Quotes

  • I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

  • In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

  • It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

  • You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

    Abraham Lincoln


  • This too shall pass. [Reflection on the temporary nature of the human condition].

    Adage


  • Nothing is more dangerous than for a seaman to be grudging in taking precautions.

    Admiral Nimitz


  • Eat alone and die alone.

    African Proverb


  • One little Indian left all alone, he went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

    Agatha Christie


  • Failing to plan is planning to fail.

    Alan Lakein


  • A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

    Albert Camus


  • Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

  • If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

  • Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

  • Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

    Albert Einstein


  • All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.

    Alexandre Dumas


  • About this time I like to have a Pot Noodle.

    Alexei Sayle


  • Lottery: a tax on people who are bad at maths.

    Ambrose Bierce


  • The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

    Amelia Earhart


  • Life's a bitch and then you die.

  • People are judged by the company they keep.

    Anon


  • Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.

    Anton Ego, Ratatouille


  • It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.

  • Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

    Aristotle


  • Death is a fickle hen, and random are her eggs.

  • Everyone wants to make television. The bad news is, everyone wants to make television. Cheaper, user-friendly technology means we’re living in both the Golden Age of TV, and a global bucket of swill. For every Sherlock and Breaking Bad, there’s a billion more people filming their brother squirt baked beans from his nose and anus.

  • I always think you've just got to move on. If you keep wallowing in the thing that you've done for a while you get a bit stale.

  • Write what makes you laugh not what you think will make someone else laugh.

    Armando Iannucci


  • If you don’t find the time, if you don’t do the work, you don’t get the results.

  • Life’s six rules for success: 1. Trust yourself. 2. Break some rules. 3. Don’t be afraid to fail. 4. Ignore the naysayers. 5. Work like hell. 6. Give something back.

  • What is the point of being on this Earth if you are going to be like everyone else?

    Arnold Schwarzenegger


  • To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand of friendship if you are willing to unclench your fist.

    Barack Obama


  • Analysing comedy is like dissecting a frog. Nobody laughs and the frog dies.

  • Picasso was burgled and did a drawing of the robbers. Police arrested a horse and two sardines.

    Barry Cryer


  • A place for everything and everything in its place.

  • Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

    Benjamin Franklin


  • Without struggle, success has no value.

    Bhavana Kaparthy


  • Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.

    Blaise Pascal


  • People used to laugh at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well they're not laughing now.

    Bob Monkhouse


  • Resistance Is futile.

    Borg


  • [Crowd in unison] Yes, we are all different! [Man in crowd] I'm not.

    Brian, Monty Python


  • To infinity... and beyond.

    Buzz Lightyear


  • A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.

    C. H. Spurgeon


  • Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

    Calvin Coolidge


  • Multitasking is a myth. When we think we’re multitasking, what we’re really doing is switching rapidly between tasks and not doing any of them well. I chose to do only the most important things but do them very, very well.

    Capt. Sully Sullenberger


  • Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.

  • The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail.

    Charles R. Swindoll


  • Everyone has a book inside them, which is exactly where it should, I think, in most cases, remain.

    Christopher Hitchens


  • The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.

    Chuck Palahniuk


  • Behave toward everyone as if receiving a great guest.

    Confusius


  • I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

  • Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.

  • The fairest thing in nature, a flower, still has its roots in earth and manure.

  • The great mass of humanity should never learn to read or write.

    D. H. Lawrence


  • We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

    Denis Diderot


  • But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.

  • Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.

  • I can’t control what happens to me, but I can control how I respond to it.

  • If I go up to heaven and find a homophobic god, I will tell him I prefer the other place.

  • If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

  • It is our moral obligation to give every child the very best education possible.

  • There is only one way to eat an elephant, a bite at a time.

  • We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven; God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.

    Desmond Tutu


  • Assume nothing.

    Directive in 8086 assembler


  • Trust me, I'm like a smart person.

    Donald Trump


  • “Eddies,” said Ford, “in the space-time continuum.” “Ah,” nodded Arthur, “is he? Is he?”.

  • He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

  • If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

  • Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

    Douglas Adams


  • ...you spend a much larger part of your life being old, not young. Rules change along the way. The first things to go are those things you thought were eternal.

  • And his computer's spell-check always forces him to capitalize the word "Internet". Come on; World War Two earned its capitalization. The Internet just sucks human beings away from reality.

  • But then a bumblebee bumbled above us and it stole our attention the way flying things can.

