Some of my favorite quotes:
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail... but a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn... that was fun!" - Seen on a bar sign
"I've been married and happy. Trust me, happy is better!" - A friend
"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people" -Merina
"Because of the nail the shoe was lost. Because of the shoe the horse was lost. Because of the horse the battle was lost. Because of the battle the war was lost." - author unknown
"History is a race between education and catastrophe." - H.G. Wells
"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress." - John Adams
"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed." - Mark Twain
"When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen Roberts
"Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman
"Always do what you want, and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind." -Dr. Suess
“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” - Confucius
“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” —The Talmud
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” - Winston Churchill
"The universe is vast and we are so small. There is only one thing we can truly control - Whether we are good or evil." - Oma to Daniel
"You must always strive to be the best, but you must never believe that you are." - Juan-Manuel Fangio
"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse" - Henry Ford
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager." - William S. Burroughs (1914 - 1997)
"The chief cause of problems is solutions!" - Unknown
"God may have created you, but I evolved." -Janis Boyle
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” - John Quincy Adams
"The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws." - Walt Whitman ("Notes Left Over" 1881)
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - John Adams
"What do they eat?"
"Meat"
"Whew. Good!"
"Dude, YOU'RE meat!"
"Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative."
"Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous."
"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." - Albert Einstein
"Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them." - Aaron Sorkin
“Tomorrow or the next life, who knows which comes first?” - Dalai Lama
"If you don't do the attic, you will have to lock me up in an institution... then you will have to hire a nanny to raise your children... you may as well just use that money to do the attic." - Janis speaking about adding another child to the brood and "do the attic" meaning add another room for child #4
"Poor people are insane; rich people are merely eccentric." - Dennis Hopper
"Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." - Albert Einstein
"Aerodynamics is for people who don't know how to build engines." - Enzo Ferrari
"Time is an abstract concept invented by carbon based life forms to monitor their constant decay." - Thunderclese
"A democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding on what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the results of the decision." - Benjamin Franklin
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." --Alexander Hamilton
"Remember, the cable company is made up of people who couldn't get jobs at the phone company." - Scott Adams
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -Albert Einstein
"Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt and dance like you do when nobody's watching." - Unknown
Don't let past bad decisions force you to make future bad decisions - Unknown
I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things - Unknown
"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." - Isaac Asimov
"The most successful people in life are generally those who have the best information." -Benjamin Disraeli
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." - Mark Twain
"The lyfe so short, the craft so long to learne" - Chaucer
"I'm Prime Minister of Canada, I live here and I'm going to take a leak." - Lester Pearson in 1967, during a meeting between himself and President Lyndon Johnson, whose Secret Service detail had taken over Pearson's cottage retreat. At one point, a Johnson guard asked Pearson, "Who are you and where are you going?"
Beautiful Women by Audrey Hepburn
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his/her fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand,
You will find one at the end of each of your arms.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands;
One for helping yourself, and the other for helping others.
"Don't drink and park. Accidents cause people!" - Seen on a bumper sticker in CA
"I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could." - Orson Welles
"Don't cry because nobody loves you... It's ok." - Three year old Olivia on her first day of school attempting to comfort another three year old who was crying incessantly
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.
"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned." -Anonymous
"I will never let my schooling get in the way of my education." - Mark Twain
"Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." --Albert Einstein
"You may be whatever you resolve to be." - Stonewall Jackson
"The difference between winners and losers is that winners do what losers don't want to do." - Phillip C. McGraw
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." -Napoleon
“Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” - John Quincy Adams quote
"If things aren't going your way, you aren't putting in enough effort" - Robert Boyle
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." -Winston Churchill
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed, if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival." - Winston Churchill
Good luck is usually preceded by hard work and planning.
