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Quotations
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Books of Quotations |
Books on quotations,
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Category |
Quote |
Author |
Achievement |
For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is. |
Goethe |
Age | I'm very pleased to be here. Let's face it, at my age I'm very pleased to be anywhere. | George Burns |
Age | At my age flowers scare me. | George Burns |
Age | I don't feel old - I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap. | Bob Hope |
Anger | For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind. | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Attitude | Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude form achieving his goal. Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude. | Thomas Jefferson |
Aviation | The three most common expressions (or famous last words) in aviation are: "Why is it doing that?" "Where are we?" and "Oh My God!" | Author Unknown |
Aviation | A smooth landing is mostly luck; two in a row is all luck; three in a row is prevarication. | Author Unknown |
Aviation | I remember when sex was safe and flying dangerous. | Author Unknown |
Aviation | Progress in airline flying: now a flight attendant can get a pilot pregnant. | Author Unknown |
Aviation | Airspeed, altitude and brains. Two are always needed to successfully complete the flight. | Author Unknown |
Banking | I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. | Thomas Jefferson, 1802 |
Biased media | I usually read the Wall Street Journal before breakfast. I can't take the New York Times on an empty stomach. | Thomas Sowell |
Bickering | I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum. | Francis Willard (1839-1898) Educator |
Bravery |
Be brave as your fathers were before you. Have faith! Go forward! |
Thomas A. Edison |
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Brotherhood |
The opportunity for brotherhood presents itself every time you meet a human being. |
Jane Wyman, Actress |
Capitalism |
The human community does not come into being except as men are able to exchange their surplus energies in the form of goods, services, and ideas. |
Ben Moreell |
Capitalism | The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. | Winston Churchill |
Challenges |
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth. Take the dragon, and the gift is yours. |
Noela Evans |
Change |
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress. |
Charles F. Kettering |
Citizenship | Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with it the equivalent power to do things TO you. | Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945) |
Citizenship | As long as most people act like sheep, all of us will get fleeced. | Mark Lamendola, activist |
Civil War | The War between the States... produced the foundation for the kind of government we have today: consolidated and absolute, based on the unrestrained will of the majority, with force, threats, and intimidation being the order of the day. Today's federal government is considerably at odds with that envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. ... [The War] also laid to rest the great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that 'Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed'. | Walter E. Williams |
Cold War | Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose. | Ronald Reagan |
Committees |
The only sure way to get a job done is to appoint a
committee |
Frank Hughes |
Compassion |
If you want to make others happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. |
The Dalai Lama |
Conciseness |
Forgive me for the long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one. |
Mark Twain |
Conciseness |
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read. |
Winston Churchill |
Confidence |
While doubt stands still, confidence can erect a skyscraper. |
George Lorimer |
Confidence | Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out into the ocean. | Christopher Reeve |
Congress | The best thing about being a member of Congress is that you get to spend other people‘s money. | A chorus of 535 |
Congress | There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress. | Mark Twain |
Congress | Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. | Mark Twain |
Congress | Talk is cheap... except when Congress does it. | Anonymous |
Congress | I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress | Ronald Reagan |
Congress | The fact that the US Congress has failed to abolish the IRS is grounds for convicting every member of Congress of treason. At the very least, they have broken their oaths of office by their failure to end this reign of terror against the American people. I wonder how high the body count must go and how much damage to our economy we must endure before these morons do the job they are grossly overpaid to do. | American victim of terrorism |
Congress | In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a Congress. | John Adams |
Consequences | Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences. | Robert Louis Stevenson |
Conservatives vs. Progressives | The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types: the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. | G. K. Chesterton |
Constitution | Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals -- that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government -- that it is not a charter _for_ government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection _against_ the government. | Ayn Rand |
Constitution | While I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only are essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. | Robert. E. Lee [1866] |
Correctness | People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost. | Anonymous |
Correctness | "Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean." | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) |
Correctness | A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. | Alexander Pope |
Corruption |
Neither your life nor my life, nor the future of this country, will be affected in the slightest by whether Linda Tripp is naughty or nice. But if any president is able to commit crimes with impunity by using the vast powers and perquisites of his office to cover up, then we will have a danger of corruption and abuse of power that can only grow with the passing years and generations. |
Thomas Sowell |
Corruption | I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it. | Ashleigh Brilliant |
Courts | Poor people have access to the courts in the same sense that Christians had access to the lions. | Judge Earl Johnson, Jr. |
Creativity |
Every good manager knows that our greatest natural resource is human creativity. |
Mary E. Cunningham |
Crime | I work for the IRS. | Said often, by career criminals |
Delusions |
The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in. |
A. E. Housman |
Democracy | Do not let this form of government deteriorate into a Democracy. For then, men would have no freedom at all. | George Washington, First President of the United States |
Democracy | The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. | Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Prime Minister of England |
Democracy | Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear. | Alan Coren, British Humorist (quoted in the London Independent) |
Democracy | Nothing is more revolting than the majority; for it consists of few vigorous predecessors, of knaves who accommodate themselves, of weak people who assimilate themselves, and the mass that toddles after them without knowing in the least what it wants. | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
Democracy | Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. | Unknown |
Democracy |
I wouldn't call it fascism exactly, but a political system nominally controlled by an irresponsible, dumbed down electorate who are manipulated by dishonest, cynical, controlled mass media that dispense the propaganda of a corrupt political establishment can hardly be described as democracy either. |
Edward Zehr |
Democracy | We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism. | Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) Premier of the Soviet Union |
Democracy | Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear. | Alan Corenk |
Democracy | What
Hillary Clinton and her ilk would do is reduce this country to communism.
Their rhetoric sounds good, but their plans to get there achieve the
opposite effect. She is dead set on erasing jobs by increasing regulation,
increasing poverty by confiscating wages via higher taxes, increasing
crimes by disarming citizens, and making healthcare simply unavailable.
This is a woman who has never had to make a mortgage payment, drive her kid to a soccer game, or make a car payment. She has armed guards 24 hours a day for the rest of her life. So, she has no concept of what it's like to pay for her programs or live under them. Actually, Cuba has exactly the kind of government she would bestow on us. Why doesn't she just move there--along with Alec Baldwin and other statist radicals? |
The American voter, casting votes against Gore in the 2000 election |
Desire |
What you really value is what you miss, not what you have. |
Jorge Luis Borges |
Difficulties |
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict. |
William Ellery Channing |
Diplomacy |
Some delicate matters must be treated like pins, because if they are not seized by the right end, we get pricked. |
J. Petit-Senn |
Discipline |
Discipline is remembering what you want. |
? |
Economy | Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. |
Ronald Reagan |
Education | Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. . . . It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. . . . Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. . . . | Bertrand Russell, 1953 |
Education |
There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them: the senses, intelligent companions, and books. |
Henry Ward
Beecher |
Education | Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. | Bertrand Russell quoting Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the head of philosophy & psychology who influenced Hegel and others – Prussian University in Berlin, 1810 |
Effort |
One does not judge the merit of a man by his great qualities, but by the usage which he knows how to make of them. |
La Rochefoucauld |
Expectations |
We hardly ever get what we deserve, but we will get what we expect. |
? |
Experience |
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning. |
James Russell Lowell |
Experts | If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done. | Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004) |
Facism | We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. | Hillary "Hitlery" Rodham Clinton, June, 1994 |
Facism | ...to manipulate men, to propel them towards goals which you - the social reformer - see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them. | Isaiah Berlin |
Failure | Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. | Henry Ford |
Failure | A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else. | John Burroughs |
Fear |
More fear, less action. More action, less fear. |
? |
Fools | Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain--and most fools do. | Dale Carnegie |
Fools | The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. | Herbert Spencer |
Foreign Aid | Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. | Douglas Casey (1992) |
Fortune | Things work out best for the people who make the best out of the way things work out. | Art Linkletter |
Free Market | The free market is not only the most
productive system, it is also the only system consistent with individual
liberty. It is also the only one that stops special interests from
oppressing taxpayers and consumers.
