People quotes

People quotes

The only person who listens to both sides of an argument is the fellow in the next apartment.
-- Ruth Brown

Modesty is the proof that morality is sexy.
-- Wendy Shalit

People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.
-- Judith Guest

Somehow I imagined this experience would be more rewarding.
-- Calvin

A fanatic is one who won't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-- Winston Churchill

Don't take life too seriously; you won't get out of it alive.
-- Hubbard's Law (from Murphy's Laws)

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
-- Oscar Wilde

Do, or do not. There is no 'try'.
-- Yoda, "The Empire Strikes Back"

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
-- Abraham Lincoln

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity;
an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
-- Sir Winston Churchill

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)

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
-- Plutarch

"If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
-- Anatole France

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog."
-- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

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

"Originality is the art of concealing your source."
-- Franklin P. Jones

"True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen."
-- La Rochefoucauld

"He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes."
-- Buddha

"Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the entire world."
-- Albert Einstein

"To see things in the seed, that is genius."
-- Lao-tzu

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."
-- Confucious

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"They can conquer who believe they can."
-- Vergil

"He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much."
-- Elbert Hubbard

"Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks."
-- Dottie Walters

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

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
-- Mahatma Gandhi

"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on."
-- Thomas Jefferson

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
-- Chinese Proverb
"A journey of a thousand miles continues with the second step."
-- Larry Wall
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire."
-- Unknown

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
-- John Lubbock

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

"Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
-- Mark Twain

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."
-- Evan Hardin

"Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose."
-- Lyndon B. Johnson

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."
-- Dr. Who

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
-- W.H. Auden

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
-- Robert A. Heinlein

A gentleman is one who never strikes a woman without provocation.
-- H.L. Mencken

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
-- Thomas Alva Edison

"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
-- Walter Bagehot

"It's always too early to quit."
-- Norman Vincent Peale

Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
-- John Barrymore

"It's not denial... I'm just very selective about the reality I accept."
-- Calvin, "Calvin & Hobbes"

"I try to make everyone's life a little more surreal."
-- Calvin, "Calvin & Hobbes"

"Go into the street and give one man a lecture on morality and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most."
-- Samuel Johnson

"But even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn't, they don't certainly know that although you probably wouldn't there's no probability that you certainly would."
-- Sir Humphrey Appleby on nuclear deterrence

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
-- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

A wise man speaks because he has something to say, a fool because he has to say something.
-- Plato

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."
-- Sir Winston Spencer Churchill

People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out. But when darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
-- Physician, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"The death of fear is in doing what you fear to do."
-- Sequichie Comingdeer

Women inspire men to great undertakings, and then distract us from carrying them out.
-- Oscar Wilde

A compliment is a statement of an agreeable truth;
flattery is the statement of an agreeable untruth.
-- Sir John A. MacDonald

"Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story ."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.
-- Julius Caesar, Act I, Sc. 2.

"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
-- George Bernard Shaw

"Hear and you forget; see and you remember; do and you understand."
-- Confucius

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather, try to become a man of value."
-- Albert Einstein

A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.
-- Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924)

"In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep."
-- Albert Einstein

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean;
if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

A lady is always grateful for a sincere compliment, so long as you don't try to knock her down with it.
-- Mark Twain

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."
-- Bob Dylan

"All Bibles are man-made."
-- Thomas Alva Edison

"Get your facts first; then you can distort them as you please."
-- Mark Twain

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."
-- Winston Churchill

"I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves."
-- August Strindberg

"I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense."
-- Harold S. Kushner

"If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

"If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one."
-- John Galsworthy

"In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place."
-- Mahatma Gandhi

"Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them."
-- Albert Einstein

"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on."
-- Winston Churchill

"Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it."
-- Maurice Chevalier

"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all."
-- Henry David Thoreau

"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man."
-- Francais Bacon

"Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends."
-- S. Weir Mitchell

"Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them."
-- Joseph Heller

"Some people have so much respect for their superiors they have none left for themselves."
-- Peter Mcarthur

"Speak when you're angry and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret."
-- Henry Ward Beecher

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
-- Ellen Parr

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
-- David Russell

The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
-- P. B. Medawar

"The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out."
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay

"The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps."
-- Benjamin Disraeli

"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said."
-- Peter F. Drucker

"The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums."
-- Peter De Vries

"The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it."
-- Samuel Johnson

"The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side."
-- James Arthur Baldwin