"There are three reasons to own a gun. To protect yourself and your family, to hunt dangerous and delicious animals, and to keep the King of England out of your face." - Krusty the Clown
There is no such thing as a mistake, there is only what you do and what you don't do. - from Unfaithful
Live each day as if it is your last because one of these days, it will be! - Unknown
"Trade unions are schools of communism." - Vladimir Il'yich Lenin
"You may delay, but time will not." - Benjamin Franklin
"If you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one." Luke 22:36
"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants." -- A. Whitney Brown
"After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws, it will be discovered that the gasket has been omitted." - De la Lastra's Corollary
"Facts all come with points of view" - David Byrne and Brian Eno
"In times of change the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." - Eric Hoffer
"I had no shoes and wept. Then I met a man who had no feet. So I said, "Hey man, got any shoes you're not using?" - Warren's Sig.
"I'm hungry and I want Macaroni and Cheese Doodles" - Olivia (Summer 2003)
"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is wasted." - Aesop (born 620BC)
"When all of your decisions are based on economics, you end up with a sameness of vision. You're not taking the risks, you're not exploiting the passions of your creators. You're manufacturing product for a huge vending machine." - TV producer Steven Bochco
"You should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about."- Willy Wonka
"Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly." - Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
"My God! I haven't been fucked like that since grade school." - Helena Bonham Carter, 'Marla Singer', from "Fight Club"
"My wife told me if I bought this car she would leave me. Sometimes I kinda miss her." - Unknown
"There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary, and those who do not" - Unknown
"The force is within you. Force yourself!" - Harrison Ford
"Every craftsman who can do more than what he was trained to do is an artist; this is because he develops a degree of 'perfection' that surpasses the level of the acquired skills." - F. A. Porsche
"Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it." - Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 1965
"REHAB is for quitters." - Unknown
"There are no ugly women, only lazy ones" - Helena Rubenstein
"Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." - Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Theory: Nothing is working but everybody knows why
Practice: Everything is working but nobody knows why
Here we combine both: Nothing is working and nobody knows why
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." - Galileo Galilee
"If you have an idea, that is good. If you also have ideas as to how to work it out, that is better." - Henry Ford
"Information is not knowledge." - Frank Zappa 1940-1993
"To yield is to be preserved whole. To be bent is to become straight." - Lao-tzu
"You have two choices in life: you can stay single and be miserable, or get married and wish you were dead." - Unknown
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds - Albert Einstein
Fuel is limited. Gravity is forever.
Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the small, quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow." - Unknown
Of all sad words of toungue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been!" - John Greenleaf Whittier
Takeoffs are optional. Landings are mandatory.
"Polygamy is one wife too many, Monogamy is still one wife too many..." - Leonard
"Technological progress is like an ax in the hands of a pathological criminal." - Albert Einstein
"The country has charms only for those not obliged to stay there." - Edouard Manet
"If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?" - Unknown
"Let every nation know, whether they wish us well or ill, that we shall bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, or oppose any foe, to ensure the survival and success of Liberty" - John F. Kennedy, January, 1962
"A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." - Frank Lloyd Wright
"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages may be preserved by quotations." - Unknown
"A cat spends her life conflicted between a deep, passionate and profound desire for fish and an equally deep, passionate and profound desire to avoid getting wet. This is the defining metaphor of my life right now."
"I'm OK with it, but it'll be a drag if I don't make it till the next James Bond movie comes out." - Singer/songwriter Warren Zevon, commenting on his terminal lung cancer
"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." - Justice William O. Douglas
A Man's Checklist for a Happy Relationship/Marriage:
1. It is important to find a woman who cooks and cleans
2. It is important to find a woman who makes good money
3. It is important to find a woman who likes to have sex
4. It is important that these three women never meet.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. - Oscar Wilde
A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten it. - Brander Matthews
A good landing is one you can walk away from. It's a great landing if you can use the airplane again.
To go up, pull the stick back. To go down, pull the stick waaaaaaay back....
Flying isn't dangerous. Crashing is.
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves. - Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967)
"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time." -James Thurber
"Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power." - Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 1965
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him? - Blaise Pascal
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. - Albert Einstein
You come with nothing. You die with nothing. What have you lost? Nothing! - Monty Python
"Force has no place where there is need of skill." - Herodotus (484 BC - 430 BC), The Histories of Herodotus
"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom." - Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 1965
"There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old system and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one." -Machiavelli, 1513
Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them. - Samuel Palmer
"Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws." - Publius Cornelius Tacitus
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price. - Benjamin Franklin
To be nobody but myself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me somebody else means to fight the hardest battle any human can fight, and never stop fighting -E.E.Cummings
The irony of the rat race explained....