In an economy characterized by government intervention, the powerful use the government to their own ends. The only cure is not more government, but getting politicians and bureaucrats out of the economy. |
Ron Paul [from a May 1981 press release issued by the office of Congressman Ron Paul] |
Freedom |
Free enterprise: the more enterprising you are, the freer you are. |
? |
Freedom |
What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom 'to' and freedom 'from'. |
Marilyn Vos
Savant |
Freedom | The Republic was not established by cowards; and cowards will not preserve it. This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave | Elmer Davis (1800-1858), American writer, commentator |
Freedom | If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees. | Famous Freedom Foe, Bill Clinton |
Freedom | The real freedom of any individual can always be measured by the amount of responsibility which he must assume for his own welfare and security. | Robert Welch (1899-1985) |
Friendship |
A friend is one who knows all about you and still likes you. |
? |
Friendship |
A friend is a person with whom you dare be yourself. |
? |
Friendship |
A friend is made by many acts--and lost by only one. |
? |
Friendship |
A friend is one who comes to you when all others leave. |
? |
Friendship |
A friend is a present you give yourself. |
? |
Friendship |
The best way to destroy and enemy is to make him your friend. |
? |
Friendship |
Trouble is a sieve through which we sift our acquaintances. Those too big to pass through are our friends. |
Arlene Francis (1907-2001) Actress |
Friendship |
Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in the best light. |
Jennie Jerome Churchill (1854-1921), Mother of Winston Churchill |
Friendship |
There are two ways of spreading the light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. |
Edith Warton |
Friendship |
True friends are those who know you but love you anyway. |
Edna Buchanan, Writer |
Friendship |
A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities. |
William Arthur Ward, Educator |
Genius |
Genius is an infinite capacity in taking short cuts. |
Ivor Brown |
Genuineness |
Hearts may be attracted by assumed qualities, but the affections are not to be fixed but by those that are real. |
De May |
Giving | We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. | Winston Churchill |
Heartbeats | The average human heart beats 100,000 times a day. Make those beats count. | Anonymous |
Helping Others | Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.... As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others. |
Audrey Helpburn
(1913 - 2003) |
Helping Others | There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up. | Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) |
Helping Others | Help others get ahead. You will always stand taller with someone else on your shoulders. | Bob Moawad, Business Leader |
Hope | Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have. | H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Writer |
Human Failings |
The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice. |
Mahatma Mohandas
K. Gandhi |
Human Failings | The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage for the man who can't read them. | Mark Twain |
Hustle |
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. |
Abraham Lincoln |
Ideas | Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. | Howard (Hathaway) Aiken Born: March 9, 1900 |
Individuality | He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. | Albert Einstien |
Ignorance |
It is better to be unborn than untaught; for ignorance is the root of misfortune. |
Plato |
Ignorance | I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. | Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642) |
Ignorance | Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession -- their ignorance. | Hendrick Van Loon |
Ignorance | The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance, as knowing so many things that ain't so. | Josh Billings |
Immortality | I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. | Woody Allen |
Impossibility | Always use the word impossible with the greatest caution. | Unknown |
Income Tax | A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the federal inspector will be in every man's counting house.... The law will of necessity have inquisical features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it, men will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of federal inspectors, spies, and detectives will descend upon the state. [Editor's note: The American Taliban has more psychopathic menaces working for it than our combined Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines have soldiers and sailors]. | Richard E. Byrd (1888-1947) Polar explorer, Virginia House Speaker Source: 1910, predicting the consequences of a federal income tax |
Integrity |
The just man walks in his integrity; his children are blessed after him. |
Proverbs 20:7 |
Integrity |
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. |
Samuel Johnson |
Intelligence | We are all one decision away from being stupid. | Unknown |
Intelligence |
Work alone does not suffice: the efforts must be intelligent. |
Charles B. Rogers. |
Knowledge | "The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance, as knowing so many things that ain't so." | Josh Billings |
Leadership | I did not have s** with that woman. | Bill Clinton, disgraced former President of the USA |
Leadership | America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within. | Josef Stalin (1879-1953) Communist leader of the USSR |
Leadership | I will not rest.... | George Bush, upon restoring leadership to the Presidency |
Legislature | No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. | Mark Twain |
Liberals | A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. | G. Gordon Liddy |
Liberals | The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just that they know so much that isn't so. | Ronald Reagan |
Liberty |
Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty. |
Calvin Coolidge (1873-1933), 30th US President Source: Speech, 1924 |
Liberty | The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of government power. | Douglas MacArthur |
Liberty | Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote. | Benjamin Franklin, 1759 |
Life | Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can. | Danny Kaye (1913-1987) |
Life | I have found that if you love life, life will love you back. | Arthur Rubenstein (1887-1982) Musician |
Lies | A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. | Mark Twain |
Lies | I can tell when she lies--her lips move. | Anon |
Life |
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive. |
Elbert Hubbard |
Life |
Life is like a coin--spend it any way you want, but spend it only once. |
? |
Life | Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the sun. | Ashleigh Brilliant |
Listening |
No man would listen to you talk if he didn't know his turn was next. |
Ed Howe |
Listening |
The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. |
Fran Leibowitz |
Listening |
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something. |
Wilson Mizner |
Logic | The older I get, the more I realize that arguing on the basis of facts and logic only gets you labeled as someone who is out of step with the times, if not lacking in compassion. | Thomas Sowell |
Luck | Never trade luck for skill. | Anonymous |
Lying |
The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. |
George Bernard Shaw |
Marriage | By all means marry: If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. | Socrates |
Marriage | I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. | Groucho Marx |
Marriage | When a man marries a woman, they become one. The trouble starts when they try to decide which one. | Anonymous |
Marriage | If a man has enough horse sense to treat his wife like a thoroughbred, she will never turn into an old nag. | Anonymous |
Marriage | On anniversaries, the wise husband always forgets the past--but never the present. | Anonymous |
Media |
Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have
all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia
effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with
Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater
importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backwardreversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know |
Michael Crichton, as quoted on www.gunlaws.com |
Mediocrity | Only the mediocre are always at their best. | Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944), Diplomat and Writer |
Military | Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong. | Ronald Reagan |
Military | Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons. | General MacArthur |
Military | You, you, and you. Panic. The rest of you, come with me | Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. |
Military Personnel | ! Though I Fly Through the Valley of Death....I Shall Fear No Evil. For I am at 80,000 Feet and Climbing. | Entrance to old SR-71 base, Kadena, Japan |
Military Personnel | "You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3. | Paul F. Crichmore, test pilot |
Military Personnel | The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire. | Anonymous pilot |
Military Personnel | Blue water Navy truism: There are more planes in the ocean than submarines in the sky. | An old carrier sailor |
Military Personnel | If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter--and therefore, unsafe. | Anonymous pilot |
Military Personnel | When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash. | Anonymous pilot |
Minds |
Our minds work with faith, belief, repetition, and expectancy |
? |
Minds |
Minds are like parachutes. They function only when open. |
Thomas DeWar |
Nationalism |
In the real world of today, the face of nationalism is one of the continuing encroachments on private business' freedom to operate. |
Orville L. Freeman |
Newspapers | People everywhere confuse, What they read in newspapers with news. |
-- A. J. Liebling [Abbott Joseph Liebling] (1904-1963) Journalist, author Source: The New Yorker, 7 April 1956 |
Newspapers | If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. | Mark Twain |
Obituaries | I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. | Clarence Darrow |
Opinions | "I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies another this right makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it." | Thomas Paine (1737-1809) Source: The Age of Reason, 1783 |
Opportunity | Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. | Thomas A. Edison |
Opportunity | Opportunity knocks but once, temptation leans on the doorbell. | ? |
Participation |
All the great Truths in the world are nothing and will be of little benefit to you without your participation. |
Cheryl L. Russell |
Passion |
Nothing in this world is accomplished without passion. It makes all the difference if our hearts are in what we're doing |
? |
Past |
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future. |
Jessamyn West |
Perfection |
It today were perfect, there would be no need for tomorrow. |
? |
Perspective |
You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. |
? |
Pilots | What is the similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots? If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies; If ATC screws up, the pilot dies. | Author unknown |
Political Correctness | Political Correctness: a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end. | Author unknown |
Politics |
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You
have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think
it's important.
