Re: Famous Quotations
 

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war.

Simone Weil

Re: Famous Quotations
 

They have gone too long without a war here. Where is morality to come from in such a case, I ask? Peace is nothing but slovenliness, only war creates order.

Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956: Mother Courage (1939)

Re: Famous Quotations
 

In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first.

Jimi Hendrix

Re: Famous Quotations
 

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

George Eliot

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No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible.

George Chakiris

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The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines---so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Re: Famous Quotations
 

I certainly remember building model rockets. It was fun to watch the rocket blast into the air, suspenseful to wonder if the parachute would open to bring the rocket safely back.

Eric A. Cornell

Re: Famous Quotations
 

It is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea---whether it is to sail or to watch it---we are going back from whence we came.

John F. Kennedy 1917-63

Re: Famous Quotations
 

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They came through you but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Kahlil Gibran 1883-1931: The Prophet (1923)

Re: Famous Quotations
 

I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomiest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous.

Dennis Potter 1935-94: Seeing the Blossom (1994)

Re: Famous Quotations
 

Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!
His beak holds more than his belican.
He takes in his beak
Food enough for a week.
But I'll be darned if I know how the helican. (Hell I can)

Dixon Lanier Merritt

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If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

Woody Allen
US movie actor, comedian, & director (1935 - )

Re: Famous Quotations
 

As I understand it, an overachiever is someone who doesn't have much smartness but does a lot of smart things. An underachiever is someone who has a lot of smartness but does a lot of dumb things.

Neil Postman - The End of Education

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You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.

Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004), quoted in Observer, March 29 1981

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This is the best I could do (Jellybeans is not easy!)


Meg: How could you embarrass me like that? Nobody better pull this kind of crap at my slumber party tonight.
Lois: Don't worry, honey. You and your friends are gonna have a great time.
Stewie: Yes. How delightful it will be. A pubescent herd of gabby wretches prattling on about boys and music and jellybeans and stickers.

Family Guy

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I hate bumper stickers, you can't sum anything up. All you do is paint yourself in some caricaturist corner.

David Cross

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"Still round the corner there may wait,
A new road or a secret gate."

J. R. R. Tolkien

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Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

Homer, The Iliad

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

Nelson Mandela

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There are certain sacred things in my life that I would never talk about. Because they are clear in my head, I can walk freely around the opposite side. I keep them completely separate in my mind.

Heather Armstrong, SXSW 2006

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Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

Richard Wilbur

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"Leave no stone unturned."

Euripides

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Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now.
P. T. Barnum

Re: Famous Quotations
 

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall;
I really don't know life at all.

Joni Mitchell

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Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Oscar Wilde (The Pictire of Dorian Gray, 1891)

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"Fallacious and misleading arguments are most easily detected if set out in correct syllogistic form."

Immanuel Kant

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What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

William Shakespeare

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"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."

George Orwell

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Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind, is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can.

Jane Austen

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Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

TS Eliot

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They said, 'You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.'
The man replied, 'Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.'

Wallace Stevens

Re: Famous Quotations
 

If something is too hard to do, then it's not worth doing. You just stick that guitar in the closet next to your shortwave radio, your karate outfit and your unicycle and we'll go inside and watch TV.

Simpsons

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When the politicians complain that TV turns their proceedings into a circus, it should be made plain that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.

Ed Murrow

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"Being deeply learned and skilled, being well trained and using well spoken words; This is good luck."

Buddha

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Never expose yourself unnecessarily to danger; a miracle may not save you...and if it does, it will be deducted from your share of luck or merit.

The Talmud

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Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.

Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)

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Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.
Sir Richard Steele

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The majority never has right on its side. Never I say! That is one of the social lies that a free, thinking man is bound to rebel against. Who makes up the majority in any given country? Is it the wise men or the fools? I think we must agree that the fools are in a terrible overwhelming majority, all the wide world over.

Henrik Ibsen

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"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self."

Aristotle

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

American Declaration of Independence 1776: from a draft by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Re: Famous Quotations
 

Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious, of which you are not aware. The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy...You want to be consciously happy; the moment you are consciously happy, happiness is gone.

Jiddu Krishnamurti