The Quote Page
"We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at
play."
- Heraclitus
"No vision and you perish; No Ideal, and you're lost; Your heart must ever
cherish Some faith at any cost. Some hope, some dream to cling to, Some rainbow
in the sky, Some melody to sing to, Some service that is high."
- Harriet Du Autermont
"Prosperity doth best discover vice, but Adversity doth best discover virtue."
- Francis Bacon, _Essays_
"There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is
the man who makes every man feel great."
- G.K. Chesterton, _Charles_Dickens_
"If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won't, you most
assuredly won't. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching
pad."
- Denis Waitley
"Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what
they want to achieve."
- Tom Landry
"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
- George Eliot
"No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some
mark on it forever."
- Francois Muriac
"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like
a rock."
- Thomas Jefferson
"A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems
to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were
somehow absent before the change."
- Earl Nightingale
"I am never a failure until I begin blaming others."
- Anonymous
"Most questions are simple when someone else has to decide them."
- Ben Franklin
"True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself, to
actualize oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people
feel one ought to be or assume that one is."
- R.D. Laing, _Self_and_Others_
"Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile... initially scared me
to death."
- Betty Bender
"Your first obligation is to carry out the mission you are meant for, not what
your father, mother, mate or friends say you should do. Your mission will
manifest in you when you decide to listen to the desire of your heart."
- Naomi Stephan
"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of
yourself that you truly give."
- Kahlil Gibran
"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so
regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for
us."
- Alexander Graham Bell
"..so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone could
find hitherto unknown lands of any value."
- Committee advising Ferdinand and Isabella regarding Columbus' proposal, 1486
"I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones
fell from the sky"
- Thomas Jefferson, on hearing reports of meteorites.
"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy."
- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon."
- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria
1873.
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered
as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to
us."
- Western Union internal memo, 1876.
"Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being
unworthy of science and mischievious to to its true progress"
- Sir William Siemens, 1880, on Edison's announcement of a sucessful light bulb.
"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy."
- Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888
"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody
will use it, ever."
- Thomas Edison, 1889
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have
all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be
looked for in the sixth place of decimals."
- physicist Albert. A. Michelson, 1894
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
"It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two
or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying
machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere."
- Thomas Edison, 1895
"The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known
forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a
practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through the
air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the
demonstration of any physical fact to be."
- astronomer S. Newcomb, 1906
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
"Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless. Those officers and men
are wasting their time and are not pulling their proper weight in the war"
- Fourth Lord of the British Admiralty, 1915, in regards to use of tanks
in war.
"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against
which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily
in high schools."
- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who
would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the
radio in the 1920s.
"All a trick." "A Mere Mountebank." "Absolute swindler." "Doesn't know
what he's about." "What's the good of it?" "What useful purpose will it
serve?"
- Members of Britain's Royal Society, 1926, after a demonstration of television.
"This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd
lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists."
-A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at
will."
- Albert Einstein, 1932
"The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who
expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is
talking moonshine"
- Ernst Rutherford, 1933
"The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents
difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the
notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent
appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility
of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished."
-Richard van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator's "Rockets in Space", Nature, March 14, 1936
"Space travel is utter bilge!"
-Sir Richard Van Der Riet Wolley, astronomer
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a
fad that won't last out the year."
- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
"Space travel is bunk"
-Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik
"There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be
used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio
service inside the Unided States."
-T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, 1961
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
"But what... is it good for?"
- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn
better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal
Express Corp.)
"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not
Gary Cooper."
- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading
role in"Gone With The Wind."
"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports
say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you
make."
- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields'
Cookies.
"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The
literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3M
"Post-It" Notepads.
"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing,
even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about
funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our
salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we
went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You
haven't got through college yet.'"
- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve
Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve
Wozniak's personal computer.
"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all
of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You
just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable
condition of weight training."
- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
- Bill Gates, 1981
"I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should
choose of its own free will, not only its moment to jump off, but also it's direction.
I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee of a gaming house than a physicist."
- Albert Einstein in a letter to Max Born
"There are more things, Lucilius, that frighten us than injure us, and we suffer
more in imagination than in reality."
- Seneca, _Epistulae_ad_Lucilium_
"If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you
might have been."
- Robert H. Schuller
"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."
- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_
"Civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof."
- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address
"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it."
- George Bernard Shaw, _Candida_
"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not
deserve them."
- Mark Twain
"If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will
not raise your price."
- Anonymous
"There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after
that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second."
- Logan Pearsall Smith, _Afterthoughts_
"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."
- Thomas Carlyle
"Kindly words do not enter so deeply into men as a reputation for kindness."
- Mencius
"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel
important."
- T.S. Eliot, _The_Cocktail_Party_
"When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the
darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen.
There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly."
- Patrick Overton
"Men and women are limited not by the place of their birth, not by the color of
their skin, but by the size of their hope."
- John Johnson
"Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary
are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in
studying the exemplary."
- Warren Bennis
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and
it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
- Anais Nin
"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this
life we get nothing save by effort."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness
can do that."
- Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once
in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
- Rene Descartes, _Principles_of_Philosophy_
"If you don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying."
- Coleman Hawking
"Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like."
- Will Rogers
"Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will
accomplish them."
- Warren Bennis
"If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will
not raise your price."
- Anonymous
"Never let yesterday use up too much of today."
- Will Rogers
"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing
anything very innovative."
- Woody Allen
"A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough
decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set
out to be a leader, but becomes one by the quality of his actions."
- Anonymous
"Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If
one is a greyhound why try to look like a Pekinese?"
- Edith Sitwell
"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where
they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be."
- Rosalynn Carter
"One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn' t pay to get
discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your
faith in yourself."
- Lucille Ball
"You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus."
- Mark Twain
"Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
- John Wooden
"I do not want to die...until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and
cultivated the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown."
- Kathe Kollwitz
"To achieve great things we must live as thought we were never going to die."
- Marquis de Vauvenargues, _Reflections_and_Maxims_
"Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more
difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the one that
crushed it."
- Anonymous
"The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people
fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure
merely propels them into some new attempt at success."
- Michael Korda
"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his
goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof."
- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address
"Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest
in the gratefully and appreciating heart."
- Henry Clay
"Not failure, but low aim, is crime."
- James Russell Lowell
"Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of
them will own up to a lack of humor?"
- Frank Moore Cobly, _The_Colby_Essays_
"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the
dark place where it leads."
- Erica Jong
"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival
value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."
- C.S. Lewis
"Our lives improve only when we take chances -- and the first and most difficult
risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves."
- Walter Anderson
"If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become
it."
- William Arthur Ward
"No man is happy who does not think himself so."
- Publilius Syrus, _Maxims_
"Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth
or the only truth."
- Charles A. Dana
"The willow knows what the storm does not: that the power to endure harm
outlives the power to inflict it."
- Anonymous
"Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and
you will grow stronger until have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember."
- Anne Sullivan
"I am never a failure until I begin blaming others."
- Anonymous
"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiam."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, _Essays_
"The paradoxes of quantum mechanics, and the nature of consciousness, are manifestly two of the deepest mysteries of all. It is striking that John Wheeler and Roger Penrose, the most original and influential living theorists about space and time, have both, in their later years, advocated the dissident view that these mysteries are linked from: Before the Beginning"
- Martin Rees (submitted by Dr. Victor Von Goldsenstein)
"You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything
and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here.... I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell. It doesn't frighten
me."
- Richard P. Feynman (submitted by James Daniel Henry)
"One reason for the recent unprecedented period of economic prosperity is that we've had a democratic administration and a republican congress, which means the government can't get much accomplished. This is a good thing - having an ineffective government is like having less government, the less government the better."
-Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Stanford Economist
"Chairman Alan Greenspan does deserve a great deal of credit for the our good economy - he has done an extraordinary job of doing nothing."
-Milton Friedman, Nobel Laurete, Stanford Economist
"Think about it. The best way to socialize our system is to have government invest in the stock market. If the
government was invested heavily in the stock market over the past ten years, just think how much of the
private sector would be owned by the government by now."
-Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Stanford Economist
"Monopolies result in two things: higher costs and lower quality. Now consider public education system. This
is a monopoly, and we have higher costs and lower quality. It costs $6,000 per year per student in public
schools in California. In America we are leaders in almost everything, except in education, where we are
among the lowest. The public education system in this country is a disaster."
-Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Stanford Economist
"Social security works like this: Send your money to Washington and let the government manage it for you.
But the government doesn't manage your money, they steal it."
-Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Stanford Economist
"When the social security system was started, there was a ratio of 10 workers to 1 social security recipient.
Now there is 2 workers to 1 social security recipient. Soon there will be 1.5 workers for each recipient. This
is a disaster."
-Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Stanford Economist
"The government should not require everyone to participate in their inefficient retirement plan. People who
want to prepare for their own retirement should do so without having to contribute to social security. By doing
this there would be a lot fewer people that really need social security, which then could be easily be provided
by the government system."
-Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Stanford Economist
"In war, the first casualty is truth."
-Athenian playwright Aeschylus - 475 BC
"If you let a camel stick his nose under your tent, sooner or later you'll have the whole camel living in your tent."
-Ancient Bedouin Saying
"You'll never get out of this world alive."
-Hank Williams, Sr.
"Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die."
-Hank Williams, Sr.
"Things are more like they are right now than they ever have been."
-Dwight Eisenhower
"If I win the lottery I'm gonna keep on farming 'till it's all gone."
-Farmer at B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning California.
"If I had a nickel for every time somebody said, 'If I had a nickel...' I'd be one rich S.O.B."
