quotes book .. quotations to compete and inspire

Top 10 Quotes of 2007

2009-09-08T11:20:00.000+02:00

Top 10 Quotes taken from Time.com

#1. "I really am not the kind of guy that sits here and says, 'Oh gosh, I'm worried about my legacy.'"

— President GEORGE W. BUSH, when asked about his falling approval numbers and mounting criticism of the Iraq War during an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes (Jan. 14, 2007)

#2. "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country."

— MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, president of Iran, responding to a question about the treatment of gays and lesbians in Iran during a visit to Columbia University in New York City (Sept. 24, 2007)

#3. "This record is not tainted at all. At all. Period.

— San Francisco Giants slugger BARRY BONDS, after breaking Hank Aaron's Major League Baseball all-time home-run record with his 756th career homer amid rampant speculation that he has used steroids. Bonds has always denied that he ever "knowingly" used performance-enhancing substances, but he was indicted in November for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury about using them (Aug. 7, 2007)

#4. "If you didn't like Darfur, you're going to hate Baghdad."

— Gen. DAVID H. PETRAEUS, warning of the consequences of an early troop withdrawal from Iraq (Aug. 14, 2007)

#5. "This is it. This is where it all ends. End of the road. What a life it was. Some life."

— Virginia Tech gunman CHO SEUNG-HUI, in a chilling video he made and sent to NBC News before killing 32 people and committing suicide in the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history (Apr. 16, 2007)

#6. "I don't think they're piling on because I'm a woman. I think they're piling on because I'm winning."

— HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, on intensifying criticism by rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination (Nov. 2, 2007)

#7. "The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton. We have to ask ourselves what is going on here?"

— AL GORE, in an interview with the British paper The Sun, before adding that he believes in 10 years it will be too late to save the planet (June 18, 2007)

#8. "I spent the better part of the past three months enduring criticism that is normally leveled at some kind of genocidal tyrant."

— RUPERT MURDOCH, News Corp. owner, on the outcry over his purchase of the Wall Street Journal (Aug. 8, 2007)

#9. "Hello, Condoleezza Rice? You have me to deal with now."

— A MASKED HAMAS GUNMAN, joking into the telephone of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after taking control of his government compound (June 15, 2007)

#10. "Why don't you just shut up?"

— KING JUAN CARLOS, of Spain, to Hugo Chávez at a summit in Chile after the Venezuelan President called former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar a fascist (Nov. 10, 2007)

and by "you" we mean other people

2008-09-16T01:11:00.004+02:00

Thanks to Jim who spotted this one this morning. Evidently, they may or may not come to you. Or somebody said that they do. Or something.

"Our Coffee"

2008-09-16T01:11:00.002+02:00

Cafe Caribe
Supreme Selection
Coffee for the Latin Taste
"Our Coffee"

Our Coffee

I'm sure that it would become "My Coffee" if I purchased it. But for now it's "Their Coffee".
I found myself wishing that the words "Latin Taste" would have been in quotes.

"you" better be "careful"

2008-09-16T01:09:00.001+02:00

thanks to reader Joy who sent this one to me today. I usually try to avoid more than one post in a day, but this was too good and I was too impatient.

Joy adds these two things:
1. The sign is not for "me" or my "dog." Although I do have one.
2. My favorite part of the sign actually has nothing to do with the quotes but the clarification (which, it seems, is neccesary) that reads in tiny writing "yes. you."

I didn't see that second thing without Joy's help, and now I love it more. Killer.

two in one day? "crazy!"

2008-09-12T00:20:00.002+02:00

frequent contributor Jon sends me a photo of this sheriff fan which says on the back "serving our community." Nicely spotted in downtown athens.

So, not really serving? not really a community? not really ours? All good questions...

actually you can use quarters also

2008-09-12T00:19:00.001+02:00

thanks to Alisa who found this one at Gypsy Hill Park duck pond. She says "I actually have no idea what they're trying to communicate to me with that message. " Me neither, Alisa.

maybe what they really mean is you can use other coins "only" if you call them "nickles."

