Good Quotations by Famous People:
(collected by Gabe Robins <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins>
over the years)
"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)
"Don't be so humble - you are not
that great. "
- Golda Meir
(1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat
"His ignorance is encyclopedic"
- Abba Eban
(1915-)
"If a man does his best, what else is
there?"
- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
"I can write better than anybody who
can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better. "
- A. J. Liebling
(1904-1963)
"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. "
-
"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)
"A lie gets halfway around the world
before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. "
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I do not feel obliged to believe
that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has
intended us to forgo their use. "
- Galileo Galilei
"The artist is nothing without the
gift, but the gift is nothing without work. "
- Emile Zola (1840-1902)
"This book fills a much-needed gap. "
- Moses Hadas
(1900-1966) in a review
"The full use of your powers along
lines of excellence. "
- definition of
"happiness" by John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
"I'm living so far beyond my income
that we may almost be said to be living apart. "
- e e cummings (1894-1962)
"Give me a museum and I'll fill it. "
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
"Assassins!"
- Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) to his
orchestra
"I'll moider
da bum. "
- Heavyweight boxer Tony Galento, when asked what he thought of William Shakespeare
"In theory, there is no difference
between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. "
- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
"I find that the harder I work, the
more luck I seem to have. "
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"Each problem that I solved became a
rule which served afterwards to solve other problems. "
- Rene Descartes (1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"
"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 only way to get rid of a
temptation is to yield to it. "
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a
halo."
- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
"Don't stay in bed, unless you can
make money in bed."
- George Burns (1896-1996)
"I don't know why we are here, but
I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
"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
"A mathematician is a device for
turning coffee into theorems."
- Paul Erdos
"The only difference between me and a
madman is that I'm not mad."
-
"If you can't get rid of the skeleton
in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"But at my back I always hear Time's
winged chariot hurrying near."
- Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
"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.)
"Whenever I climb I am followed by a
dog called 'Ego'."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Never interrupt your enemy when he
is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"I think 'Hail to the Chief' has a
nice ring to it."
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) when asked
what is his favorite song
"Human history becomes more and more
a race between education and catastrophe."
- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
"Talent does what it can; genius does
what it must."
- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
"The difference between 'involvement'
and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved'
- the pig was 'committed'."
- unknown
"If you are going through hell, keep
going."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I'm all in favor of keeping
dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with
typewriters."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"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)
"He is one of those people who would
be enormously improved by death."
- H. H. Munro (Saki)
(1870-1916)
"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether
my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another
matter."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I shall not waste my days in trying
to prolong them."
- Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"If you can count your money, you
don't have a billion dollars."
- J. Paul Getty (1892-1976)
"Facts are the enemy of truth."
- Don Quixote - "Man of
"When you do the common things in
life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."
- George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
"How wrong it is for a woman to
expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it
herself."
- Anais Nin (1903-1977)
"I have not failed. I've just found
10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
"I begin by taking. I shall find
scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right."
- Frederick (II) the Great
"Maybe this world is another planet's
Hell."
- Aldous Huxley
(1894-1963)
"Blessed is the man, who having
nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."
- George Eliot (1819-1880)
"Once you eliminate the impossible,
whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
- Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, 1859-1930)
"Black holes are where God divided by
zero."
- Steven Wright
"I've had a wonderful time, but this
wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx
(1895-1977)
"It's kind of fun to do the
impossible."
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)
"We didn't lose the game; we just ran
out of time."
- Vince Lombardi
"The optimist proclaims that we live
in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."
- James Branch Cabell
"A friendship founded on business is
better than a business founded on friendship."
- John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)
"All are lunatics, but he who can
analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"You can only find truth with logic
if you have already found truth without it."
- G. K. Chesterfield
"I have come to believe that the
whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own
mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
- Umberto Eco
"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)
"A people
that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969),
Inaugural Address,
"The significant problems we face
cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created
them."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Basically, I no longer work for
anything but the sensation I have while working."
- Albert Giacometti
(sculptor)
"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)
"Many a man's reputation would not
know his character if they met on the street."
- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"There is more stupidity than
hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf
life."
