A collection of amusing, interesting and otherwise neat quotes I have been
compiling for the last little while.
Pick a topic
"Every gun that is fired, 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. The world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius
of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
"Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature.... Life is
either a daring adventure or it is nothing."
"No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars or sailed to an uncharted land or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."
"True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable"
"It has been one of the great errors of our time to think that by thinking
about thinking, and then talking about it, we could possibly straighten
out and tidy up our minds.... It is all very well to be aware of your
awareness, even proud of it, but never try to operate it. You are not up
to the job."
"Part of Being Sane is Being a Little Bit Crazy"
"He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still."
"Gonna live while I'm alive / I'll sleep when I'm dead."
"With an ironclad fist I wake up and French kiss the morning."
"Change is inevitable; progress is optional."
"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to
enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer
spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and
you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand."
"If A is a success in life, then A equals X plus Y plus Z. Work is X,
Y is play and Z is keeping your mouth shut."
"The world has forgotten Y."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
"The whole human race suffers from three basic misconceptions. They believe
they must do well; that other people must treat them kindly, nobly and do
their bidding; and that conditions must be absolutely just so -- or else
they become horribly depressed. It's deadly for people to feel that they
must have these things. These things are contrary to the facts of life.
They are preferences."
"It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, it is by the beans
of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the
shaking becomes a warning, it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in
motion."
"Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an
experience."
"I think one reason we admire cats, those of us who do, is their proficiency
in one-upmanship. They always seem to come out on top, no matter what they
are doing - or pretend they do. Rarely do you see a cat discomfited. They
have no conscience, and they never regret. Maybe we secretly envy them."
"People yearn for love....It is similar to a dog's relationship to the car.
First, they cry because they want to get in the car. Then, as soon as the
car starts to move, they cry because they want to get out. And of course,
as soon as they get out, all they want to do is get back in as soon as
possible. Good thing for us, dogs aren't especially musical or just imagine
all the annoying songs there'd be about cars."
"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school
class is running the country."
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by 18."
"If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of
rubbish into it."
"There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots
to do and not doing it."
"Take care of him. And make him feel important. And if you can do that,
you'll have a happy and wonderful marriage. Like two out of every 10
couples."
"Men who have worked together to reach the stars are not likely to descend
together into the depths of war and desolation"
"We have more power than will; and it is often by way of excuse to
ourselves that we fancy things are impossible."
"Since the concepts people live by are derived only from perceptions and
from language and since the perceptions are received and interpreted only
in light of earlier concepts, man comes pretty close to living in a house
that language built"
"Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody
well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't
do that by sitting around wondering about yourself."
"Creativity is the retention throughout life of something that belongs
properly to infant experience: the ability to create the world... When
we are surprised at ourselves we are being creative, and we find we can
trust our own unexpected originality."
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world
and moral courage so rare."
"The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human
attention."
"To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass
is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be."
"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
"Do we have to wallow in our own conviction of how fascinating we are? ... Of
all the curses of this media-driven age, I think one of the worst is our failure
to see how simply human we are. Our commerce-driven culture tries to sell us
stuff by appealing relentlessly to our sense of specialness, and we let the
flattery go to our heads. I think that's what drove the millenium hype, if
you want to know the truth. ... But [the world] didn't end, did it? And so
now we can face facts and get on with our lives. We are merely human,
merely mortal, merely alive for a few brief decades and then gone. Let's
live with our eyes open, while we can."
"Liberty is being free from the things we don't like in order to be slaves
of the things we do like."
"Pretend the entire world is a school and all the prominent people are
students in your class. What's everybody up to? The popular kids are out
having fun. The smart kids are reading Adam Smith. The ambitious kids
are working nights and weekends. The talented kids are playing sports and
rehersing for the school play. I'm drinking beer behind the Dairy Queen.
And the insufferable twits? They're running for student government."
"I know of only two things which are infinite, the universe and human
stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
"It is better keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and
remove all doubt."
"People do not see; they only recognize. And what they do not recognize
remains invisible to them."
"When I was a kid, some guy told me that men play at love to get sex,
and women play at sex to get love. The dynamite thing is that in a healthy
relationship, you can meet somewhere in the middle."
"We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry."