-Drunk cowboy at B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning California.
"The hand that picks the spit and cigarette butts out of the urinal mixes your drinks."
-Sign over urinal at B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning California.
"Truckers with short stacks or low manifold pressure, please stand close to the urinal."
-Sign over urinal at B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning California.
"Please do not remove from the premises"
-Written on the cover of the phone book at the pay phone outside of B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning
California. The phone book was missing, but the cover remained.
"The toes you step on today may be connected to the butt you have to kiss tomorrow."
-Bartender, B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning California.
"I'm not as think as you drunk I am."
-Bass Player, Lonestar Band, B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning California.
"For a good time, call Hillary at ...."
-Graffiti on the bathroom wall, B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning California
"No fighting before midnight. "
-Sign over bar at B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning California.
"I'm so broke I can't even pay attention."
-Big rig driver, B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning California.
"Visualize Whirled Peas"
- Bumper sticker on new Volkswagen Beetle
"Lord, save me from your followers"
-Bumper sticker, Jesus Freak VW Microbus, Chico California
"Visualize using your turn signal"
-Bumper sticker, Lexus SUV, I-680
"Visualize Parking Spaces"
-Bumper sticker, double parked Dodge pickup, San Francisco
"Don't blame me, I voted for Zappa"
-Bumper sticker, Robinson Timber Crew Cab
-"Earth First! We'll log the other planets later"
-Bumper sticker, Syler Brothers Crew Cab
"DARE! To keep cops off donuts"
-Bumper sticker
"Look at me when I'm hitting you!"
-Bumper sticker on Soccer Mom van, I-680
"Speaking of impeachment, we ought to impeach Dumbo"
-KGO San Francisco segway to commute traffic report, refering to traffic on the Dumbarton Bridge
"Oh God! Oh shit! Ok!"
-Exclamation of tatooed toothless Orovillite as the hood of his 1973 Oldsmobile came unlatched and
folded over the windshield while speeding down Highway 70.
"How can I miss you if you won't go away?"
-Dan Hicks, sometime in the 60's
"Just when you get ahead of the rat race, along come faster rats."
- Annon
"That's one skunk I don't think we should kick."
-Roy Fuel, VP Government Affairs, ICBO
"He's so bad he kicked his own butt."
-Oroville saying
"Sayin aint doing."
-Matt Dylan, from the movie Tex
"I read the General Theory of Relativity and I understand all the english parts. It's the math I don't get."
-Joe Montana talking to Dan Marino.
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you."
-Annon
"You'd be paranoid too if everybody was after you."
-Slick Spent
"As long there are calculus exams there will be prayer in schools."
-Bumper Sticker, Oroville, CA
"Some men rob with a six gun, and some with a fountain pen."
- Woody Guthrie
"If you were my husband, I'd poison your coffee."
-Lady Whats-Her-Name to Winston Churchill
"If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
- Winston Churchill
"Time is natures way of keeping everything from happening all at once."
-Annon
"If it happened to someone who knows someone you know, it could happen to you."
-Anti-virus salesman
"Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark."
-Ancient Zen saying
"Even Ray Charles could see that."
-Popular Oroville saying
"We're the dot in dot com."
-Scott McNealy, CEO Sun Microsystems
"I can't remember the last time I drank Tequila"
-Popular saying in Oroville
"I thought I was dancing till someone stepped on my hand."
-Drunk cowboy laying on the floor at B&B Crossroads Saloon, Corning California
"Congress is like the Vanguard Missile, they don't work and you can't fire them."
- Barry Goldwater (I think)
"An organized desk is the sign of a sick mind"
-Annon (Chief Al One Rock?)
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot exchange."
-Bumper sticker on Toyota Avalon, parked at Nordstrom's, Pleasanton, CA
"We don't have a drinking problem, we get drunk, we fall down, no problem."
-Sign over bar at The Sierra Club
"London, Paris, Rome, Oroville"
-Oroville Tee Shirt
"Jesus is coming soon, and man is he pissed!"
-Oroville Tee Shirt, seen at Walmart
"Judge not, lest ye be judged, but discern until your hearts content."
-Assembly of God Minister
"You're only as young as you look, so just keep on looking"
-Annon old man
"Quit thinking that you must halt before the barrier of inner negativity. You
need not. You can crash through...whatever we see a negative state, that is
where we can destroy it."
- Vernon Howard
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be
indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."
- George Bernard Shaw, _The_Devil's_Disciple_
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once
in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
- Rene Descartes, _Principles_of_Philosophy_
"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like
a rock."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp."
- John Berry, _Flight_of_White_Crows_
"Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already."
- Marcus Aurelius
"Character isn't inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts,
thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take
possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains."
- Helen Gahagan Douglas
"Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that
seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day."
- Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they
arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
- Anais Nin
"Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits;
habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny."
- Tryon Edwards
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