quotes blog

People say I’ve had brushes with the law. That’s not true. I’ve had brushes with overzealous prosecutors. - Mark Duffy

Experience shows that success is due less to ability that to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul. - Charles Buxton

Zeal is a volcano, the peak of which the grass of indecisiveness does not grow. - Kahlil Gibran

While day by day the overzealous student stores up facts for future use, He who has learned to trust nature finds need for ever fewer external directions. He will discard formula after formula, until he reaches the conclusion Let nature take its course. By letting each thing act in accordance with its own nature, everything that needs to be done gets done. - Lao Tzu

At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas. - Aldous Huxley

I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat. - Pierre Elliott Trudeau

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language. - James Earl Jones

Indeed, the Founders mentioned the pagan authors in so many heartfelt speeches, pamphlets and letters that today’s sweeping references to America’s ‘Christian’ roots and ‘Judeo-Christian heritage’ ought to be amended. Maybe these terms should be reserved to explain the traditional religions and morality of individuals, families, congregations, small communitities. Politically, our notions of virtue and vice have had another genesis. - Colin Campbell

It is the common failing of totalitarian regimes that they cannot really understand the nature of our democracy. They mistake dissent for disloyalty. They mistake restlessness for a rejection of policy. They mistake a few committees for a country. They misjudge individual speeches for public policy. (Answering North Vietnamese charge that US could not endure) - Lyndon B. Johnson

We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showmanship, to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we’ll do it … not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that bring people to their senses. - Mario M Cuomo

How Kennedy knew the precise drop in milk consumption in 1960, the percentage rise in textile imports from 1957 to 1960 and the number of speeches cleared by the Defense Department is not quite clear, but anyway, he did. He either overwhelmed you with decimal points or disarmed you with a smile and a wisecrack. - James Barrett Scotty Reston

America has begun a spiritual reawakening. Faith and hope are being restored. Americans are turning back to God. Church attendance is up. Audiences for religious books and broadcasts are growing. And I do believe that he has begun to heal our blessed land. - President Ronald Reagan, to the National Association of Evangelicals, Columbus, Ohio

Each of us, as members of the Body of Christ, has been given at least one spiritual gift. Besides this, there are the natural abilities with which God has endowed us. He intends these to primarily be used for the edification of the Body of believers. There is no such thing as a private gift (Rom. 126-8). - Bruce Kemper

Military power wins battles, but spiritual power wins wars. - General George Catlett Marshall

Numbers are essential, but not absolutely essential to strength. For many churches are numerically strong but lamentably weak spiritually. Numbers, then, are no display of spiritual power or strength. - W. T. Ussery

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. - Carl Sagan

I think that parents only get so offended by television because they rely on it as a babysitter and the sole educator of their kids. - Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Death, 1997

Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them - Author Unknown

If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent us an economist. But since our greatest need was forgiveness, God sent us a Savior. - Max Lucado

The task of the educator lies in seeing that the child does not confound good with immobility and evil with activity. - Maria Montessori

In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment. - Pliny the Elder, Natural History

By and large, I seem to have made more mistakes than any others of whom I know, but have learned thereby to make ever swifter acknowledgment of the errors and thereafter immediately set about to deal more effectively with the truths disclosed by the acknowledgment of erroneous assumptions. - Richard Buckminster Fuller

Acknowledgment - If you wish your merit to be known, acknowledge that of other people. - Author Unknown

Sex is the tabasco sauce which an adolescent national palate sprinkles on every course in the menu. - Mary Day Winn

The political lesson of Watergate is this Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election. - Gerald R. Ford

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness . It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is important to the point of necessity when they are adolescents. - Phyllis Mcginley

When life hands us a beutiful bouquet of flowers we stare at it in cautious expectation of a bee. - Dean Koontz, Shadow Fires ( early book)

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being? - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature. - Tom Robbins

The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all. - Jawaharlal Nehru

The brown bag, of course, had its imperfections. While some kids carried roast beef sandwiches, others had peanut butter. I have no way of knowing if all of those brown bags contained ‘nutritionally adequate diets.’ But I do know that those brown bags and those lunch pails symbolized parental love and responsibility. - Charles Mathias, Jr.