"Comfort the troubled; trouble the comfortable."
"I'm all for killing animals and turning them into handbags. I just don't
want to have to eat them."
"Minds are not vessels to be filled, but fires to be lighted."
"I once asked an enormously happy and well-matched couple who had been
together for more than 40 years whether there was a secret to successful
relationships and they replied that it was really quite simple: Do not
take yourself too seriously and treat your partner with as much respect
as you would like from him or her. But instead of trying to stick to these
self-evident basics, you find men and women trying desperately to be more or
less dominant, or more of less submissive, depending on the prevailing
fashion, which sometimes only lasts for a few months until the next self-help
potboiler comes along."
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always
so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
"Something desired through reason alone is never passionately desired."
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided
missiles and misguided men."
"I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except
yourself."
"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do
not expect to sit."
"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
"The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his
own way."
"The second day of a diet is easier than the first. By the second day,
you're off it."
"All of us are watchers - of television, of time clocks, or traffic on
the freeway - but few are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are
seeing."
"Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have
nothing to be proud about."
"If being inside is so great, then why is your screensaver a sunset?"
"The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me
new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and
Truth."
"Our greatest glory is not in never failing but in rising each time we fall."
"Men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of life is in the hazards
of life ... to the heroic, desperate odds fling a challenge."
"Take risks; be afraid. Continue to stretch yourself. Dream big, and be
open-minded to all ideas. Take on tasks that seem well above your normal
capabilities so that you will experience the highs and lows of a fulfilled
life. A mediocre life is a wasted life."
"The wicked leader is the one whom people despise.
"The truth is rarely pure, and never simple"
"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?"
"God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference."
Back to top
"University degrees are a bit like adultery: You may not want to get
involved in that sort of thing, but you don't want to be thought incapable."
"... no, you can't do that, at least not until you get tenure."
"To see the teacher clearly, look at the students. They are his work
of art."
"For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and
diamonds are dimmed."
Back to top
"North America in general, and Canadian and American business specifically,
desperately need leadership. Great leadership would be preferable, but almost
any leadership would be better than management, which is a hollow substitute."
"It's a bit like Wile E. Coyote, how he walks out over the edge of the cliff
and he's standing there in midair, and he never falls down until he actually
looks down. I think we just all looked down."
"We are still barely a rounding error on Time Warner's balance sheet."
"Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible
stupidity can usually be traced to an organization."
"Do they really think the human race is destined to sit in a field naked and unfed in front of a computer screen, talking on a cellphone all day?"
"Accountants, the inhabitants of counting-houses, often suffer from the
illusion that it is their efforts, and not those of the production-workers,
sales staff and designers, that sustain the life of the enterprise. To be
sure, few businesses would survive long without an effective finance
function, but on its own it is utterly worthless."
"The gap in our economy is between what we have and what we think we ought
to have -- and that is a moral problem, not an economic one."
Back to top
"... the greatest danger to good computer science research today may be excessive relevance..."
"Because we have achieved instant communication, we expect instant response,
whether or not it's merited. The form and content of the response scarcely
matter. What we're after is not so much communication as acknowledgment. To
not carry a cell phone or a pager, to not have voice mail, to not be on line,
is to all but declare yourself a hermit."
Definition of Win 95-32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit
patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor,
written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the
Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know
this is not true."
"Combining the intrusiveness of a phone call with the hassle of writing
e-mail"
"It was like a visit by Don Corleone. I expected to find a bloody computer monitor in my bed the next day."
"Theory is when you understand everything, but nothing works.
"We may not get everything right, but at least we knew the century
was going to end."
"Failure is not an option - it comes bundled with your Microsoft product."
Back to top
"If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."
"I know you're just a reporter, but you used to be a person, right?"
"The environmental movment of our times was sparked by the re-release of Bambi in the 1950's."
"You've got a death wish. That's so selfish. I have one, too, but I direct
it toward others..."
"Lets hope they make better babies than they do records."
"I don't want my body to be a distraction from my talent or my brain."
"Raises serious doubts about whether humanity is worth saving."
"The guy's got a girl's name and he wears makeup. What an original idea."
"Matt and Ben are off on their own trip... I'm happy to see them skyrocket in
to their own egotistical oblivion. I wish them the best in whatever they do."
