Quotes

I have always been a fan of quotes, I collect them from various places, even write a few myself. This page is a list of all the quotes I have added to the random quotes on the home page. If you have any quotes you like please add them on as a comment, and I will include them in to the list (I will of course make sure your name is mentioned). This list is by no means complete yet, will be several nights of adding in quotes as I have them all over the place at the moment. Also if you see a quote misquoted please let me know so I can correct it. I will also be posting some longer quotes and passages as sub-pages.

Motivational Quotes

The only real Prison is Fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

— Aung San Suu Kyi (1945 – )

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

— Helen Keller (1880 – 1968)

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours.

— Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.

— Sam Levenso

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

— Albert Einstein

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. You can never change things by fighting the existing reality.

— Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983)

Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

— Quentin Crisp

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.

— Ralph W. Sockman

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.

— Steven Wright

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

— Andre Malraux

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.

— Ray Bradbury

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true

— James Branch Cabel

we live on borrowed time but we usually waste the time we have. so take time to enjoy your life because you never know when it will just disappear.

— On someone’s facebook

It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.

— Judith Martin

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

— Oscar Wilde

Forgiveness is the smell that lavender gives out when you tread on it

— Mark Twain

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

— Viktor Frankl

Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.

— Viktor Frankl

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

— Henry David Thoreau

No body can be the best at every thing, But any one can be the best at some thing. Finding your something is the key to success.

— DevilWAH

Success in life is not measured by the amount of money that you earn, but in the quality of the time you have spent.

— DevilWAH’s

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.

— Wendell Johnson

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.

— Thomas Jefferson

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.

— Will Rogers

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.

— Thomas Szasz

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

— H. H. Williams

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

— James Thurber

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy – I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

— Bertrand Russell

The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.

— Aesop

You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.

— Sydney Smith

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

— Douglas Adams

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

— Sir Francis Bacon

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

— Richard Feynman

The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.

— Carl Becker

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

— Rene Descartes

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

— Peter Ustinov

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

— Henry Ford

Dignity cannot wait for better times

— Alberto Cairo

Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up

— Jesse Jackson

Happiness is not a destination it is a way of life

— Unknown (Might be taken from Paul H. Dunn)

Observations

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

— Tom Stoppard (1937 – ), Artist Descending a Staircase

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.

— Walter Bagehot

A signature always reveals a man’s character – and sometimes even his name.

— Evan Esar

I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.

— E. V. Lucas

Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy.

— Janet Long

When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.

— Evan Esar

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

— Russell Baker

Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end

— Spock Undiscoveried country.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

— Henry David Thoreau

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

— Krishnamurti

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

— Abraham Lincoln

The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.

— David Brinkley

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.

— Esther Dyson

You don’t get anything clean without getting something else dirty.

— Cecil Baxter

Good people do good things, and bad people do bad things. But for good people to do bad things.. that requires religion…

— unknown

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.

— Evan Esar

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

— Thomas A. Edison

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.

— Albert Einstein

We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.

— Anais Nin

Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

— Susan Ertz

“To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behaviour of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the ‘size’ of human suffering is absolutely relative.”

— Viktor Frankl

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

— Viktor Frankl

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

— Plato

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn’t the slightest intention of putting it into practice.

— Otto von Bismarck

A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.

— George Iles

There are more fools in the world than there are people.

— Heinrich Heine

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

— Joseph Baretti

The reason there is so little crime in Germany is that it’s against the law.

— Alex Levin

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

— Douglas Adams

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

— Isaac Asimov

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

— Samuel Butler

The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.

— Solomon Short

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

— Robert Frost

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

— George Bernard Shaw

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

— Blaise Pascal

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

— Mark Twain

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.

— Charles Wadsworth

People will buy anything that is one to a customer.

— Sinclair Lewis

If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.

— George C. Marshal

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

— Putt’s Law

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

— Isaac Asimov

Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.

— Alan Turing

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

— Blaise Pascal

First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again – and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.

— Frank Leahy

It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.

— Logan Pearsall Smith

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses.

— Margaret Millar

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.

— William Hazlitt

A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

— Gian Vincenzo Gravina

Everything you can imagine is real.

— Pablo Picasso

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what’s really going on to be scared.

— P. J. Plauger

The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

— John Cage

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

— Henry Adams

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

— Oscar Wilde

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.

— Anatole France

How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

— Ronald Reagan

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

— Fran Lebowitz

I look to the future because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.

— George Burns

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

— Sir Richard Francis Burton

I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

— Thomas Jefferson

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

— Oscar Wilde

Martyrdom… is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

— George Bernard Shaw

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

— Alan Kay

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

— John le Carre

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

— Flannery O’Connor

Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.

— John F. Kennedy

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

— Barry LePatner

The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.

— Russell Baker

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.

— William Dement

Sanity is a madness put to good use.

— George Santayana

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.

— George Bernard Shaw

Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.

— Franklin P. Adams

Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.

— Dan Barker

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

— Dorothy Parker

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don’t.

— W. Somerset Maugham

That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent.

— Aldous Huxley

The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.

— Daniel Webster

To be willing to die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.

— Anatole France

In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

— Stephen Jay Gould

Tradition is what you resort to when you don’t have the time or the money to do it right.

— Kurt Herbert Alder

The only thing that lasts longer than a friend’s love is the stupidity that keeps us from knowing any better.

— Randy K. Milholland

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

— Aldous Huxley

I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.

— Mitch Hedberg

Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.

— Franklin P. Adams

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

— Umberto Eco

Sometimes people are layered like that. There’s something totally different underneath than what’s on the surface. But sometimes, there’s a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie.

— Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

— Henry Ford

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

— Albert Einstein

Dignity cannot wait for better times

— Alberto Cairo

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness is a journey, not a destination; happiness is to be found along the way not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it’s too late. The time for happiness is today not tomorrow.

— Paul H. Dunn, 20 Simple Tools for Happiness


2 thoughts on “Quotes

  1. “Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way . This is not a philosophy. This is physics”
    Albert Einstein.
    Really cool quotes, keep it up.
    Thanks
    Snow.Bros

  2. I really liked your quote:
    “Success in life is not measured by the amount of money that you earn, but in the quality of the time you have spent.” — DevilWAH’s

    Thank you

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *