MISC.

A good quote serves the purpose of encapsulating in a few attributed words and sentences an often deeper and more complex idea. Here's a real world example: In response to the addition of security cameras to the hallways of the school in which I teach, I wrote a quote from Ben Franklin on the blackboard in the teacher's lounge. It read, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Some knuckle-head wrote underneath that, "He who write stupid quote not have enough to do," and signed it Confusion (This from a supposedly educated person...No wonder our public schools are in such trouble!). My response was simply a quote from Slim Jim..."Eat me!!!" I guess Howard Aiken had it right when he said, "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."

"Education: The inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent."

... John Maynard Keynes

"The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense."

...Mark Twain

"Behind every argument is someone's ignorance."

...Louis D. Brandeis

"The worst-tempered people I have ever met were people who knew they were wrong."

...Wilson Mizner

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

...James Harvey Robinson

"Nothing hath an uglier look to us than reason when it is not on our side."

...George Saville

"The only force I fear more than human irrationality is irrationality armed with passion."

...Leo Rosten

"No good deed goes unpunished."

...Clare Boothe Luce

"Less is more."

...Mies van der Rohe

"It's clever, but is it art?"

...Rudyard Kipling

"The perfection of art is to conceal art."

...Quintilian

"Modern Art: Things can't possibly be as bad as they are painted."

...Leo Rosten

"Art does not render what is visible; art makes visible."

...Paul Klee

"All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography."

...Federico Fellini

"What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art."

...Augustus Saint-Gaudens

"Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend."

...John Singer Sargent

"I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait."

...Salvador Dali

"Abstract art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."

...Al Capp

"Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic."

...Ambrose Bierce

"Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere."

...G. K. Chesterton

"There are moments when art almost attains the dignity of manual labor."

...Oscar Wilde

When asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence: "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

...Dorothy Parker

"There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown hopeless about them."

...Clare Boothe Luce

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

...Oscar Wilde

"A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines."

...Frank Lloyd Wright

"Art is I; science is we."

...Claude Bernard

"The scientific theory I like the best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline baggage."

...Max Born

"Every ten seconds there is a woman giving birth to a child on this planet. She must be found and stopped!"

...Sam Levenson

"There is always an easy solution to every human problem...simple, plausible, and wrong."

...H. L. Mencken

"Men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."

...G. K. Chesterton

"My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can. That's almost $7.00 in dog money."

...Joe Weinstein

"I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult."

...Rita Rudner

"If a man's best friend is a dog, his worst is a dogma."

...Leo Rosten

"Atheism...is too theological."

...G. K. Chesterton

"Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God."

...Heywood Broun

"Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?"

...Lily Tomlin

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

...H. L. Mencken

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."

...John F. Kennedy

"A liberal is a man who leaves a room when the fight begins."

...Heywood Broun

"Definition of a bigot: Anyone who's winning an argument with a liberal."

...Rush Limbaugh

"There is no such thing as a free lunch."

...Lazarus Long, a.k.a. Robert A. Heinlein

"Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You will pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins."

...Sammy "The Bull" Gravano
Mafia turncoat

"Television: The device that brings into your living room characters you would never allow in your living room."

...Red Skelton

"Television: a medium. So called because it is neither rare or well done."

...Ernie Kovacs

"History repeats itself; historians repeat each other."

...Philip Guedalla

"A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic."

...Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

...Mark Twain

"My grandmother is over 80 and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle."

...Henny Youngman

"It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."

...Jack Handy

"Gossip is the art of saying nothing in such a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid."

...Walter Winchell

"A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. 'You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?' she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, 'I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too."

...Jake Johansen

"You're only young once, but you can be immature forever."

...Anthony Perkins in Mahogany

"From the moment I picked up your book, until the moment I put it down, I could not stop laughing. Someday, I hope to read it."

...Groucho Marx, in a letter to Leo Rosten

"By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve."

...Robert Frost

"I said to my mother-in-law last year, 'My house is your house.' The next day, she sold it."

...Rodney Dangerfield

"A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized."

...Fred Allen

"Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if you run out of food."

...Dean McLaughlin

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