Quotes fascinate because they contain an unusually clear and succinct idea that speaks to our unique personalities. Quotes are something more than ideas however; they are windows into the mind, the spirit, and the humor of the person who retells them. Here are some of my favorites.
And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.
--Anais Nin
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking." --Albert Einstein
The map is not the territory. --Alfred Korzbyski
"An ecological trap occurs when biological evolution moves too slowly to adapt a species to the rate of environmental change around it. A similar thing is happening to the human species since their skills, institutions and ideas are not growing fast enough to cope with the rate of change in their total environment." --Geoffrey Vickers
Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity? --Ronald Reagan
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything (one) as if it were a nail" -- A Maslow
"The reverse side also has a reverse side." -- Japanese proverb
"Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire." --Anwar El-Sadat
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. --Albert Einstein
At the heart of it, all we can really offer each other is our full attention. --Frank Ostaseski - Stories of Lives Lived and Now Ending, The Sun, December 1994
There is a saying, that before a baby is born, God kisses its soul, and as the angel carries it to its tiny body, he sings. Is there somewhere in my soul a dim memory of that kiss, a faint echo of that song? --Anon
"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies." --Peter Pan, I , J.M. Barrie 1860-1937
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." --Schopenhauer
They can't censor the gleam in my eye. --Charles Laughton
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. -- Anatole France
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 fully suffice. ---Albert Einstein
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin. --Anatole France in Crainquebeille
We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are. --- Max De Pree
People who are having a love-sex relationship are continuously lying to each other because the very nature of the relationship demands that they do, because you have to make a love object of this person, which means you editorialize about them....You cut out what you don't want to see, you add this if it isn't there. And so therefore you're building a lie. But in a friendship you don't do that. You do exactly the reverse. You try more and more to be as completely pure and straight as you can be. --Truman Capote, interviewed by David Frost
"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."--Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
"If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time" --Chinese proverb
Reason can answer questions...But imagination has to ask them.--Ralph Gerard
"Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." -- Lily Tomlin
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." -- Anatole France
"In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up." ---Paston Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984
"Your case will be decided by twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty." -- Norman Yarvin
Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over [your] body. -- George Carlin
...I offer a third phenomena which may be considered God: the matrix of relationships between all things. That matrix or web unifies each of the parts of reality into a whole. --David K. Miller
"It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in." Graffito in London (c. 1970s)
"If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn't thinking." --General George S. Patton
There is one way to find out if a man is honest -- ask him. If he says 'yes,' you know he is crooked. -- Groucho Marx
Growth, for growth's sake, is the ideology of the cancer cell. --Abbey
"The value of love will always be stronger than the value of hate. Any nation or group of nations which employs hatred eventually is torn to pieces by hatred." - -Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat."-- Harry Emerson Fosdick
"Hate burns up more energy than anything else, more than hard work, illness or justifiable worry. So when hatred is entering our hearts, let us just put it out, make room for pleasant thoughts instead, save our precious God-given energy for something worthy of it." -- Dale Carnegie
Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right. --Henry Ford
"To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy." --Hippocrates
Creativity is more important than knowledge. ---Albert Einstein
Only in the last moment of human history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world. --E.O. Wilson
"What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?" --Bertolt Brecht
To be honest, one must be inconsistent. -- H.G. Wells
"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot."--Horace Greeley
"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together".--Australian Aboriginal woman.
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. ---Wayne Gretsky
If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one. --Anatole France in Crainquebeille
"Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace." -- Albert Schweitzer
"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." -- Timothy Leary
There are angels walking around masquerading as people all over this planet. --Iggie, Fried Green Tomatos
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware. --Hebrews 13:2
Every time you get angry, you poison your own system. --Alfred Montapert
Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. ---Ambrose Pierce
There was one who thought he was above me, and he was above me until he had that thought. -- Elbert Hubbard
Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye. -- Austin O'Malley
Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity can usually be traced to an organization. ---Jon Bentley - More Programming Pearls
"People are not homeless if they're sleeping in the streets of their own hometowns." --Dan Quayle
"Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is IN the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here." -- Hawaii, September 1989.
The best thing about rain forests is they never suffer from drought. --Dan Quayle
Bank failures are caused by depositors who don't deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement. --Dan Quayle
It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our rain and water that are doing it. --Dan Quayle
"The other day [the President] said, I know you've had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. (He paused, then said) Would you like a puppy?" -- Dan Quayle, LA Times 5/21/89
Do you remember being in left field? Thinking to yourself--`Don't hit the ball to me. Don't hit the ball to me?' I believe that there is a fundamental change in a kid's life when that thought changes into `Hit the ball to me. I want the ball. Hit it to me.' --Paraphrased from Jody Powell on the PBS' documentary "Baseball"
I went to a convent in New York and was fired finally for my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was a spontaneous combustion. --Dorothy Parker
" Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of." --Bill Moyers
"Nonsense wakes up brain cells" ---Dr. Seuss
"Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way." -- Booker T. Washington
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total oblivion. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me and turn my inner eye to follow its path. When the fear is gone, only I will remain. ---The Litany Against Fear from Dune by Frank Herbert, 1965
"Spring has sprung
the grass has riz.
I wonder where
my flowers is?