Kids’ views are often just as valid as the teachers’. The best teachers are the ones that know that. - Morley Saefer

… it’s simply wrong to always order kids to stop that fighting. There are times when one child is simply defending his rights and damned well should be fighting. - Erma Bombeck

A scout troop consists of twelve little kids dressed like schmucks following a big schmuck dressed like a kid. - Jack Benny

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. - James Harvey Robinson

We do not believe in immortality because we can prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it. - Harriet Martineau

I refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery. I insist on believing that some men are my equals. - Brigid Brophy

The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular. - George Santayana

Tony Montana I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. - Scarface

Tony Taylor was one of the first acquisitions that the Phillies made when they reconstructed their team. They got him from Philadelphia. - Jerry Coleman

Tony Montana Me, I want what’s coming to me. Manny Oh, well what’s coming to you Tony Montana The world, Chico, and everything in it. - Scarface

Tony Montana In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women. - Scarface

Tony Montana What you lookin’ at You all a bunch of f***ing assholes. You know why You don’t have the guts to be what you wanna be You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your f***ing fingers and say, That’s the bad guy. So… what that make you Good You’re not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don’t have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There’s a bad guy comin’ through Better get outta his way - Scarface

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength one is pushing down, the other is pulling up. - Booker T. Washington

Half the failures of this world arise from pulling in one’s horse as he is leaping. - Augustus Hare

There is nothing like a coup de foudre and absorption in family responsibility for maturing the male and pulling his scattered wits together. - Sir V Pritchett

The earth has grown old with its burden of care But at Christmas it always is young, The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair And its soul full of music breaks the air, When the song of angels is sung. - Phillips Brooks

Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of - for credit is like fire when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. - Socrates

Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head. - William Shakespeare

I bet if you were a mummy wrapper in ancient Egypt, on thing you would constantly find yourself telling people would be, ‘Be sure, before I start, you have all the jewelry and so forth on the body, because I am NOT unwrapping him later.’ - Jack Handey Deep Thoughts

Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head. - William Shakespeare

The sage wears clothes of coarse cloth but carries jewels in his bosom He knows himself but does not display himself He loves himself but does not hold himself in high esteem. - Lao Tzu

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out. - Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Go tell the Spartans,
Passerby,
That here, obedient to their laws,
We lie. - Simonides, Epitaph for the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae

I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. - William Frank Buckley, Jr.

If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another: I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt. - William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, Act 1 scene 1

All men are evil and will declare themselves to be so when occasion is offered. - Sir Walter Raleigh

…no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night. - H. L. Mencken

What you have when everyone wears the same playclothes for all occasions, is addressad by nickname, expected to participate in Show And Tell, and bullied out of any desire form privacy, is not democracy; it is kindergarten. - Judith Martin, (Miss Manners)

The happy person is the one who finds occasions for joy at every step. He does not have to look for them, he just finds them. - Ossian Lang

… and thereof do I repent: I only plucked an occasional flower when I might have gathered an ample harvest of fruit — such are the just grounds for the regrets I have … - D. A. F. Sade, “Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man”

There are two modes of establishing our reputation: to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will invariably be accompanied by the latter. - Charles Caleb Colton

There are two types of people–those who come into a room and say, ‘Well, here I am’ and those who come in and say, ‘Ah, there you are.’ - Frederick L Collins

There are two lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings. - Hodding Carter Jr.

There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink. - Booth Tarkington, Penrod (1914)

He who possesses the source of Enthusiasm Will achieve great things. Doubt not. You will gather friends around you As a hair clasp gathers the hair. - I Ching

A rolling stone gathers no moss. - Publilius Syrus

Remember, a closed mouth gathers no foot. - Steve Post

A closed mouth gathers no feet. - Anonymous

A tree is known by its fruit a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love. - Saint Basil

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants it is the creed of slaves. - William Pitt

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. - G. K. Chesterton, Defendant (1901)

Few things in life are more embarrassing than the necessity of having to inform an old friend that you have just got engaged to his fiancee. - W.C. Fields

Necessity never made a good bargain. - Benjamin Franklin

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered. - Gelett Burgess

Literature is a luxury fiction is a necessity. - G. K. Chesterton

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. - Mark Twain

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken. - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds upon the heel that crushes it. - Mark Twain

Where does the violet tint end and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blending enter into the other. So with sanity and insanity. - Herman Melville

We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory. - Bern Williams

No greater nor more affectionate honor can be conferred on an American than to have a public school named after him. - Herbert Clark Hoover

He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid ungenerous spirit. To remind a man of a kindness conferred and to talk of it, is little different from reproach. - Demosthenes