|
Eugene McCarthy (1916- ) US Congressman (D-Minnesota) & US Senator (D-Minnesota) |
Politics |
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. |
Plato |
Politics | It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first. | Ronald Reagan |
Politics | What this country needs are more unemployed politicians and lawyers. | Edward Langle |
Politics | Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book | Ronald Reagan |
Politics |
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use--which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics |
Mark Twain |
Politics | Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. | Pericles (430 B.C.) |
Power |
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable. |
Eric Hoffer |
Practice | Every artist was first an amateur. | Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Prejudice | If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other causes for prejudice by noon. | Howard (Hathaway) Aiken Born: March 9, 1900 |
Problems |
It isn't that they can't see the solution, it's that they can't see the problem. |
G. K. Chesterton |
Problems |
Problems are only opportunities in work clothes. |
Henry. J. Kaiser |
Problems | Problems are not like wine and cheese. Rather than improve with age, they simply get worse. You save time by solving them as early as possible. | Mark Lamendola, Time Management Speaker |
Problems |
A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved. |
Charles F. Kettering |
Prosperity | Prosperity or egalitarianism--you have to choose. I favor freedom--you never achieve real equality anyway, you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion. | Marios Vargas Llosa (1936- ) Peruvian writer Source: Independent on Sunday, 5 May 1991 |
Prosperity | Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things. | Eric Butterworth |
Rat race | "I wouldn't mind the rat race -- if the rats would lose once in a while." | Tom Wilson [Thomas Frances Wilson, Jr.] |
Reading | The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. | Mark Twain |
Respect | They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. | Carl W. Buechner |
Revenge | We cannot see the future. We cannot change the past. We can only live in the now with an eye towards gaining enough power in the future to wreak revenge on everyone who ever screwed us in the past. | Anonymous IRS victim |
Romantic breakups | Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. | Anonymous |
Roses | I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall. | Eleanor Roosevelt |
Self | Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. | Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) |
Self | Nobody will believe in you unless you believe in yourself. | Liberace (1919-1987) |
Sermons | The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending and having the two as close together as possible. | George Burns |
Silence |
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves. |
Thomas Carlyle |
Sleaze | We can sum up the Bill and Hillary Clinton's White House accomplishments quite easily: Sleazegate. | Anonymous |
Sleaze | Anyone who grew up in the South is bound to have heard the phrase "poor white trash." Teresa Heinz Kerry has given us a new category -- rich white trash. | Thomas Sowell |
Smoking | Isn't a no smoking section in a restaurant like a no peeing section in a swimming pool? | Anonymous |
Socialism |
Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone. |
Frederick Bastiat |
Socialism | The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of inevitable blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of inevitable misery. | Winston Churchill |
Socialism |
Nowhere have people been willing to work as well for the common good as they do for their own benefit. Perhaps in some other galaxy there are creatures who would, but the track record of socialism among human beings on earth shows that this is not the place. Worst of all, the concentration of political power
necessary to try to reduce economic inequalities has allowed tyrants like
Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to impose their notions and caprices on millions
of others--draining them economically or slaughtering them en masse or
exploiting them sexually. Mao Zedong, for example, had harems of young
girls--and occasionally boys--for his pleasure in various parts of China.