  • By the age of twenty, you know you're not going to be a rock star. By twenty-five, you know you're not going to be a dentist or any kind of professional. And by thirty, darkness starts moving in - you wonder if you're ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy and successful. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life, and you become resigned to your fate.....I mean, why do people live so long? What could be the difference between death at fifty-five and death at sixty-five or seventy-five or eighty-five? Those extra years... what benefit could they possibly have? Why do we go on living even though nothing new happens, nothing new is learned, and nothing new is transmitted? At fifty-five, your story's pretty much over.

  • Ethan and I drove around Silicon Valley today looking at various company parking lots to see whose workers are working on a Sunday. He says that's the surest way to tell which company to invest in. "If the techies aren't grinding, the stock ain't climbing”.

  • I don't remember where I was before I was born, why should I be worried about where I go after I die?

  • If you don't change, then what's the point of anything happening to you? It'll still be happening to an unchanged person.

  • It’s hard to get mad at Neal, because he suffers from a medical condition called total fucking stupidity.

  • Nothing very very good and nothing very very bad ever lasts for very very long.

  • One of the cruelest things you can do to another person is pretend you care about them more than you really do.

  • People who advocate simplicity have money in the bank; the money came first, not the simplicity.

  • Question: If there were two of you which one would win?

  • Rick, I'm holding a do-I-give-a-shit-ometer in my hand, and the needle's not moving. Shut up.

  • Sometimes I think God is like weather - you may not like the weather, but it has nothing to do with you. You just happen to be there. Deal with it.

  • The best thing about being young is being stupid. Or rather, the best thing about being young is being too stupid to know how stupid you really are.

  • There is no shame in impulse.

  • We instinctively wave to people on trains because trains are a metaphor for being alive: countless souls, trapped together, hurtling across the landscape, with a destination somewhere in the unseeable distance. Nobody ever waves at buses.

    Douglas Coupland


  • In war, there is no substitute for victory.

    Douglas MacArthur


  • Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

    Dwight D. Eisenhower


  • And remember: everything is meaningless and we're all going to die.

    Dylan O'Donnell


  • Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like.

    Edward Thurlow


  • In a few wretched buildings, we created a whole new industry with international significance.

  • There's a rule they don't teach you at the Harvard Business School. It is, if anything is worth doing, it's worth doing to excess.

  • We use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first.

    Edwin H. Land


  • What's the big fucking deal? Lots of amazing people have committed suicide, and they turned out alright.

    Emilie Autumn


  • I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, 'I'm going to mop the floor with your face.' I said, 'You'll be sorry.' He said, 'Oh, yeah? Why?' I said, 'Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well'.

  • I once had a large gay following, but I ducked into an alleyway and lost him.

  • I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.

  • My classmates would copulate with anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself.

  • When I wake up in the morning, I just can't get started until I've had that first, piping hot pot of coffee. Oh, I've tried other enemas.

  • When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

    Emo Philips


  • If In doubt, ask.

    Engineering schematic rubric


  • Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

  • The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

  • Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.

    Ernest Hemingway


  • Knowledge is power.

    Francis Bacon


  • Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

    Francis of Assisi


  • If you treat people right they will treat you right... ninety percent of the time.

  • The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

    Franklin D. Roosevelt


  • It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

    Frederick Douglass


  • There are no facts, only interpretations.

    Friedrich Nietzsche


  • All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

    Galileo Galilei


  • History teaches us that people have never learned anything from history.

    Georg Hegel


  • He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.

    George Bernard Shaw


  • Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

  • If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

  • If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

  • We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

    George Orwell


  • It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.

  • Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.

    George Washington


  • God...created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed — that is the meaning of evolution.

  • However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.

  • My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

  • Sooner or later...one has to take sides – if one is to remain human.

  • We’d forgive most things if we knew the facts.

    Graham Greene


  • What is a history teacher? He's someone who teaches mistakes.

    Graham Swift


  • I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

    Grant Allen


  • “I hope you had a pleasant time, Mr. Marx!” “I had a wonderful time, but this wasn’t it".

  • Before I speak, I have something important to say.

  • I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

  • Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

  • One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.

    Groucho Marx


  • We are the Greeks in the American empire. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans: great big, vulgar bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues, but also more corrupt. We must run Allied Forces Headquarters in Algers as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius.