--Ogden Nash
If you hear the sound of hoofs, you tend to think think horses, not zebras. --Anon
Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me? --Mae West
I feel like a million tonight, but one at a time. --Mae West
If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people. --Old Chinese Proverb
The fact that your voice is amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other does not confer upon you greater wisdom or understanding than you possessed when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other. --Edward R. Murrow An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind. --Mohandas K. Gandhi
"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..." --General Sedgewick, killed at the Spotsylvania battle, 1864, imprudently looking over the parapet at the enemy lines.
Government has to concede the dignity of its citizens. If the government can't protect its citizens with fairness, we're in real trouble, aren't we. --Ramsey Clark, in an interview with David Frost
You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think. ---(speech to American Horticultural Society)
Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly....Even when your body is relaxed do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body be influenced by your spirit. --Musashi
"Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire." -- William Yeats
Here
Lies
Lester Moore
Four slugs
FROM A 44
NO LES
NO MORE
:::::Boot Hill @ Tombstone, AZ:::::::
The Lord Buddha has said: that we must not believe in a thing merely because it is said; nor traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity; nor rumors, as such; not writings by sages, because sages wrote them; nor fancies that we may suspect to have been inspired in us by a Deva (that is, in presumed spiritual inspiration); nor from inferences drawn from some haphazard assumption we may have made; nor because of what seems to be an analogical necessity; nor on the mere authority of our teachers or masters. But we are to believe when the writing, doctrine, or saying is corroborated by our own reason and consciousness. "For this," says he in concluding, "I taught you not to believe merely because you have heard, but when you believed of your consciousness, then to act accordingly and abundantly." --Secrit Doctine, Vol. III page 401
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. --Basho
"It matters if you just don't give up." --Stephen Hawking
The biologist thinks
He is a chemist,
The chemist thinks
He is a physicist,
The physicist thinks
He is a God,
And God thinks
She is a mathematician.
-mapped from a University of Toronto t-shirt, circa 1980
"The more you use your brain, the more brain you will have to use." -- George A. Dorsey
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
"Poets and artists live on the frontiers. they have no feedback; they have only feed-forward. They have no identity; they are probes. --Marshall McLuhan
In the Unites States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is. -- Gertrude Stein in The Geographical History of America, 1936
"Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels." --Attributed to Linda Ellerbee, Ann Richards, and Faith Whittlesey (1980's)
"If you want to make God laugh, tell him you have plans." --Sister Emerita
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. --Helen Keller
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. --H G Wells
When looking for an apartment, Mrs. Parker to a realtor: "It needn't be too large. All I need is a place to lay my hat and a few friends."
I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid. --Dorothy Parker
You can't teach an old dogma new tricks. --Dorothy Parker
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. --(book review) --Dorothy Parker
Consensus is the triumph of leadership. --James Lux
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful. ---Mae West
"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing: and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization." --Putonius, AD 66, suicide by Nero's orders
Life would be infinitely happier if I could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen. --Mark Twain (Samuel Clements)
"The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer because smaller things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of suffering" -- Thomas Merton
Never eat more than you can lift. --Miss Piggy
If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything. -- Marva Collins
I think there is inherent in the Native American world view the idea that naming is coincidental with creation; that, when you bestow a name uppon someone or something, you at the same time invest it with being....It's a worldwide kind of idea. --N. Scott Momaday in Winged Words
I've never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful. --Mrs. H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
You should not have a favorite weapon. To become over-familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well. You should not copy others, but use weapons you can handle properly. --Musashi
What we call God is the evolutionary drive of consciousness in the Universe. --Nikos Kazantzakis
"Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the time I am being carried on great wings across the sky." --Ojibway saying
We are like flies crawling across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We cannot see what angels and gods lie underneath the threshold of our perceptions. We do not live in reality: we live in our paradigms, our habituated perceptions, our illusions, the illusions we share though culture we call reality, but the true reality of our condition is invisible to us. --William Thompson
So I'm interested in transformations, I'm interested in how you go from one phase of being to another phase of being, in how you go from one condition or state to another condition or state, which is what ritual is, after all. --Paula Guinn Allen in Winged Words
"A man is not finished when he's defeated; he's finished when he quits." --Richard Nixon
Woe to the society that extols the philosopher as a noble professional, and scorns the plumber as an uneducated laborer, for in this society neither the philosophy, nor the pipes will hold water. (a poster in the in office of Carl Michealson, an engineer who predicted the accident at Three Mile Island almost two years before it happened, and then could not get anyone to believe him)
"No plan can prevent a stupid person from doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time--but a good plan should keep a concentration from forming." --Charles E. Wilson
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." --Western Union internal memo, 1876.
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. --Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? --H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." --Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949.
"But what ... is it good for?" --Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." --Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again." -- A. Solzhenitsyn
"Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and all good things will be yours." -Swedish proverb
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. --Philip K. Dick in How to Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978
You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. --Richard Bach
A short cut to riches is to subract from our desires. --Petrarch Epistolae de Rebus Familiaribus
There is no safety. Only varying degrees of risk. --Lois McMaster Bujold
"Condoms aren't completely safe, a friend of mine was wearing one and he got hit by a bus." --Bob Rubin
Excuse my dust. (epitaph suggested by Dorothy Parker)
"If not us, who? If not now, when?" --John F. Kennedy
Return to Lighthook's Main Page