- Frank Zappa
"Perfection is achieved, not when
there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take
away."
- Antoine de Saint Exupery
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.
It's the transition that's troublesome."
- Isaac Asimov
"If you want to make an apple pie
from scratch, you must first create the universe."
- Carl Sagan
"It is much more comfortable to be
mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."
- G. B. Burgin
"Once is happenstance. Twice is
coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
- Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger"
by Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"To love oneself
is the beginning of a lifelong romance"
- - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom
listens."
- Jimi Hendrix
"A clever man commits no minor
blunders."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
"Argue for your limitations, and sure
enough they're yours."
- Richard Bach
"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.)
"It was the experience of mystery --
even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"If everything seems under control,
you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti
"I do not consider it an insult, but
rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where
many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means."
- Clarence Darrow,
Scopes trial, 1925.
"Obstacles are those frightful things
you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
- Warren Zevon
"There are people in the world so
hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"If you gaze long into an abyss, the
abyss will gaze back into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"The instinct of nearly all societies
is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to
beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this
fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head."
- Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
"Everyone is a genius at least once a
year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together."
- Georg
Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
"Success usually comes to those who
are too busy to be looking for it"
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"While we are postponing, life speeds
by."
- Seneca (3BC - 65AD)
"Fill what's empty, empty what's
full, and scratch where it itches."
- the Duchess of
Windsor, when asked what is the secret of a long and happy life
"First they ignore you, then they
laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"Luck is the residue of design."
- Branch Rickey - former owner of the
Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team
"Most people would sooner die than
think; in fact, they do so. "
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"Wit is educated insolence. "
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"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
"Wise men make proverbs, but fools
repeat them. "
- Samuel Palmer (1805-80)
"It has become appallingly obvious
that our technology has exceeded our humanity. "
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"The secret of success is to know
something nobody else knows. "
- Aristotle Onassis
(1906-1975)
"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have
the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.
"
- Guy Davenport
"When you have to kill a man, it
costs nothing to be polite. "
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Any man who is under 30, and is not
a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a
conservative, has no brains. "
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"The opposite of a correct statement
is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another
profound truth. "
- Niels Bohr
(1885-1962)
"We all agree that your theory is
crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
- Niels Bohr
(1885-1962)
"When I am working on a problem I
never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when
I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. "
- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
"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)
"Anyone who considers arithmetical
methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. "
- John von Neumann (1903-1957)
"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.)
"Grove giveth
and Gates taketh away. "
- Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on
the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with software demands
"Reality is merely an illusion,
albeit a very persistent one. "
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"One of the symptoms of an
approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly
important. "
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves
a ton of explanation. "
- H. H. Munro (Saki)
(1870-1916)
"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
"I heard someone tried the
monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they
got was the collected works of Francis Bacon. "
- Bill Hirst
"
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"A doctor can bury his mistakes but
an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
"
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959 )
"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)
"A man can't be too careful in the
choice of his enemies. "
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Forgive your enemies, but never
forget their names. "
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
"Logic is in the eye of the logician. "
- Gloria Steinem
"No one can earn a million dollars
honestly. "
- William Jennings
"Everything has been figured out,
except how to live. "
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"Well-timed silence hath more
eloquence than speech. "
- Martin Fraquhar
Tupper
"Thank you for sending me a copy of
your book - I'll waste no time reading it. "
- Moses Hadas
(1900-1966)
"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)
"It is better to have a permanent
income than to be fascinating. "
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"When ideas fail, words come in very
handy. "
- Goethe (1749-1832)
"In the end, everything is a gag. "
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
"The nice thing about egotists is that
they don't talk about other people. "
- Lucille S. Harper
"You got to be careful if you don't
know where you're going, because you might not get there.