    Harold Macmillan


  • I'm an absolute hypocrite because, given half a chance, I always use the M6 Toll! At the poor man's turn-off, "Bye-bye!" There is even a service station on the M6 Toll. Always go in there. It's just ... a completely different class of people.

    Henning Wehn


  • Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

    Henry Ford


  • There is nothing permanent except change.

    Heraclitus


  • I’ve learned that life is one crushing defeat after another.

    Homer Simpson


  • I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

  • I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone's imagination.

  • The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

    Hunter S. Thompson


  • Any A.I. smart enough to pass a Turing test is smart enough to know to fail it.

    Ian McDonald


  • Truth is the ultimate power. When the truth comes around, all the lies have to run and hide.

    Ice Cube


  • To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

    J.K. Rowling


  • Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.

  • I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.

  • PowerPoint makes us stupid.

  • Reading sheds light on our dark path ahead. By traveling into the past, I enhance my grasp of the present.

  • You don't always control your circumstances, but you can always control your response.

    James Mattis


  • 'We all make mistakes.' As the Dalek said, climbing off the dustbin.

    Jasper Carrot


  • To be or not to be. That's not really a question.

    Jean Luc Godard


  • Don't flip the bozo bit. [Dynamics of Software Development].

    Jim McCarthy


  • Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

  • The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

    John F. Kennedy


  • I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.

  • If you've ever played golf, you know that you yell 'fore' off the tee. You're not threatening somebody; you're warning them: 'Look, don't get hit by the ball, it's coming.'.

  • I'm a person who has always believed that you tell people the truth, and they'll make reasonable decisions. Truth is powerful.

  • You can't let concerns stop you; they drive you and they motivate you.

    John F. Kerry


  • A good writer is an expert on nothing except himself. And on that subject, if he is wise, he holds his tongue.

    John le Carré [David Cornwell]


  • Being honest might not get you a lot of friends, but it will always get you the right ones.

    John Lennon


  • In the long run we are all dead.

  • When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?

    John Maynard Keynes


  • [On his Top of the Pops debut] "In case you're wondering who this funny old bloke is, I'm the one who comes on Radio 1 late at night and plays records made by sulky Belgian art students in basements dying of TB.".

  • I just want to hear something I haven't heard before.

    John Peel


  • Astronomy is what we have now instead of theology. The terrors are less, but the comforts are nil.

    John Updike


  • Always take failure as an opinion; never as an option.

    Johnnie Dent Jr


  • The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

    Joseph Stalin


  • If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.

    Katharine Hepburn


  • The editor’s indecision is final.

    Katharine Whitehorn


  • A handbag?

  • To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

    Lady Augusta Bracknell


  • A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.

  • All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

  • Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

  • Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish: too much handling will spoil it.

  • He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

  • Man's enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

  • Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

  • One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

  • Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.

  • Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

  • To lead people walk behind them.

    Lao Tzu


  • I am just going outside and may be some time.

    Lawrence Oates


  • Art is never finished, only abandoned.

    Leonardo da Vinci


  • In 1969 I published a small book on Humility. It was a pioneering work which has not, to my knowledge, been superseded.

    Lord Longford


  • You’re not alone when you moan.

    Maggie Smith


  • Justice delayed is justice denied.

    Magna Carta


  • If I had no sense of humour, I would long ago have committed suicide.

    Mahatma Gandhi


  • Do what's right. Do it right. Do it right now.

    Malcolm Stevenson Forbes


  • A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

  • Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.

  • Don't let the bastards grind you down.

  • Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.

  • I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.

  • If he wants to be an asshole, it's a free country. Millions before him have made the same life choice.

  • Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

  • In the end, we’ll all become stories.

  • Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future.

  • War is what happens when language fails.

  • We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

  • When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.

    Margaret Atwood


  • Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

    Margaret Mead


  • Listen to your mother, kids. Aim low. Aim so low no one will even care if you succeed.

    Marge Simpson


  • Nothing in life is to be feared, it is to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

    Marie Curie


  • Being alone with fear can rapidly turn into panic. Being alone with frustration can rapidly turn into anger. Being alone with disappointment can rapid turn into discouragement and, even worse, despair.

    Mark Goulston


  • Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

  • History never repeats itself, but it rhymes.

  • I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.

  • I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

  • If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

  • It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

  • 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.

  • Life is short, break the rules. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile.

  • The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

  • The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

  • There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

  • Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

    Mark Twain


  • In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

  • Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

    Martin Luther King Jr


  • If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it.

    Mary Engelbreit


  • Failure is not falling down; it is not getting up again.