A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.
"Not very long," answered the Mexican.
"Well, then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.
The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.
The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs...I have a full life."
The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers.
Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge enterprise."
"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.
"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.
"And after that?"
"Afterwards? That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"
"Millions? Really? And after that?"
"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take siestas with your wife, and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."
"Beware the man of one book." - Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274)
Oscar Wilde's definition of fox hunting: "The pursuit of the inedible by the unspeakable."
"Pursue perfection but accept excellence." - Unknown
Everyone dies, but not everyone truly LIVES! - W. Wallace in Braveheart
"Every person is a fool in somebody's opinion." - Spanish Proverb
"Beware the man of one book." - Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274)
He said come to the edge.
I said I can't - I'm afraid.
He said come to the edge.
I said I can't - I'll fall off
He said finally, COME TO THE EDGE.
And I went to the edge and He pushed me.
And, I flew! - Guilluame Apollinaire
Oliver Wendell Holmes once attended a meeting in which he was the shortest man present. "Dr. Holmes," quipped a friend, "I should think you'd feel rather small among us big fellows." "I do," retorted Holmes, "I feel like a dime among a lot of pennies."
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains. - Sir Winston Churchill
What is it that you lost that you are grieving for?
What is it that you brought into this world, that you have lost?
Whatever you gained, you gained from this world.
Whatever you lost , you lost to this world.
What Belongs to you today, Belonged to someone else yesterday and will belong to someone else tomorrow. Bhagavad Gita (Krishnan V)
Fall seven times, Stand up eight. - Japanese proverb
Our greatest glory consists not of never falling,but in rising every time we fall. - Oliver Goldsmith
"A man who loses his money, gains, at the least, experience, and sometimes, something better." - Benjamin Disraeli
A woman awakes during the night to find that her husband was not in bed. She
puts on her robe and goes downstairs to look for him. She finds him sitting at
the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of him.
He appears to be in deep thought, just staring at the wall. She watches as he
wipes a tear from his eye and takes a sip of his coffee.
"What's the matter, dear?" she whispers as she steps into the room.
"Why are you down here at this time of night?"
The husband looks up from his coffee, "Do you remember 20 years ago when we were
dating, and you were only 16?" he asked solemnly.
"Yes, I do" she replies.
The husband paused. The words were not coming easily. "Do you remember when your
father caught us in the back seat of my car making love?"
"Yes, I remember," said the wife, lowering herself into a chair beside him.
The husband continued. "Do you remember when he shoved the shotgun in my face
and said, 'Either you marry my daughter, or I'll send you to jail for 20 years?"
I remember that too" she replied softly.
He wiped another tear from his cheek and said, "I would have gotten out today."
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch of a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." -Robert F. Kennedy
Lewinsky and Clinton have shown
What Kaczynski must surely have known:
That an intern is better
Than a bomb in a letter
When deciding how best to be blown.