"
- Yogi Berra
"I love Mickey Mouse more than any
woman I have ever known. "
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)
"He who hesitates is a damned fool. "
- Mae West (1892-1980)
"Good teaching is one-fourth
preparation and three-fourths theater. "
- Gail Godwin
"University politics are vicious
precisely because the stakes are so small. "
- Henry Kissinger (1923-)
"The graveyards are full of
indispensable men. "
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
"You can pretend to be serious; you
can't pretend to be witty. "
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
"Behind every great fortune there is
a crime. "
- Honore de
Balzac (1799-1850)
"If women didn't exist, all the money
in the world would have no meaning. "
- Aristotle Onassis
(1906-1975)
"I am not young enough to know
everything. "
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"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)
"Sometimes a scream is better than a
thesis. "
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"There is no sincerer love than the
love of food. "
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"I don't even butter my bread; I
consider that cooking. "
- Katherine Cebrian
"I have an existential map; it has
'you are here' written all over it. "
- Steven Wright
"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but
bad quarters of an hour. "
- Gioacchino
Rossini (1792-1868)
"Manuscript: something submitted in
haste and returned at leisure. "
- Oliver Herford
(1863-1935)
"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)
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think
the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of
them. "
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
"Too many pieces of music finish too
long after the end. "
- Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
"Anything that is too stupid to be
spoken is sung. "
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"When choosing between two evils, I
always like to try the one I've never tried before. "
- Mae West (1892-1980)
"I don't know anything about music.
In my line you don't have to. "
- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
"No Sane man will dance. "
-
"Hell is a half-filled auditorium. "
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)
"Show me a sane man and I will cure
him for you. "
- Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
"Vote early and vote often. "
- Al Capone (1899-1947)
"If I were two-faced, would I be
wearing this one?"
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"Few things are harder to put up with
than a good example. "
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Hell is other people. "
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"I am become death, shatterer of worlds. "
- Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967)
(citing from the Bhagavad Gita,
after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion)
"Happiness is good health and a bad
memory. "
- Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)
"Friends may come and go, but enemies
accumulate. "
- Thomas Jones
"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.)
"Distrust any enterprise that
requires new clothes. "
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"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
- Robert Orben
"The cynics are right nine times out
of ten. "
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"There are some experiences in life
which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening
to the Brahms Requiem. "
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Attention to health is life greatest
hindrance. "
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"Plato was a bore. "
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal. "
- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
"I'm not going to get into the ring
with Tolstoy. "
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"Hemingway was a jerk. "
- Harold Robbins
"How can I lose to such an
idiot?"
- A shout from chessmaster
Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)
"Not only is there no God, but try
finding a plumber on Sunday. "
- Woody Allen (1935-)
"I don't feel good.
"
- The last words of Luther Burbank
(1849-1926)
"Nothing is wrong with
- Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)
"Men have become the tools of their
tools. "
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"I have never let my schooling
interfere with my education. "
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"It is now possible for a flight
attendant to get a pilot pregnant. "
- Richard J. Ferris, president of United
Airlines
"I never miss a chance to have sex or
appear on television. "
- Gore Vidal
"I don't want to achieve immortality
through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. "
- Woody Allen (1935-)
"Men and nations behave wisely once
they have exhausted all the other alternatives. "
- Abba Eban
(1915-)
"To sit alone with my conscience will
be judgment enough for me. "
- Charles William Stubbs
"Sanity is a madness put to good uses. "
- George Santayana (1863-1952)
"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
- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy
from two, it's research. "
- Wilson Mizner
(1876-1933)
"Why don't you write books people can
read?"
- Nora Joyce to her husband James
(1882-1941)
"Some editors are failed writers, but
so are most writers. "
- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
"Criticism is prejudice made
plausible. "
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"It is better to be quotable than to
be honest. "
- Tom Stoppard
"Being on the tightrope is living;
everything else is waiting. "
- Karl Wallenda
"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 best way to predict the future is to invent it.
