Peter Drucker: "The computer is a moron."
Aldous Huxley: "The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name."
Luis Bunuel: "I'm still an atheist, thank God."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): "Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history."
Ken Hakuta: "Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle."
Phineas Taylor Barnum: "Every crowd has a silver lining."
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966): "Punctuality is the virtue of the bored."
Woody Allen: "Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon."
Mark Twain (1835-1910): "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
Jonathan Swift: "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."
Jane Wagner: "The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool."
Mark Twain (1835-1910): "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955): "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
Robert Byrne: "There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on."
Robert Benchley: "A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down."
Tom Stoppard: "Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art."
Hunter S. Thompson: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
Arthur C. Clarke: "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future": "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Douglas Adams: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
Robert Frost: "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): "Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
Margaret Bonnano: "It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis."
Heinrich Heine: "There are more fools in the world than there are people."
Susan Ertz: "Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
Caron de Beaumarchais: "It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them."
Emile Coue: "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better."
Fred Allen: "Committee--a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done."
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."
Robert Frost: "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper."
F. P. Jones: "Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again."
Willy Wonka, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: "A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men."
Benjamin Disraeli: "Man is a being born to believe, and if no church comes forward with all the title deeds of truth, he will find altars and idols in his own heart and his own imagination."
Casey Stengel: "The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided."
unknown: "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Richard P. Feynman: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."
Simon Cameron: "An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought."
Frank Zappa: "The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced."
T.H. Huxley: "Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
Gustave Flaubert: "To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."
Fred Showker, (http://www.graphic-design.com/DTG/DTG-Solutions/60-Cool.html): "Content is more important than style... message is always more important than technique."
Howard Scott: "Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation."
Henry J. Tillman: "Life is something that everyone should try at least once."
Ambrose Bierce, The_Devil's_Dictionary: "Cabbage: A... vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head."
Helen Rowland (1876-1950): "One man's folly is another man's wife."
Don Marquis: "Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control."
Maurice Chevalier: "Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives."
Luis Bunuel: "I'm still an atheist, thank God."
Garrison Keillor: "I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it."
Ben Franklin, ~1784: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): "What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): "Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!"
E.V. Lucas: "I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them."
E. F. Schumacher: "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