-Unknown
"Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better." - Unknown
"The road to greatness begins at home." - Chinese Proverb
"He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts." - Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side and a dark side and it holds the universe together." - Carl Zwanzig
We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly. -- Sam Keen, To Love and Be Loved
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. - Derek Bok
He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees. - Benjamin Franklin
"A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough." - Bovee
"A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him." - Alexander Solzenitsyn
Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned. --Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." - Albert Einstein
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be critized anyway." - Elanor Roosevelt
"Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be." - Thomas a Kempis
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." - Mark Twain
"How a person plays the game shows something of his character - how he or she loses shows all of it." - Unknown
"A goal without a date is only a wish." - Unknown
"We don't need to continue living the way we lived yesterday. Free yourself of that idea and a thousand possibilites beckon to a new life." - Christian Morgenstern
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan
To know even one life has breathed easier because you lived - this is to have succeeded. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Amoris vulnus idem sanat, qui facit" (Love's wounds can be healed only by the one who inflicts them.) - Publilius Syrus (85BC-43BC)
The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it. - John Ruskin
"Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off the goal." - E.Joseph Cossman
Live as if you will die tomorrow; learn as if you will live forever. - Unknown
You can spend your money and spend your time. At the end of the day, you can look in your wallet and know how much money you have left. That's the difference between money and time. - Richard Miller
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." - Jean-Luc Picard
"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something." - Wilson Mizner
"Kindness is a language which the deaf man can hear and the blind man read." - Mark Twain
To me, there is no greater act of courage than being the one who kisses first. - Janeane Garafolo
A letter from a father to his son on his son's appointment as a judge in Hungary in the early 20th century. From the film Sonnenschein (Sunshine)
My dear son Ignatz,
You have left the safety of the house in which you were born in order to achieve you life's goal: to become a judge. To create laws, as Moses did. To render justice, like King David. To exercise power from which the Almighty has barred us... or, perhaps, protected us for thousands and thousands of years. You are entering a new world where you will certainly be successful because you have knowledge. Study has always been our religious duty as Jews. Our exclusion from society has given us an ability to adapt to others and sense the connections between things which seem diverse, but if you feel you have power, you are mistaken. If you feel you have the right to put yourself ahead of others because you think you know more than they do, you are wrong. Never allow yourself to be driven into the sin of conceit. Conceit is the greatest of sins - the source of all other sins... Never give up your religion, not for God. God is present in all religions, but if your life becomes a struggle for acceptance, you'll always be unhappy. Religion may not be perfect, but it is a well built boat that can stay balanced and carry you to the other shore. Our life is nothing but a boat adrift on water, balanced by permanent uncertainty. About the people whom you will judge, know this: All they do is struggle to find a kind of security. They're just people, like us. Therefore, you mustn't judge them on the basis of appearance or hearsay. Trust no one. Examine all things yourself. Do not join with power. Despise all rank. Do not be ostentatious with what is yours. Owning possessions and property ultimately comes to nothing. Possesions and property can be consumed by fire, swept away by flood, taken away by politics. Do not undertake what you do not know. This causes anxiety which makes you ill. Exercise discipline. I think of you with all my love.
Your father,
Emmanuel Sonnenschein
I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money. - Lord Acton
A superior pilot is one who uses his superior judgement to avoid having to use his superior skill.
I don't pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages. - Robert Bosch
The best way out is through. - Robert Frost
If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business. - B. C. Forbes
Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The scars you acquire by exercising courage, will never make you feel inferior." - D.A. Battista
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, not touched...but are felt in the heart." - Helen Keller
"Good will, like a good name, is got by many actions, and lost by one." - Francis Jeffrey
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart." - Linus
"You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures." - Charles C. Noble
"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." - Francis Bacon
"Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve." - Roger Lewin
"If both of us thought alike, one of us would not be necessary." - Unknown
"If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere." - Unknown
I always prefer to believe the best of everybody-it saves so much trouble. - Rudyard Kipling
"It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong." - Unknown
"The way to acquire enthusiasm is to believe in what you are doing and in yourself; and to want to get something definite accomplished. Enthusiasm will follow as night the day." - Unknown
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that 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." - Mark Twain
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." - Thomas Jefferson
"Leave undone whatever you hesitate to do." - Yoshida Kenko
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. -Unknown
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what other people say you cannot do. -Walter Bagehot
Most people are in favor of progress; it's the changes they don't like. -Unknown
You teach best what you most need to learn. -- Richard Bach
Let a man avoid evil deeds as a man who loves life avoids poison. -- Buddha
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. -- H.L. Mencken
As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. - Socrates
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. -- Niels Bohr
No one is guaranteed happiness. Life just gives each person time and space. It is up to us to fill it with joy. - Unknown
I have never been hurt by things I didn't say. - Unknown
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible. " - A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express)
Sometimes holding on makes you stronger; sometimes its letting go. - Unknown
"The truth is ugly so we put our prophets in prison." - Oscar Wilde? No... Charles Manson
"Emotion should reflect reason not guide it" - Unknown
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, 1758.