(I'm jealous of Alisa for her experience which included unneccesary quotation marks AND ducks, two things of which I am very fond.)

I also have a question

2008-09-10T22:31:00.002+02:00

I found this on crummy church signs

what's weird about this is there is a place where quotation marks WOULD be appropriate one line down. But it's not there. Maybe "Summit's Youth" are really asking, do you have good grammar? our church could use some direction...

"predictable"

2008-09-10T10:50:00.002+02:00

I was browsing the lowercase L blog (a problem much more common than I initially guessed) and the proprietor there, William, posted this letter from Mark "Hollywood" Hatten about his potential paternity of Anna Nicole's young daughter.

I am somehow not surprised that this silliness includes punctuation errors.

The letter is littered with semi-amusing errors, including the eggregious lower-case l among upper-case letters. But it also includes "sperm sample" in questionable quotation marks. (Highlighted in a different color even). See below:

A classic case of quotation marks for emphasis, I'm sure. I'm trying to think of something funny to say that's not innapropriate, and I've got nothing. A little help, readers?

"you're ok"

2008-09-10T10:48:00.001+02:00

Also a good item for crummy church signs, I like the way this sign can be read as really cynical.
(thanks to Jim who took this picture in LA today)

Drive-Thru Gas Station

2008-09-09T14:50:00.000+02:00

Found on the way home for Christmas this year:

Have we developed in-drive fueling now?

I have a "game" to play...

2008-09-09T14:42:00.001+02:00

reader John posted this one in a comment. I'm not sure if the quotations signify a title here, and if that is grammatically kosher. However, I think we can all agree that the name of the coming store should be emphasized by a larger size, not by punctuation. Maybe the ineffectiveness of this sign is the reason the place closed down.

Maybe the place actually is entirely round - no corners at all! hence the quotation marks.... OR maybe the "games" are actually work. Like, hey kids, try this fun "game" called data entry!

(thanks John)

Drug Free America

2008-09-08T11:19:00.002+02:00

Top 55 Tech Quotes

2008-09-08T11:19:00.001+02:00

1. Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.

2. COFFEE.EXE Missing - Insert Cup and Press Any Key

3. Buy a Pentium 586/90 so you can reboot faster.

4. 2 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.

5. Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.

6. Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.

7. My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.

8. C:WINDOWS C:WINDOWSGO C:PCCRAWL

9. C:DOS C:DOSRUN RUNDOSRUN

10. -{----- The information went data way --------[

11. Best file compression around: "DEL ." = 100% compression

12. The Definition of an Upgrade: Take old bugs out, put new ones in.

13. BREAKFAST.COM Halted...Cereal Port Not Responding

14. The name is Baud......, James Baud.

15. BUFFERS=20 FILES=15 2nd down, 4th quarter, 5 yards to go!

16. Access denied--nah nah na nah nah!

17. C: Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner.

18. Bad command. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaay..

19. Why doesn't DOS ever say "EXCELLENT command or filename!"

20. As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.

21. Southern DOS: Y'all reckon? (Yep/Nope)

22. Backups? We don' NEED no steenking backups.

23. E Pluribus Modem

24. ... File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)

25. Ethernet (n): something used to catch the Etherbunny

26. A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available.

27. An error? Impossible! My modem is error correcting.

28. CONGRESS.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot Washington D.C. (Y/n)?

29. Does fuzzy logic tickle?

30. A computer's attention span is as long as it's power cord.

31. 11th commandment - Covet not thy neighbor's Pentium.

32. 24 hours in a day...24 beers in a case...coincidence?

33. Disinformation is not as good as datinformation.

34. Windows: Just another pane in the glass.

35. SENILE.COM found . . . Out Of Memory . . .

36. Who's General Failure & why is he reading my disk?

37. Ultimate office automation: networked coffee.

38. RAM disk is not an installation procedure.

39. Shell to DOS...Come in DOS, do you copy? Shell to DOS...

40. All computers wait at the same speed.

41. DEFINITION: Computer - A device designed to speed and automate errors.

42. Go ahead, make my data!

43. Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.....

44. Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...

45. ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI!

46. E-mail returned to sender -- insufficient voltage.

47. Help! I'm modeming... and I can't hang up!!!

48. All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?

49. Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.

50. "640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

51. DOS Tip #17: Add DEVICE=FNGRCROS.SYS to CONFIG.SYS

52. Hidden DOS secret: add BUGS=OFF to your CONFIG.SYS

53. Press any key to continue or any other key to quit...

54. Press any key...... no, No, NO!! Not THAT one!

55. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to continue ...

Best Love Story in Three Pictures

2008-09-08T11:15:00.000+02:00

101 Greatest Quotes from George Carlin

2008-09-08T11:14:00.000+02:00

1. I don’t have pet peeves — I have major psychotic fucking hatreds!

2. Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

3. Swimming is not a sport. Swimming is a way to keep from drowning. That’s just common sense!

4. A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.

5. Have you ever noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?

6. I wanna live. I don’t wanna die. That’s the whole meaning of life: Not dying! I figured that shit out by myself in the third grade.

7. I used to be Irish Catholic. Now I’m an American — you know, you grow.

8. You can’t fight City Hall, but you can goddamn sure blow it up.

9. If the Cincinnati Reds were really the first major league baseball team, who did they play?

10. Honesty may be the best policy, but it’s important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

11. If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

12. No one knows what’s next, but everybody does it.

13. There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be baaaad. They must be OUTRAGEOUS to be separated from a group that large. “All of you words over here, you seven….baaaad words.” That’s what they told us, right? …You know the seven, don’t ya? That you can’t say on TV? Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.

14. The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.”

15. The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.

16. Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it.

17. Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man…living in the sky, who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer and burn and scream until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money.

18. Weather forecast for tonight: Dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.

19. If it requires a uniform, it’s a worthless endeavor.

20. If you live long enough, sooner or later everybody you know has cancer.

21. You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans.

22. Soft rock music isn’t rock, and it ain’t music. It’s just soft.

23. Reminds me of something my third-grade teacher said to us. She said, “You show me a tropical fruit and I’ll show you a cocksucker from Guatemala.”

24. As soon as someone is identified as an unsung hero, he no longer is.

25. If a movie is described as a romantic comedy, you can usually find me next door playing pinball.

26. The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions.

27. I knew a transsexual guy whose only ambition is to eat, drink, and be Mary.

28. I put a dollar in a change machine. Nothing changed.

29. If you’ve got a cat and a leg, you’ve got a happy cat. If you’ve got a cat and two legs, you’ve got a party.

30. You can prick your finger — just don’t finger your prick.

31. By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

32. Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster is a maniac?

33. Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do “practice”?

34. I don’t like to think of laws as rules you have to follow, but more as suggestions.

35. I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

36. When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat.

37. Eventually, alas, I realized the main purpose of buying cocaine is to run out of it.

38. I never fucked a ten, but one night, I fucked five twos.

39. I never joined the Boy Scouts. I don’t trust any organization that has a handbook.

40. I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a man nailed to two pieces of wood.

41. Have you noticed that most of the women who are against abortion are women you wouldn’t want to fuck in the first place? There’s such balance in nature.

42. So I say, “Live and let live.” That’s my motto. “Live and let live.” Anyone who can’t go along with that, take him outside and shoot the motherfucker. It’s a simple philosophy, but it’s always worked in our family.

43. Catholic — which I was until I reached the age of reason.

44. Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car.”

45. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them; I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

46. Beethoven was so hard of hearing, he thought he was a painter.

47. Don Ho can sign autographs 3.4 times faster than Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

48. God bless the homicidal maniacs. They make life worthwhile.

49. I’ve never seen a homeless guy with a bottle of Gatorade.

50. One great thing about getting old is that you can get out of all sorts of social obligations just by saying you’re too tired.

