Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming.
-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The following are from a post at K5 ...
"His ignorance is encyclopedic"
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."
- Saint Augustine (354-430)
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"This book fills a much-needed gap."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review
"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
- e e cummings (1894-1962)
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
- Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."
- Edsgar Dijkstra
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
- Bjarne Stroustrup
"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"If you are going through hell, keep going."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."
- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them."
- Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
"Black holes are where God divided by zero."
- Steven Wright
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
- Carl Sagan
"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
- Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"God, please save me from your followers!"
- Bumper Sticker
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
- Mel Brooks
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher."
- Socrates (470-399 B.C.)
"Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
- Gore Vidal
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny."
- Guy Davenport
"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."
- Paul Dirac (1902-1984)
"I would have made a good Pope."
- Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."
- chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game's opening position
"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
- C. A. R. Hoare
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"What do you take me for, an idiot?"
- General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy
"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)
"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
- Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
"I have read your book and much like it."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
"The covers of this book are too far apart."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
- General George Patton (1885-1945)
"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
"Vote early and vote often."
- Al Capone (1899-1947)
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
- Al Capone (1899-1947)
"The gods too are fond of a joke."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."
- Gloria Leonard
"It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man."
- Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell
"Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."
- Robert Orben
"Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."
- Woody Allen (1935-)
"Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives."
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)
"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
"Why don't you write books people can read?"
- Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
- Sun Tzu
"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
- Perelman
"Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done."
- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), while working, when informed that his wife is dying
"I think it would be a good idea."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."
- Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)
"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
- last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)
"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
- Tom Clancy
"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live
"We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees."
- Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks
"Half this game is ninety percent mental."
- Yogi Berra
"My occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate."
- Unibomber Theodore Kaczynski, when asked in court what his current profession was
"This isn't right, this isn't even wrong."
- Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist's paper
"Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
- Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.
"He would make a lovely corpse."
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"I just bought a Mac to help me design the next Cray."
- Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when was informed that Apple Inc. had recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"If all men were rich, all men would be poor."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough."
- Philip Dormer Stanhope
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