"So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind while just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs." -Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American poet, 1896
If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work. - Kahlil Gibran
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776
The Night of the Broken Glass (Kristallnacht)--the infamous Nazi rampage against Germany's Jews--took place in November 1938. It was preceded by the confiscation of firearms from the Jewish victims. On Nov. 8, The New York Times reported from Berlin, "Berlin Police Head Announces 'Disarming' of Jews," explaining: "The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been 'disarmed' with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Any Jews still found in possession of weapons without valid licenses are threatened with the severest punishment."
On the evening of Nov. 9, Adolph Hitler, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and other Nazi chiefs planned the attack. Orders went out to Nazi security forces: "All Jewish stores are to be destroyed immediately . Jewish synagogues are to be set on fire . The Führer wishes that the police does not intervene. All Jews are to be disarmed. In the event of resistance they are to be shot immediately."
All hell broke loose on Nov. 10: "Nazis Smash, Loot and Burn Jewish Shops and Temples," a headline read. "One of the first legal measures issued was an order by Heinrich Himmler, commander of all German police, forbidding Jews to possess any weapons whatever and imposing a penalty of twenty years confinement in a concentration camp upon every Jew found in possession of a weapon hereafter." Thousands of Jews were taken away.
Searches of Jewish homes were calculated to seize firearms and assets and to arrest adult males. The American Consulate in Stuttgart was flooded with Jews begging for visas: "Men in whose homes old, rusty revolvers had been found during the last few days cried aloud that they did not dare ever again return to their places of residence or business. In fact, it was a mass of seething, panic-stricken humanity."
Himmler, head of the Nazi terror police, would become an architect of the Holocaust, which consumed 6 million Jews. It was self-evident that the Jews must be disarmed before the extermination could begin.
Finding out which Jews had firearms was not too difficult. The liberal Weimar Republic passed a Firearm Law in 1928 requiring extensive police records on gun owners. Hitler signed a further gun control law in early 1938.
Other European countries also had laws requiring police records to be kept on persons who possessed firearms. When the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1939, it was a simple matter to identify gun owners. Many of them disappeared in the middle of the night along with political opponents.
Stephen P. Halbrook, "Registration: The Nazi Paradigm," American Rifleman, Vol. 149 No. 6, June 2001, pg. 52.
"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms ... discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all the world would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside...Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived the use of them..." -Thomas Paine, I Writings of Thomas Paine.
Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral. - Frank Lloyd Wright
Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible. - Andy Warhol
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" -Patrick Henry, 3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions
"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind." - General William Westmoreland
"I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet." - Albert Einstein, letter, 1954
Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths. - Joseph Campbell
"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat" - John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. - Mohandas Gandhi
"The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday they might force their beliefs on us." -Mario Cuomo
One attraction of Latin is that you can immerse yourself in the poems of Horace and Catullus without fretting over how to say, "Have a nice day." - Peter Brodie
"If one were to take the bible seriously, one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad." -Aleister Crowley
The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it. - Epicurus
History balances the frustration of "how far we have to go" with the satisfaction of "how far we have come"; It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time. - Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. - George Bernard Shaw
It's the most unhappy people who most fear change. - Mignon McLaughlin
Things do not change; we change. - Henry David Thoreau
"Jesus saves, Buddha invests" - Seen on a T-Shirt
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." - sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton Univerity
What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is the collection of books. - Thomas Carlyle
"Lifes too short to drive slow ugly cars" - Unknown
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable. - Seneca
I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. - John Burroughs
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. - Garrison Keillor
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. - Mark Twain
May you live every day of your life. - Jonathan Swift
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. - Mark Twain
"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms..."--Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a "peace conference," you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes. - Joseph Stalin
When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. - Emo Philips
I love to go to the playground and watch the children jumping up and down. They don't know I'm firing blanks. - Emo Philips
"The penalty for censoring what your children are taught is children who are no brighter than you." - Unknown (Andrew David Hartman?)
Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love. - Butch Hancock
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. - E. B. White
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. - Henry David Thoreau
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. - George Bernard Shaw
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies. - Erich Fromm
When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity. - John F. Kennedy
He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past. - George Orwell
Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee. - Tacitus
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. - H. G. Wells
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. - William James
Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. - Saint Augustine
Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain. - Leo Buscaglia
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. - Bishop Desmond Tutu
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies. - Alexis de Tocqueville
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence. - David Byrne
Where there is love there is life. - Mohandas Gandhi
I don't wish to be everything to everyone, but I would like to be something to someone. - Javan
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. - Stephen Roberts
No man treats a motor car as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin, he does not say, "You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go." He attempts to find out what is wrong and set it right. - Bertrand Russell
In some awful, strange, paradoxical way, atheists tend to take religion more seriously than the practitioners. - Jonathon Miller
Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love. - William Shakespeare
"Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales." -Bertrand Russell
Do companies look for clueless people to hire? or do people become that way after being hired by clueless companies? - Andrew Staples
I got some new underwear the other day. Well, new to me. - Emo Philips
"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!" - Adolph Hitler 1935
"To disarm the people (is) the best and most effectual way to enslave them..." -George Mason
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be. - THOMAS JEFFERSON 1816
Whenever people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government. - THOMAS JEFFERSON
A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. - WALTER LIPPMANN
Jesus, please deliver me from your followers! -Unknown
"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves." - John Wayne
Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can't get into it do that. - OSCAR WILDE (The Importance of Being Earnest)
"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." -Henry David Thoreau, 1847
"Ask youself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves--or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth." -Ayn Rand
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said 'Stop! don't do it!' 'Why shouldn't I?' he said. I said, 'Well, there's so much to live for!' He said, 'Like what?' I said, 'Well... are you religious or atheist?' He said, 'Religious.' I said, 'Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?' He said, 'Christian.' I said, 'Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?' He said, 'Protestant.' I said, 'Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?' He said, 'Baptist!' I said, 'Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist church of god or Baptist church of the lord?' He said, 'Baptist church of god!' I said, 'Me too! Are you original Baptist church of god, or are you reformed Baptist church of god?' He said, 'Reformed Baptist church of god!' I said, 'Me too! Are you reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?' He said, 'Reformed Baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!' I said, 'Die, heretic scum,' and pushed him off. - Emo Philips
New York's such a wonderful city. Although I was at the library today. The guys are very rude. I said, "I'd like a card." He says, "You have to prove you're a citizen of New York." So I stabbed him. - Emo Philips
"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." -Gandhi
"Do not wait until you are thirsty to dig a well." -Chinese Proverb
"Religion is a way of walking, not a way of talking." -Dean William R. Inge
"Artists and engineers create wealth, lawyers and politicians redistribute it." -Unknown
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage. - Lao Tzu
Who, being loved, is poor? - Oscar Wilde
"The point to remember is that what the government gives, it must first take away." -John S. Coleman
People who are sensible about love are incapable of it. - Douglas Yates
To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be. - Anna Louise Strong
"It's a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
"The ants are my friends, they're blowing in the wind..." -Alison Armadillo Jacobson
To live without having a Cicero and a Tacitus at hand seems to me as if it was aprivation of one of my limbs. - John Quincy Adams
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. - Sir Winston Churchill
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window. - Stephen King
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. - Confucius
"Sometimes I wake up grumpy. Other times I let her sleep."
You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. - Anne Lamott
"It is too late tomorrow. Obituary columns are filled with love." -Joan Armatrading
The simple lack of her is more to me than others' presence. - Edward Thomas
"They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price." -Kahlil Gibran
"Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do." -Voltaire
"How you spend your days is how you spend your life."
"When I get a little money, I buy books; and, if any is left, I buy food and clothes." -Erasmus
"The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost their power of reasoning." -Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764
"A man is as old as the woman he feels." -Groucho Marx
"The journey is the reward" -Chinese Saying
"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length." -Robert Frost
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." -Mark Twain
"There are only two ways to live your life: One is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is." -Albert Einstein
"Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world." -Blaise Pascal
Zorba came upon an old man planting an apricot seedling and asked why he, and old man, was planting a new tree. "I live as though I would never die," was his reply. "And me, I live as though I might die tomorrow," said Zorba, "which one of us is right?" -Nikos Kazantzakis
"I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather... not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car."
