Some of my favorite quotes…

December 28th, 2007

I was in the habit back in the 1990s of collecting quotes. I came across the file earlier today and thought I’d share. Quotes range from Einstein to Hemingway to the Tick and even Mariah Carey. I used some in my first novel. Enjoy!

Because the heart beats under a covering of hair, of fur, feathers, or wings, it is, for that reason, to be of no account? -Jean Paul Richter, German Writer (1763-1825)

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody. -Buckminster Fuller

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. -Henry David Thoreau

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805)

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterward. -Arthur Koestler

It is only the wisest and the stupidest that cannot change. -Confucius Analects

Life is life–whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man’s own advantage. -Sri Aurobindo

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. -Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (500 B.C.)

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness. -Joseph Campbell

The meek may inherit the earth, but they won’t get the ball from me. — Charles Barkley —

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy. -F. Scott Fitzgerald, [The Crackup]

Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. -Albert Einstein

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. -Linus Pauling

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust

Be humble, for the worst thing in the world is of the same stuff as you; be confident, for the stars are of the same stuff as you. -Nicholai Velimirovic

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit. -Gaius Plinius (c. 61-112 A.D.)

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

“Never risk anything unless you’re prepared to lose it completely — remember that.” — Ernest Hemingway

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts….A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child. -Sophia Loren

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down. -Mary Pickford

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men. -Alice Walker

We cannot glimpse the essential life of a caged animal, only the shadow of [her] former beauty. -Julia Allen Field [Reflections on the Death of an Elephant]

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth. -Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. -John Kenneth Galbraith

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up. -Robert Frost

It is man’s sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.
-Albert Schweitzer

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.
-Emile Zola

“As the hand held before the eye conceals the greatest mountain, so the little earthly life hides from the glance the enormous lights and mysteries of which the world is full, and he who can draw it away from before his eyes, as one draws away a hand, beholds the great shining of the inner worlds.”
– Rabbi Nachmann of Bratzlav

To gain that worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.
-Bernadette Devlin

He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end. -Harry Emerson Fosdick

The only journey is the one within. -Rainer Maria Rilke

The secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for. -Dostoyevsky

One who walks in another’s tracks leaves no footprints. -Proverb

May you live in interesting times. -Ancient Chinese Curse

Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well. -La Rochefoucauld

The only time you don’t fail is the last time you try anything–and it works. -William Strong

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. -Seneca

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -Carl Sagan

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. -Henry David Thoreau

The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it. -Arnold H. Glasow

By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
-Rabindranath Tagore

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification. -Martin H. Fischer

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. -Helen Keller

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life. -Sandra Carey

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. -H.Berlioz

If you consult enough experts, you can confirm any opinion.

Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. -Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. –Carl Sagan

He who has a why can endure any how. -Friedrich Nietzsche

Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half of the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it. -Bertrand Russell

If you judge, investigate. -Seneca

If you want your eggs hatched, sit on them yourself. -Haitian proverb

“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars or sailed to an uncharted land or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” – Helen Keller

After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box. -Italian Proverb

“Every morning I get out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me.” — Ray Bradbury

The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, “Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.” Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that … The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed … [However] Revelations 21:8 says “But the fearful, and unbelieving … shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C. — From “Applied Optics” vol. 11, A14, 1972

As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.
-Ursula LeGuin

A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn’t feel like it. -Alistair Cooke

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. -John Milton

Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and death and stuff. — Mariah Carey

As Isaac Asimov said about evolution in a 1980 address to NCAC “(creationists) make it sound as though a ‘theory’
is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. -General George S. Patton, Jr.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be. — Abraham Maslow

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
— Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest:

Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two, but can’t remember what they are.
–Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today show, August 22

I haven’t committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.
— David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
— Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C.

“Well, once again my friend, we find that science is a two-headed beast. One head is nice, it gives us aspirin and other modern conveniences…but the other head of science is bad! Oh beware the other head of science, Arthur, it bites!”
–The Tick

“Clown makeup, so central to adults, is not a mask, shielding inner evil, but a mirror, taking what’s deep inside the viewer and projecting it back. The evil, in other words, is in the eye of the beholder.”
— Bruce Feller, author of “Under the Big Top: A Season With the Circus”

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. -George Bernard Shaw

Grad school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life. -Comedian John Rogers (who holds a graduate degree in physics)

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. -Thomas Jefferson

“Virtually all scientists have the bad habit of displaying feats of virtuosity in problems in which they can make some progress and leave until the end the really difficult central problems.”
— Malcolm Longair

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
— John Muir, 1869

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind. — George Bernard Shaw

“The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
– A. Einstein

Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
— M. C. Reed.

A plan so cunning, you could stick a tail on it and call it a “Weasel”
– Blackadder III

“The great questions of the day are settled not by speeches and the decisions of majorities, but by blood and iron.”
— Otto von Bismarck

The way of the mystic and the way of the artist are related, except that the mystic doesn’t have the craft. -Jean Erdman

The value of the average conversation could be enormously improved by the constant use of four simple words: “I do not know.” -Andre Maurois

Ten years of rejection slips is nature’s way of telling you to stop writing. — R. Geis

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.
— Pablo Picasso

Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path. –
Ralph Waldo Emerson

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. -Abraham Lincoln

[Nuclear war] … may not be desirable.
— Edwin Meese III

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
— Albert Einstein

“No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.” -H.G. Wells

“Go out every day and create at the top of your lungs”
– Ray Bradbury

“The difference between the amateur and the professional writer is that the professional did not quit.” – Richard Bach

Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life. – Germaine Greer

“If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so.” – Andre Gide
“Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don’t need you.”
– James Michener

“To live is to war with trolls.”
-Henrik Ibsen

“Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”
–Mark Twain

“You can’t say ‘I won’t write today,’ because that excuse will extend into several days, then several months, then… you are not a writer anymore, just someone who dreams about being a writer.”
–Dorothy C. Fontana

“Whatcha doin’?” “Looking for frogs.” “How come?”
“I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul.”
“Ah, but of course.”
“My mandate also includes weird bugs.”
-Calvin and Hobbes

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
— Dorothy Parker

Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else — unless it is an enemy.
— A. Einstein

A city is a large community where people are lonesome together
— Herbert Prochnow

Yield to Temptation … it may not pass your way again.
— Lazarus Long, “Time Enough for Love”

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
— Groucho Marx

Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
— Wernher von Braun

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
— Eleanor Roosevelt

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
— Oscar Wilde

We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time. — T.S. Eliot

“There were endless winters and the dreams would freeze…” — Jim Steinman, lyrics to ‘Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer than They Are’

I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent — not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar’s temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to the point where it would not run at all.
— George Greenstein, “Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black Holes and the Fate of Stars”

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
— Abraham Lincoln

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
— Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: “You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny …”
— Isaac Asimov

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.
— Lazarus Long, “Time Enough for Love”

The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people.
— Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King

A Severe Strain on the Credulity
As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest parts of the earth’s atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard’s rocket is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt … for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard, with his “chair” in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to
re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react … Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
— New York Times Editorial, 1920

After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, “A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created.”
“This is true,” He replied.
“He will need laws,” said the Demon slyly.
“What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?”
“Oh, no!” Satan replied, “I ask only that he be allowed to make his own.”
It was so granted.
— Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”

The following is from the business section of The Kansas City Star, Jan
17, 1995:

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
– Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
– Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.”
– The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.

“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.

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