    Mary Pickford


  • My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour, and some style.

  • You train animals; you educate people.

    Maya Angelou


  • I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

    Michael Jordan


  • Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

    Mike Tyson


  • If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.

    Milton Berle


  • I don't know why. It's a perfectly cromulent word.

    Miss Hoover


  • Illegitimi non carborundum. (Don't let the bastards grind you down).

    Mock-Latin aphorism


  • The vaccine should be tested on politicians first. If they survive, the vaccine is safe. If they don’t, then the country is safe.

    Monika Wiśniewska


  • The less men think, the more they talk.

    Montesquieu


  • A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now.

  • My life needs editing.

  • Nixon's the kind of guy that if you were drowning 50 feet off shore, he'd throw you a 30 foot rope. Then Kissinger would go on TV the next night and say that the President had met you more than half-way.

  • Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.

    Mort Sahl


  • A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.

  • Appearances matter — and remember to smile.

  • Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.

  • Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

  • It always seems impossible until it’s done.

  • It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.

  • Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front.

  • No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

  • One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that, until I changed myself, I could not change others.

  • Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

    Nelson Mandela


  • Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

  • I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.

  • Work as though you would live forever, and live as though you would die today. Go another mile.

    Og Mandino


  • We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.

    Orson Welles


  • A cynic: ‘a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.‘.

  • A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

  • Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

  • Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

  • I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

  • I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.

  • I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

  • I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.

  • Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

  • The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

  • The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

  • We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

  • You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.

    Oscar Wilde


  • Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

  • Avoid people who try to dimiminish your ambitions.

  • Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.

  • Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others' experience.

  • I consider even a victorious war as an evil, from which statesmanship must endeavour to spare nations.

  • Laws are like sausages. It's best not to see them being made.

  • Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

  • The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

  • When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.

  • When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.

  • Woe to the leader whose arguments at the end of a war are not as plausible as they were at the beginning.

    Otto von Bismarck


  • Art is theft.

  • Go and do the things you can’t. That is how you get to do them.

  • Learn the rules like a professional, so you can break them like an artist.

  • We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

  • We artists are indestructible, even in a prison cell or a concentration camp I would be all right in my own world of art. Even if I had to paint my pictures with my tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.

  • What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing.

  • Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.

    Pablo Picasso


  • Charlie Brown says to Snoopy...’you only live once’. Snoopy replies...’wrong, you only die once, you live every day’.

    Peanuts


  • Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

  • Never forgive a friend who betrayed you once — he will betray you again.

  • One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

  • The one who learns and learns and doesn't practice is like the one who ploughs and ploughs and never plants.

  • Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.

  • Without friendship no communication between people has value.

    Plato


  • Ich bin ein Berliner. [I am a citizen of Berlin.] [I am a jam doughnut].

    President John F. Kennedy


  • No money: no honey.

    Prostitute’s negotiation


  • Rules are made to be broken.

  • Speech is silver, silence is golden.

  • The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

    Proverb


  • A blow from your friend is better than a kiss from your enemy.

  • Concern should drive us into action and not into depression.

  • Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.

  • Learn silence. With the quiet serenity of a meditative mind, listen, absorb, transcribe, and transform.

  • Most men and women, by birth or nature, lack the means to advance in wealth and power, but all have the ability to advance in knowledge.

  • Never trust a friend who speaks bad of his comrades.

    Pythagoras


  • For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

  • I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

  • I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.

  • If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.

  • I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb.

  • It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

  • Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you.

  • Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

  • Physics is to maths what sex is to masturbation.

  • Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is.

  • Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

  • Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

  • The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.

  • We are lucky to live in an age in which we are still making discoveries.

  • What do I advise? Forget it all. Don't be afraid. Do what you get the most pleasure from. Is it to build a cloud chamber? Then go on doing things like that. Develop your talents wherever they may lead. Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead! If you have any talent,or any occupation that delights you,do it, and do it to the hilt.

  • You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.

    Richard Feynman


  • As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.

  • Kindness is strength. Good-nature is often mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes passes for genius. Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm. Intelligence is not the foundation of arrogance. Insolence is not logic. Epithets are the arguments of malice.

  • The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.

  • The truth shall make you free, but first it shall make you angry.

  • To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.

  • We rise by lifting others.

    Robert G. Ingersol


  • Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.

    Robert H. Schuller


  • Death comes to us all; we can only choose how to face it when it comes.