You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle-aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life. - Emo Philips
The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done. - George Carlin
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
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
"To the right, books; to the left, a tea-cup. In front of me, the fireplace; behind me, the post. There is no greater happiness than this." -Teiga
"Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all." -Jane Austen
"She would get to know him, sleep with him numerous times, spend the rest of her summer with him but never fall for him, and at the summer's end stand on that much anticipated mountaintop and wonder if she had learned anything at all." -Lisa Ko Green Afternoon of This Knowledge
"The cure for anything is salt water- sweat, tears, or the sea." -Isak Dinesen
"It is never too late to be what you might have been." -George Eliot
"We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth." -Pablo Picasso
"The Sweetest distance between Two Points... is a Curvy Line!" -Mae West
"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson
"And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." -Kahlil Gibran
"It is the weak who are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong." -Leo Rosten
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." -Voltaire
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
"If I had but two loaves of bread, I would sell one and buy hyacinths, for they would feed my soul." -The Koran
"Back at her house, as Nate excused himself to use the bathroom, Maggie sat down at the piano and taped out music. She let the chords grow in her hands, streching them out to ninths, elevenths, thirteenths. Maggie harmonized and her touch transformed sound to color, color to sound. I have passion ,she thought. Nate came out, stood in the doorway and watched her fingers. He had always thought he'd fall for her like that, listening to her play. But he hadn't, and instead they looked at each other and just breathed silently, doing nothing more." -Lisa Ko Geek
"Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts." -Albert Einstein
"To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers" -Paul Klee
"If we do not find anything pleasant, at least we shall find something new." -Voltaire
"If you don't have a sense of humor, it's just not funny." -Wavy Gravy
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -Pablo Picasso
"There are many things worth living for, there are few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for." - Chink?
"The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor." -Henry David Thoreau
"It is hard to get your thing together if your thing is paradise on earth." -Jerry Garcia
Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you." -Erich Fromm
"Be obscure clearly." -E.B. White
"Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand" -George Eliot
"Nothing is ever as bad as it seems beforehand" -Jennifer Wagner
"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tide and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love and then... for the second time in the history of the world, man will have dicovered fire." -Teilhard de Chardin
"History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it." -Robert Heinlein, "Notebooks of Lazarus Long"
"The sun, the moon, and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of human hands." -Havelock Ellis
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away." -Henry David Thoreau
"You had to be taught to demand heavy doses of refined sugar in your diet, and other non-food products and stimulants: soft drinks, coffee, and alcohol. You had to be sold the idea of filling your lungs with smoke. You had to have your curiosity and creativity pounded out of you by your parents and teachers. You had to be conned into buying the junk that clutters up your life - decreasing your happiness and your pocketbook. You had to be trained to be physically lazy. You are all right. You can live on the earth just fine. You were made for it. You're welcome there. It's all that stuff that's been laid on you at some corporation's profit - that's making you miserable and causing you to loose track of the rythm of the earth. You can get it back, but only when you remember where you lost it." -Nicholas Johnson
"I don't want to advocate the use of drugs, violence, or insanity, but in my case it certainly has worked." -Hunter S. Thompson
"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell." --St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37
"So we must love, while these moments are still called today, take part in the pain of this passion play, stretching our youth as we must, until we are ashes to dust, until time makes history of us." -Emily Saliers
"We attract hearts by the qualities we display; we retain them by the qualities we possess." -Suard
"Acts of injustice done between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one." - William F. Auden
Gandhi on western civilization: "It would be a good idea."
Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds; and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: "Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one ?" -Plutarch
"There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling by stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's postition, and be bruised in a new place." -Washington Irving
"Don't Interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties." -Abraham Lincoln
"John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he temporarily died to save it from himself. But none of that really matters because most people will be tortured for eternity anyways." -Matt Miller
"There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before." -Willa Cather
"A sense of this necessity, and a submission to it, is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." -Thomas Jefferson
"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact." -George Eliot
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." -Ken Olson, President of DEC, World Future Society Convention, 1977
Please send any comments or suggestions to me at robert@garden.net
Last updated 11/27/07
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