"Matt's the first guy I'd call if I woke up in a hotel room with a dead hooker."
"I tell you, if I was on the Dark Side, I'd organize my forces a hell of lot better than they did."
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"Right now I'm planning to postpone having fun until after I'm dead."
"I'm an idiot!"
"Damn Policy 33!"
Back to Andrew's homepage.
War - prompted by 2003 planned war in Iraq
-- General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States
On Living Life
-- Helen Keller
-- Helen Keller
-- Dave Tyson Gentry
-- Lewis Thomas in Late Night Thoughts.
-- Janet Long
-- Lau Tsu
-- Jon Bon Jovi
-- Jon Bon Jovi
-- Kate McMilan
-- Woodrow Wilson
-- Albert Einstein
-- Andrew Kennedy
-- Albert Einstein
-- Dr. Albert Ellis in Civilization magazine
-- unknown
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
-- Barbara Webster
-- The author in Merrill Markoe's Guide to Love
-- Kurt Vonnegut
-- Albert Einstein
-- William Orton
-- Mary Little
-- Neil Simon in Barefoot in the Park.
-- Lyndon B. Johnson
-- La Rochefoucauld
-- Russell R. W. Smith
-- Katharine Hepburn
-- British psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott
-- Mark Twain
-- Kevin Kelly in Wired
-- Linda Vaughan in the San Antonio Express-News
-- Unknown
-- Louise Kennedy, The Boston Globe magazine
-- Ernest Benn
-- P.J. O'Rourke, The Spectator
-- Albert Einstein
-- Mark Twain.
-- Simon Leys
-- Mel Gibson
-- John Webster
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
-- British comedy writter and vegetarian Victoria Wood
-- Plutarch
-- Andre Malan in The West Australian
-- Bertrand Russell
-- Francois de la Rochefoucauld
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
-- Rita Mae Brown
-- Nelson Henderson
-- Tom Stoppard
-- Josh Billings
-- Jackie Gleason
-- Peter Leschak
-- Schopenhauer
-- Toyota Canada commercial
-- Albert Einstein
-- Confuscius
-- Aeschylus
-- Mark Burnett on the creation of Eco-Challenge
The good leader is the one whom the people revere.
The great leader is the one of whom the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'"
-- Lao-Tzu
-- Oscar Wilde
-- Satchel Paige
-- Anon.
On University/Education
-- Sir Peter Imbert
-- John Morton on getting physical with disruptive students
-- George Leonard in Mastery
-- Robert Ingersoll
On Modern Business
-- J.P. Bryan after stepping down in February 1998 as CEO of Gulf Canada
-- John McCaul of ScotiaMcLeod surveying the markets in April 1998
-- Michael MacMillan, chairman of Alliance Atlantis Communications in
November 1998 after the merger
-- Jon Bentley
-- Sy Harding, quoted in the Globe and Mail, March 20, 2000
-- Steve Blinkhorn, Nature 407, p 564.
-- Paul Heyne
On Modern Technology
-- Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs in his Turing Award Lecture
-- John Powers in The Boston Globe magazine.
-- Robert Wilensky, University of California
-- gicq Homepage
-- Netscape co-founder Marc Andressen on his 1995 meeting with Bill Gates to
divide the Internet browser market
Practice is when everything works but you do not understand why."
-- unknown
-- Apple Computer, HAL 9000 ad for Macintosh Y2K compliance
-- unknown
On and From Modern Entertainment
-- Red Green
-- from the movie Deep Impact
-- from the movie The Last Days of Disco
-- Lisa Kudrow in the movie The Opposite of Sex
-- Boy George on the pregnancy of two of the Spice Girls
-- Shania Twain being somewhat naive
-- Variety reviewer Todd McCarthy on Armageddon
-- Alice Cooper on Marilyn Manson
-- Minnie Driver on ex Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, being not-bitter
-- Ben Affleck proving Driver's case
-- Paul Fieguth on the Dark Side in Star Wars
Paul Fieguth
-- Paul Fieguth
-- Paul Fieguth
-- Paul Fieguth
Last updated 2001-03-04 20:40
Send any email concerning this page to: ajkenned@rousseau.uwaterloo.ca