"The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.'
But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself."
-- Thomas Szasz

"The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone."
-- Henrik Ibsen

"The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands."
-- Alexander Penney

"There ain't no rules around here, we're trying to accomplish something."
-- Thomas Alva Edison

"There are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action."
-- William Somerset Maugham

"There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it."
-- George Bernard Shaw

"There is a great difference between not wishing to do evil and not knowing how."
-- Seneca

"There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom."
-- Francis Bacon

"There is no sin except for stupidity."
-- Oscar Wilde

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

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
-- Douglas Adams

"To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing.
To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die."
-- Oscar Wilde

"Virtue has never been as respectable as money."
-- Mark Twain

"Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience."
-- Adam Smith

"What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death."
-- Dave Barry

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."
-- Mark Twain

In flying I have learned that carelessness and overconfidence are usually far more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks.
-- Wilbur Wright in a letter to his father, September 1900

"I may not practice what I preach but God forbid I should preach what I practice"
-- G K Chesterton

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
-- Isaac Asimov

A child is not a glass that is filled but a fire that is set ablaze.
-- Vincent van Gogh

Love is like Pi --- natural, irrational and *very* important.
-- Lisa Hoffmann

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like and do what you'd rather not.
-- Mark Twain

In the long run luck is given only to the efficient.
-- Helmuth von Moltke, founder,German Imperial Army

"Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the latter than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte, French soldier

Invincibility depends on one's self; The enemy's vulnerability on him.
-- Sun Tzu

"...an imperfect plan implemented immediately and violently will always succeed better than a perfect plan."
-- Gen. George S. Patton

Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.
-- Sun Tzu

All warfare is based on deception.
-- Sun Tzu

Nothing concentrates the military mind so much as the discovery that you have walked into an ambush.
-- Thomas Packenham

Superior firepower is an invaluable tool when entering negotiations.
-- General George S. Patton

The superior person uses his mind like a mirror: it accepts all, it reflects all. It recieves, but it does not keep.
-- Chuang Tzu

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
-- Herman Melville (in Moby Dick)

If you must argue, remember that it is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
-- William Gibbs McAdoo

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own,instead of someone else's.
-- Billy Wilder

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

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
-- Chuang-Tzu

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Worry is like a rocking chair - it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.
-- Dorothy Galyean

I think it would be a good idea.
-- Mahatma Gandhi, when asked by a reporter for his opinion of western civilization

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
-- Mark Twain

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground; but a kind word is never thrown away.
-- Arthur Helps (1813-1875)

Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

"Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation."
-- Aristotle

"It's hard to soar like an eagle when you're working with turkies."
-- Jerry Dey

By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher... and that is a good thing for any man.
-- Socrates

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
-- Henry Kissinger

I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
-- Voltaire

"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will."
-- Mahatma Gandhi

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
-- Albert Einstein

As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
-- John Wheeler

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte

'Failure is not falling down, it is not getting up again.'
-- Mary Pickford

Sincerity is the key. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
-- George Burns

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
-- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)

"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
-- Emile Zola (1840-1902)

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
-- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
-- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
-- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must."
-- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

"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)

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
-- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
-- J. Paul Getty (1892-1976)

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
-- Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)

"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."
-- John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)

"Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down."
-- Jimmy Durante

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
-- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
-- Isaac Asimov

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance"
-- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"A witty saying proves nothing."
-- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
-- Will Durant

"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
-- Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
-- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."
-- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
-- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
-- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"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)

"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."
-- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."
-- Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (citing from the Bhagavadgita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion)

"Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate."
-- Thomas Jones

"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

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
-- Sun Tzu

"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."
-- Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."
-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"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.

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
-- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"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)

"Reality continues to ruin my life."
-- Calvin and Hobbes

"I thought I had a great idea today, but it never really took off. In fact, it didn't even get on the runway. I guess you could say it exploded in the hangar."
-- Calvin and Hobbes

Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?
-- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife."
-- Groucho Marx

The first casualty of war is truth.
-- Senator Johnson

The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.
-- Henny Youngman

Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a sick mind.
-- Terry Prattchet

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
-- Herbert Hoover

Quote of the Times:
"He that will not reason is a bigot.
He that cannot reason is a fool.
He that dares not reason is a slave."
-- Rickey

"Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves."
-- Rudyard Kipling

"Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world."

Never explain
--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
-- Elbert Hubbard

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
--John W. Gardner