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"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
"We are students of words; we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing"
"A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature."
"The only way to have a friend is to be one."
"The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship."
"Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass."
"Men are what their mothers made them."
"There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love."
"Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason."
The Road Not Taken:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
"I am not a teacher but an awakener."
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on."
~Robert Frost~
"The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love."
~William Wordsworth~
"Society is now one polished horde, --- Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored."
~Lord Byron~
"The only means of strengthening one's intelligence is to make up one's mind about nothing-- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts."
~John Keats~
"What is now proved was only once imagined."
~William Blake~
"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."
"The unexamined life is not worth living to a human.”
"Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history."
The passionate are like men standing on their heads; they see all things the wrong way.
~Plato~
"True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing. And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all."
"Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of - for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear."
I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
I know I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.
~Socrates~
"Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach."
"To the query, "What is a friend?" his reply was "A single soul dwelling in two bodies.""
"Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them."
"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self."
~Aristotle~
"If a person offend you and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures. Simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick."
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
"There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting."
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
~Mark Twain~
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify."
"There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
It is only when we forget our learning, do we begin to know."
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or faraway."
"I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live."
"I know I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing."
~Henry David Thoreau~
"Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form."
Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.
~Karl Marx~
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
- "Common sense is the collection of prejudices learned by age eighteen."
"True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness."
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
~Albert Einstein~
"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it."
"To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered."
"Love truth, but pardon error."
"Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read."
~Voltaire~
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
~Thomas Jefferson~
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
"'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
"I am not young enough to know everything."
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
"We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow."
"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame."
"Anyone can make history. Only a great man can write it."
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
~Oscar Wilde~
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
"You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live."
"When a man wants to murder a tiger, it's called sport; when the tiger wants to murder him it's called ferocity."
"All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships."
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity."
"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience?"
"What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real."
~Leonardo DaVinci~
"Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."
~Walt Whitman~
"We turn not older with years, but newer every day."
"Hope is a thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without words / And never stops at all."
"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things."
~Emily Dickinson~
"The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers."
"If a man hasn't discovered something he would die for, he isn't fit to live."
"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me. But it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."
"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
~Martin Luther King Jr.~
"If you're not ready to die for it, put the word "freedom" out of your vocabulary."
"It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That's the only thing that can save this country."
"
We're not Americans, we're Africans who happen to be in America. We were kidnapped and brought here against our will from Africa. We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - that rock landed on us."
"I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color."
"I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King."
"Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American”
~Malcolm X~
"Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."
~Langston Hughes~
"Our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."
"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt."
~William Shakespeare~
"A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top ."
"Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who decided to stand their ground."
~Unknown~
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
"An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind."
"If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake."
"Where there is love there is life.
You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind."
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
~Mahatma Gandhi~
"Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans”
"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."
"If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal."
~John Lennon~
"The man who has no imagination has no wings."
"The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life."
"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."
~Muhammad Ali~
"He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator."
"Whoever is out of patience is out of possession of his soul. Men must not turn into bees, and kill themselves in stinging others."
"There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool."
"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."
~Napoleon Bonaparte~
"Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed."
"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."
"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly."
"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."
"Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart, give yourself to it."
~Buddha~
"Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room."
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else."
"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce."
~Dante Allighieri~
"Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."
~Charles Dickens~
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those of us who profess to favor freedom yet depreciate agitation are men who want the crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters... This struggle may be a moral one or a physical one, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people. These wrongs and injustices may be fought with words or with blows or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose."
~Frederick Douglass~
"I haven't failed. I've found 10,000 ways that don't work."
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
~Thomas Edison~
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."
~F. Scott Fitzgerald~
"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did."
"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."
"Experience is a dear teacher, and only fools will learn from no other."
~Benjamin Franklin~
"Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don't want them to become politicians in the process."
"I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics but for our contributions to the human spirit."
"When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses."
~John F. Kennedy~
"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will."
"It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up."
~Vincent Lombardi~
"Computers are useless, they can only give you answers."
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
"Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds?"
~Pablo Picasso~
"I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence."
"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night."
~Edgar Allen Poe~
"To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written."
"The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences."
"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
"It is our duty to make the best of our misfortunes, and not to suffer passion to interfere with our interest and public good."
~George Washington~
"Dream as if you'll live forever... Live as if you'll die today."
~James Dean~
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
~Robert F. Kennedy~
To be nobody-but-yourself--in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
"You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun."
~Al Capone~
"I'm just trying to make a smudge on the collective unconscious."
~David Letterman~
"The odds against there being a bomb on a plane are a million to one, and against two bombs a million times a million to one. Next time you fly, cut the odds and take a bomb."
~Benny Hill~
"It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens."
"I don't want to become immortal through my work; I want to become immortal through not dying."
"The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you."
"I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick -- not wounded -- dead."
"I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats."(about the KKK)
~Woody Allen~
We took pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed. . . But we're going back next week.
'Well, we're very sorry, Mr. Marx,' said the manager, 'but we don't allow Jews to swim at our beach.'
'What about my son?' retorted Groucho. 'He's only half-Jewish. Would it be all right if he went into the water up to his knees?'
"Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know."
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made."
"He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot."
"Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"
~Groucho Marx~
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
~Abraham Lincoln~
Press: "Does all the adulation from teenage girls affect you?"
John: "When I feel my head start to swell, I look at Ringo and know perfectly well we're not supermen."
~John Lennon~
"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function."
~Unknown~
“A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her.”
~W.C. Fields~
"Is it true that you smoke eight to ten cigars a day?" "That's true." "Is it true that you drink five martinis a day?" "That's true." "Is it true that you still surround yourself with beautiful young women?" "That's true." "What does your doctor say about all of this?" "My doctor is dead."
"Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years."
~George Burns~
"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating.....and you finish off as an orgasm."
~George Carlin~
"I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I said, 'Got any shoes you're not using?"
"What's another word for Thesaurus?"
"If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?"
"My aunt gave me a walkie-talkie for my birthday. She says if I'm good, she'll give me the other one next year."
"You know how it is when you go to be the subject of a psychology experiment, and nobody else shows up, and you think maybe that's part of the experiment? I'm like that all the time."
~Steven Wright~
Lady Astor- "Why Sir Churchill you are drunk!"
Churchill- "And you are ugly, but I shall be sober in the morning!"
"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."
~Sir Winston Churchill~
"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."
~Albert Einstein~
"Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein."
to Cicero's Spot