    Robert Jordan


  • Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

  • We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it.

    Robert Louis Stevenson


  • Politics are all matters of theory—there is no stability in them: they shift about like the sands of the sea: and I should feel quite out of my element amongst them.

  • Secure the maximum of result with the minimum of means.

    Robert Stephenson


  • Anything works, as long as you write it properly.

  • Drama's not safe and it's not pretty and it's not kind. People expect the basic template of television drama where there might be naughty villains, but everyone ends up having a nice cup of tea. You've got to do big moral choices and show the terrible things people do in terrible situations. Drama is failing if it doesn't do that.

  • Fun, that's the word I keep on using. That's the word I worry about when other writer's scripts get too dark. Optimistic. Fun. And to be optimistic and have fun there's got to be a darkness there. I think that's a very British attitude.

  • I would rather be confused for 10 minutes than bored for 5 seconds.

  • We've always been there, behind the scenes, making the sensible decisions for thousand of years. Just saying: 'If you built that on the left it would all be so much better'... [or] 'Hadrian just move that wall a little bit' - there was undoubtedly a gay man there saying: 'Just don't go all the way!'.

  • You are worthy of love and respect. You are beautiful, gifted, and intelligent. Don't let the storm make you forget it.

    Russell T Davies


  • Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.

  • You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.

    Sam Levenson


  • Homosexuality is God's way of assuring that the truly gifted aren't burdened with children.

    Samuel Austin Allibone


  • Always remember that as long as other people are gullible, there's no limit to what you can achieve.

  • Be careful that what you write does not offend anybody or cause problems within the company. The safest approach is to remove all useful information.

  • Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you're a consultant.

  • I have infinite capacity to do more work as long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero.

  • I wrote 'The Dilbert Principle' around the concept that in many cases the least competent, least smart people are promoted, simply because they’re the ones you don't want doing actual work. You want them ordering the doughnuts and yelling at people for not doing their assignments—you know, the easy work. Your heart surgeons and your computer programmers—your smart people—aren't in management. That principle was literally happening everywhere.

  • Losers have goals. Winners have systems.

  • The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers.

  • The job isn't done until you've blamed someone for the parts that went wrong.

  • You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.

    Scott Adams


  • I'm giving her all she's got, captain.

    Scotty


  • Be not too hasty either with praise or blame; speak always as though you were giving evidence before the judgement-seat of the gods.

    Seneca


  • A tiger doesn't lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.

    Shahir Zag


  • Best men are moulded out of faults.

    Shakespeare


  • If you can connect all the dots between what you see today and where you want to go, then it’s probably not ambitious enough or aspirational enough.

    Shantanu Narayen


  • Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

    Sigmund Freud


  • Bart: This is the worst day of my life. Homer: The worst day of your life so far.

    Simpsons


  • The prime minister giveth, and the prime minister taketh away. Blessed be the name of the prime minister.

    Sir Humphrey Appleby


  • Try everything once, except incest and folk dancing.

    Sir Thomas Beecham


  • In this world, with great power there must also come great responsibility.

    Spider-Man [Stan Lee]


  • All men are cremated equal.

  • Hello, I'm Spike Milligna - the well-known spelling mistake.

  • I have the body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge.

  • I told you I was ill. {Epitaph}.

  • I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

    Spike Milligan


  • Live long and prosper.

    Spock


  • My first words, as I was being born... I looked up at my mother and said, "that's the last time I'm coming out one of those".

    Stephen Fry


  • Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick.

    Steve Jobs


  • I've never listened back to it: a dog never goes back and inspects its own mess.

    Steven Isserlis


  • Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.

  • I poured spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone.

  • I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.

  • I went to a general store but they wouldn't let me buy anything specific.

  • Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.

    Steven Wright


  • If you don't ask, you don't get.

    Stevie Wonder


  • Make haste slowly.

    Suetonius


  • Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes it's built on catastrophe.

    Sumner Redstone


  • A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.

  • I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.

    Susanna Kaysen


  • Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

    T. S. Eliot


  • Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

  • I believe it should be possible for someone stricken with a serious and ultimately fatal illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help, rather than suffer.

  • In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

  • In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

  • It's not morbid to talk about death. Most people don't worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

  • Magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

  • Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.

  • The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

  • They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

  • You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.

    Terry Pratchett


  • Comparison Is the Thief of Joy.

  • Speak softly and carry a big stick.

    Theodore Roosevelt


  • I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

    Thomas Edison


  • Delay is preferable to error.