…The electoral franchise has been conferred upon the Negroes in almost all the states in which slavery has been abolished, but if they come forward to vote, their lives are in danger… The same schools do not receive the children of the black and of the European. In the theaters gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their former masters in the hospitals they lie apart… Not only is slavery prohibited in Ohio, but no free Negroes are allowed to enter the territory of that state or to hold property in it. - Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville

Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them. - Ellis Peters

We must dare to think “unthinkable” thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about “unthinkable things” because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless. - James W. Fulbright, March 27, 1964

We must dare to think unthinkable thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. - William Fullbright

We must dare to think ‘unthinkable’ thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about ‘unthinkable things’ because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless. - William Fullbright

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. - H. L. Mencken

To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought. - Tom Robbins

Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip. - John Locke

Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened. - Sir Winston Churchill

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. - Sir Winston Churchill

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life. - Jimmy Carter

There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one’s gifts to those one loves most. - May Sarton

Being plied with fine food always puts me in mind of the slammer, cause the food was jumpin’ in there too–high in fat but nice and salty. You know what the worst deprivation in there was My music. Radio belonged to my cell mate, the Blonde Hammer. He was into that jazz-fusion thing at the time. I tell you what, enough Spyro Gyra and you’re hoping you’ll get killed in a knife fight. - Barbara Hall

Americans become unhappy and vicious because their preoccupation with amassing possessions obliterates their loneliness. This is why production in America seems to be on such an endless upward spiral: every time we buy something we deepen our emotional deprivation and hence our need to buy something. - Philip Saltier

Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many players on the field - Jim Boulton

Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical. - Lawrence Peter Berra

Baseball is a lot like life. The line drives are caught, the squibbles go for base hits. It’s an unfair game. - Rod Kanehl

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. - Isaac Asimov, Salvor Hardin in “Foundation”

God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, thehelpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters. - H. L. Mencken

An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for months or years. A competent attorney can delay one even longer. - Evelle J. Younger

A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective. - Sun-tzu

Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There’s no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere. - Julius Henry Marx

History has proven, God has never given anyone a dream Without also including the power to achieve that dream It is up to us to claim the power and go after that dream, Or just claim , it was only a dream. - Unknown

Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends. - Dwight David Eisenhower, address at Guildhall, London, 7/12/45

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern. - C. S. Lewis

The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. … The new president and his first lady. - Richard Milhous Nixon

I think a new, different kind of bowling should be ‘carpet bowling.’ It’s just like regular bowling, only the lanes are carpet instead of wood. I don’t know why we should do this, but my God, we’ve got to try something - Jack Handey Deep Thoughts

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. - Woody Allen

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger and as, in the latter state, even the individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful. - Alexander Hamilton

Real knowledge, like everything else of value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more that all, must be prayed for. - Thomas Arnold

A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment. - Walter Lippman

No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself. - Pythagorus

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. - Bertrand Russell

Do not regret growing older. It’s a privilege denied to many. - Unknown

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage. - Lucille Ball

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility. - Louis

A venturesome minority will always be eager to get off on their own… let them take risks, for Godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches- that is the right and privilege of any free American. - 16 Idaho Law Review 407, 420 - 1980.

He who carries out one good deed acquires one advocate in his own behalf, and he who commits one transgression acquires one accuser against himself. Repentance and good works are like a shield against calamity. - The Talmud

If thou desire to purchase honor with thy wealth, consider first how that wealth became thine; if thy labor got it, let thy wisdom keep it; if oppression found it, let repentance restore it; if thy parent left it, let thy virtues deserve it; so shall thy honor be safer, better and cheaper. - Francis Quarles

The path of repentance, though hard at times, lifts one ever upwards and leads to a perfect forgiveness. - Howard W. Hunter, Speech given in October 1994

Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don’t let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity. - R. I. Fitzhenry

Prince Akeem Oh, it was a most amazing game. The Giants of New York took on the Packers of Green Bay. The Giants triumphed by kicking a pigskin ball through a big H. A most ripping victory. Cleo McDowell Son… I’m just going to tell you this one time. If you want to keep working here, stay off the drugs. - Coming to America

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. - Napoleon

On the road to Mandalay Where the flyin’ fishes play, An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the bay. - Rudyard Kipling

Replying to the tributes paid to him at a testimonial dinner, Herbert Bayard Swope said; “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure. Try to please everybody.” - Author Unknown

Ted Striker It was a rough place - the seediest dive on the wharf. Populated with every reject and cutthroat from Bombay to Calcutta. It’s worse than Detroit. - Airplane