"
- Alan Kay
"Never mistake motion for action. "
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"Hell is paved with good samaritans. "
- William M. Holden
"The longer I live the more I see
that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so
humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
"
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Silence is argument carried out by
other means. "
- Ernesto"Che"Guevara
(1928-1967)
"Well done is better than well said. "
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"The average person thinks he isn't. "
- Father Larry Lorenzoni
"Heav'n hath no rage like love to
hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd. "
- William Congreve (1670-1729)
"A husband is what is left of the
lover after the nerve has been extracted. "
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)
"Learning is what most adults will do
for a living in the 21st century. "
- Perelman
"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)
"There is a country in
- Sigfried Hulzer
"Ask her to wait a moment - I am
almost done. "
- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), while
working, when informed that his wife is dying
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in
every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. "
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I think there is a world market for
maybe five computers. "
- Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of
IBM, 1943
"I think it would be a good idea. "
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked
what he thought of Western civilization
"The only thing necessary for the
triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. "
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"I'm not a member of any organized
political party, I'm a Democrat!"
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"If Stupidity got us into this mess,
then why can't it get us out?" "
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"The backbone of surprise is fusing
speed with secrecy. "
- Von Clausewitz
(1780-1831)
"Democracy does not guarantee
equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity. "
- Irving Kristol
"There is no reason anyone would want
a computer in their home. "
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and
founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"640K ought to be enough for anybody. "
- Bill Gates (1955-),
in 1981
"The concept is interesting and
well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible. "
- A Yale University management professor
in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery
service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
"Who the hell wants to hear actors
talk?"
- H. M. Warner (1881-1958), founder of
Warner Brothers, in 1927
"We don't like their sound, and
guitar music is on the way out. "
- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the
Beatles, 1962
"Everything that can be invented has
been invented. "
- Charles H. Duell,
Commissioner,
"Denial ain't
just a river in
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of
blood. "
- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
"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 right to swing my fist ends
where the other man's nose begins. "
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)
"The difference
between fiction and reality?
Fiction has to make sense. "
- Tom Clancy
"It's not the size of the dog in the
fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. "
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"It is better to be feared than
loved, if you cannot be both. "
- Niccolo
Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"
"Whatever is begun in anger ends in
shame. "
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"The President has kept all of the
promises he intended to keep. "
-
"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
"There is only one nature - the
division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one.
Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to
comprehend the whole. "
- Bill Wulf
"There's many a bestseller that could
have been prevented by a good teacher. "
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
"He has all the virtues I dislike and
none of the vices I admire."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I criticize by creation - not by
finding fault."
-
"Love is friendship set on
fire."
- Jeremy Taylor
"God gave men both a penis and a
brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same
time."
- Robin Williams, commenting on the
Clinton/Lewinsky affair
"My occupation now, I suppose, is
jail inmate."
- Unibomber
Theodore Kaczynski, when asked in court what his current profession was
"Woman was God's second
mistake."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"This isn't right, this isn't even
wrong."
- Wolfgang Pauli
(1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist's paper
"For centuries, theologians have been
explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"Pray, n:. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a
single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"Every normal man must be tempted at
times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting
throats."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"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.
"Fill the unforgiving minute with
sixty seconds worth of distance run."
- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
"He would make a lovely corpse."
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
"I've just learned about his illness.
Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
- Irvin S. Cobb
"I worship the quicksand he walks
in."
- Art Buchwald
"Wagner's music is better than it
sounds."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"A poem is never finished, only
abandoned. "
- Paul Valery
(1871-1945)
"We are not retreating - we are
advancing in another Direction."
- General Douglas MacArthur
(1880-1964)
"If you were plowing a field, which
would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"
- Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of
supercomputing
"#3 pencils and
quadrille pads."
- Seymoure Cray
(1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer;
he also recommended using the back side of the pages so that the lines were not
so dominant.
"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.
"Your Highness, I have no need of
this hypothesis. "
- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on
celestial mechanics make no mention of God.
"I choose a block of marble and chop
off whatever I don't need. "
- Francois-Auguste
Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make
his remarkable statues
"The man who does not read good books
has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. "
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"The truth is more important than the
facts. "
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"Research is what I'm doing when I
don't know what I'm doing. "
- Wernher Von
Braun (1912-1977)
"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)
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collection on this Web page is copyright © 1994-2002 by Professor Gabriel Robins
<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/>. Permission is hereby
granted to anyone to make copies of this Web page, either in part or in its
entirety, as long as (1) Professor Gabriel Robins
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copyright notice is included in all copies made.
If you have any comments on this Web page,
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