  • I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

  • Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

  • When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

    Thomas Jefferson


  • The only good war photograph is an anti-war photograph.

    Tim Page


  • “If you've been in the software business for any time at all, you know that there are certain common problems that plague one project after another. Missed schedules and creeping requirements are not things that just happen to you once and then go away, never to appear again. Rather, they are part of the territory. We all know that. What's odd is that we don't plan our projects as if we knew it. Instead, we plan as if our past problems are locked in the past and will never rear their ugly heads again. Of course, you know that isn't a reasonable expectation.”.

  • “It’s a rare company I visit these days that doesn’t have a Dilbert cartoon posted somewhere. I guess the message of these cartoons is “Our company is in some ways like Dilbert’s company, ” or, even worse, “My boss is in some ways like Dilbert’s boss.” When I encounter these cartoons, I always want to find the person who posted them and ask, “Yes, but are you like Dilbert?” Are you keeping your head down? Are you accepting senseless direction when it’s offered? Are you letting the bureaucracy dominate at the expense of the real goals? If so, I’d like to tell that person, then you’re part of the problem. At the risk of being a total killjoy, I propose that you look at the next Dilbert cartoon that falls under your eye in a totally different way. I propose that you ask yourself about Dilbert’s role in whatever corporate nonsense is the butt of the joke. Ask yourself, How should Dilbert have responded? (The real Dilbert, of course, never responds at all.) How could Dilbert have made this funny situation distinctly nonfunny? What could he have done to put an end to such absurdities? There is always an obvious answer. Sometimes the action is one that would get Dilbert fired. It’s easy (and fair) to blame lousy management on lousy managers. But it’s not enough. It’s also necessary to blame the people who allow themselves to be managed so badly. At least partly at fault for every bad management move is some gutless Dilbert who allows it to happen.”.

  • Each switch imposes a direct penalty of a bit more than twenty minutes of lost concentration.

  • In my early years as a developer, I was privileged to work on a project managed by Sharon Weinberg, later to become president of the Codd and Date Consulting Group. She was a walking example of much of what I now think of as enlightened management. One snowy day, I dragged myself out of a sickbed to pull together our shaky system for a user demo. Sharon came in and found me propped up at the console. She disappeared and came back a few minutes later with a container of soup. After she’d poured it into me and buoyed up my spirits, I asked her how she found time for such things with all the management work she had to do. She gave me her patented grin and said, “Tom, this is management.”.

  • The purpose of a team is not goal attainment, but goal alignment.

    Tom DeMarco


  • People try to say suicide is the most cowardly act a man could ever commit. I don't think that's true at all. What's cowardly is treating a man so badly that he wants to commit suicide.

    Tommy Tran


  • A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

  • I don't think people realise how the establishment became established. They simply stole land and property from the poor, surrounded themselves with weak minded sycophants for protection, gave themselves titles and have been wielding power ever since.

  • If democracy is ever to be threatened, it will not be by revolutionary groups burning government offices and occupying the broadcasting and newspaper offices of the world. It will come from disenchantment, cynicism and despair caused by the realization that the New World Order means we are all to be managed and not represented.

  • The House will forgive me for quoting five democratic questions that I have developed during my life. If one meets a powerful person - Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler - one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system.

  • We should always watch how politicians treat refugees, Neal Ascherson once wrote, because that's how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.

    Tony Benn


  • Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.

    Vince Lombardi


  • Common sense is not so common.

    Voltaire


  • In God we trust, all others must bring data.

    W. Edwards Deming


  • You can't abdicate and eat it.

    Wallis Simpson


  • Physics works, and I'm still alive.

    Walter Lewin


  • The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

    William Arthur Ward


  • I will arise and go now.

    William Butler Yeats


  • We study the past to understand the present. We understand the present to guide the future.

    William Lund


  • Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. (Occam's razor.).

    William of Ockham


  • I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

  • I may be drunk, miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

  • If you're going through hell, keep going.

  • It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.

  • Keep Buggering On. (KBO).

  • Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

  • Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

  • Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

  • The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

  • The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

  • The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

  • When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

  • Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy then an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then it becomes a tyrant and, in the last stage, just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

  • You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

    Winston Churchill


  • Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise they won't go to yours.

  • If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.

  • It ain't over 'til it's over.

  • It's déjà vu all over again.

  • When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

  • You can observe a lot by watching.

    Yogi Berra