There is no point blaming the tragedies of socialism on the flaws or
corruption of particular leaders. Any system which |
Thomas Sowell |
Society |
We desperately need a society that believes in itself and feels good about the things that professionals do. |
Julia Thomas |
Society |
The Earth is
degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey
their parents, |
Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC [also attributed to Socrates] |
Spiritual |
The spiritual resources are not to be miscalculated. They can serve life in a wholesome, beneficial way. |
C. Neil Strait |
Stealing | A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns. | Mario Puzo (1920-1999) Novelist Source: The Godfather |
Struggle |
Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and the money not scarce? |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Success |
Success is speaking words of praise/ In cheering other people's ways / In doing just the best you can / With every taste and every plan. / It's silence when your speech would hurt / Politeness when your neighbor's curt. / It's loyalty when duty calls. / It's courage when disaster falls. / It's patience when the hours are long. / It's found in laughter and in song. / It's the silent time of prayer / In happiness and in despair. / In all of life and nothing less, / We find the thing we call success. |
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Tax Abuse | Let me get this straight. We're paying a huge army of people--more than those who serve in all of our armed forces combined--to steal 4300 computers a year, spend half their in-office Internet time on porn and gambling sites, break countless laws every day, take out their childhood aggressions on innocent people--and we call other governments terrorists? | Anonymous taxpayer |
Tax Abuse | The trick is to stop thinking of it as "your" money. I don't even think of it as the government's money. I take what I want, and you can't stop me. We never had this conversation. | Unidentified IRS revenue officer |
Tax Abuse | It seems that every time Congress sets out to trim the budget, the knife slips and trims the taxpayer instead. | Anonymous |
Taxes | The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't
get worse every time Congress meets. |
Will Rogers |
Taxes | When Barbary pirates
demand a fee for allowing you to do business, it's called "tribute
money." When the Mafia demands a fee for allowing you to do
business, it's called "the protection racket." When the state
demands a fee for allowing you to do business, it's called "income
tax." |
Jeff Daniel, Libertarian |
Taxes | The only difference
between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the
skin. |
Mark Twain |
Taxes | The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal
government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination |
Ronald Reagan |
Taxes | We contend that for a
nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a
bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handles. |
Winston Churchill |
Taxes | [The Internal Revenue Code
is] about 10 times the size of
the Bible--and unlike the Bible, contains no good news. (Editor's
note: it is actually 15 times the size of the Bible). |
Senator Don Nickels, OK |
Taxes | I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization. | Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. |
Taxes | [The tax code] is a
monstrosity and there's only one thing
to do with it. Scrap it, kill it, drive a stake through its
heart, bury it and hope it never rises again to terrorize
the American people. |
Steve Forbes |
Taxes | I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. | Winston Churchill |
Taxes | When my mother makes out her income tax return every year, under Occupation she writes in, "Eroding my daughter's self-esteem." | Robin Roberts |
Taxes | The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation. | Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924), First Leader of the Soviet Union |
Taxes on inheritance |
"The
question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on
the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk
about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes |
-- Thomas Sowell (1930- ) Writer and economist |
Television |
Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other. |
Ann Landers |
Thinking | I don't mind that you think slowly but I do mind that you are publishing faster than you think. | Wolfgang Pauli, physicist, Nobel laureate (1900-1958) |
Thinking | Thinking appears to be non-existent in federal agencies. | Frustrated citizen |
Time |
Yesterday is a cancelled check. Tomorrow is a promissory note. Today is ready cash. How are you going to spend it? |
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Trouble |
The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. |
Bertrand Russell |
Trouble | Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. | Benjamin Franklin |
Trouble |
Be thankful for the troubles of your job. They provide about half of your income. Because if it were not for things that go wrong, the difficult people you have to deal with, and the problems and unpleasantnesses of your working day, someone could be found to handle your job for half of what you are being paid. // It takes intelligence, resourcefulness, patience, tact, and courage to meet the troubles of any job. And it may be the reason you aren't holding down an even bigger one. // If all of us would start to look for more troubles, and learn to handle them cheerfully and with good judgment, as opportunities rather than irritations, we would find ourselves getting ahead at a surprising rate. For it is a fact that there are plenty of big jobs waiting for men and women who aren't afraid of the troubles connected with them. |
Robert R. Updegraff |
Truth | Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death. | John Gilmore |
Tyranny | I hate the IRS. | The average U.S. citizen |
Tyranny | When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny. | Thomas Jefferson |
Tyranny | We will get those people. We have the power. | Randy Brown, IRS official, commenting on innocent taxpayers with bogus tax debts |
US Air Force | Without ammunition, the USAF would be just another expensive flying club. | Author unknown |
Weather | Weather forecasts are horoscopes with numbers. | Author unknown |
Women | What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce. | Mark Twain |
Vegetarianism | I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants. | A. Whitney Brown |
Vicarious learning | Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. | Douglas Adams |
Youth | Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life. | Herbert Henry Asquith |
Check out these posters of famous quotes: |
Love poems. http://www.lovepoemsandquotes.com. A collection of romantic love poems and quotes, as well as a free monthly poetry contest
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