51. If Helen Keller had psychic ability, would you say she had a fourth sense?

52. What year did Jesus think it was?

53. George Washington’s brother, Lawrence, was the Uncle of Our Country.

54. Have you ever wondered why Republicans are so interested in encouraging people to volunteer in their communities? It’s because volunteers work for no pay. Republicans have been trying to get people to work for no pay for a long time.

55. In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.

56. Once you leave the womb, conservatives don’t care about you until you reach military age. Then you’re just what they’re looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.

57. “One thing leads to another”? Not always. Sometimes one thing leads to the same thing. Ask an addict.

58. No one who has had “Taps” played for them has ever been able to hear it.

59. Property is theft. Nobody “owns” anything. When you die, it all stays here.

60. The best thing about living at the water’s edge: You only have assholes on three sides of you, and if they come this way you can hear them splash.

61. The future will soon be a thing of the past.

62. The planet is fine. The people are fucked.

63. The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

64. Boxing is a more sophisticated form of hockey.

65. The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music.

66. I think everyone should treat one another in a Christian manner. I will not, however, be responsible for the consequences.

67. Bowling is not a sport because you have to rent the shoes.

68. “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?” This title offends all three major religions, and even vegetarians!

69. Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.

70. And now, in the interest of equal time, here is a message from the National Institute of Pancakes: It reads, and I quote, “Fuck waffles.”

71. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

72. Whoever coined the term “Buyer Beware” was probably bleeding from the asshole.

73. Cloud nine gets all the publicity, but cloud eight actually is cheaper, less crowded, and has a better view.

74. Have you ever noticed that the lawyer always smiles more than the client?

75. I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I’m listening to it.

76. Just think, right now as you read this, some guy somewhere is gettin’ ready to hang himself.

77. The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.

78. If all our national holidays were observed on Wednesdays, we could wind up with nine-day weekends.

79. “Meow” means “woof” in cat.

80. Most people with low self-esteem have earned it.

81. Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

82. “No comment” is a comment.

83. If a man smiles all the time, he’s probably selling something that doesn’t work.

84. You can’t argue with a good blowjob.

85. Most of the time people feel okay. Probably it’s because at the moment they’re not actually dying.

86. So far, this is the oldest I’ve been.

87. Instead of warning pregnant women not to drink, I think female alcoholics ought to be told not to fuck.

88. Do you think Sammy Davis ate Junior Mints?

89. When you think about it, attention-deficit order makes a lot of sense. In this country there isn’t a lot worth paying attention to.

90. The Golden Gate Bridge should have a long bungee cord for people who aren’t quite ready to commit suicide but want to get in a little practice.

91. I think I am, therefore, I am. I think.

92. If the cops didn’t see it, I didn’t do it!

93. Hooray for most things!

94. Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.

95. I don’t have a fear of heights. I do, however, have a fear of falling from heights.

96. What was the best thing before sliced bread?

97. May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.

98. Life is a zero sum game.

99. Somehow I enjoy watching people suffer.

100. I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

101. It isn’t fair: the caterpillar does all the work, and the butterfly gets all the glory

Mike Gravel on The Colbert Report

2008-09-08T11:13:00.000+02:00

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Top 10 Love Quotes

2008-09-08T11:12:00.000+02:00

10) Passionate love is a quenchless thirst.
Quote by Kahlil Gibran.

9) Love is like pi -- natural, irrational, and very important.
Quote by Lisa Hoffman.

8) Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear,
too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice,
but for those who love,
time is eternity.
- Quotes by Henry Van Dyke.

7)Love is a canvas furnished by Nature
and embroidered by imagination.
- Love Quotes by Voltaire.

6) Love is an energy - it can neither be created
nor destroyed. It just is and always will be,
giving meaning to life and direction to goodness...
Love will never die.
Quotes by Bryce Courtney.

5) Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength
while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Quotes by Lao-Tsu.

4) Tell me who admires and loves you,
And I will tell you who you are.

3) Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

2) You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.
- Hermann Hesse Famous Love Quotes

1) I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.
- Robert Fulghum

Chris Rock Quotes

2008-09-08T11:11:00.000+02:00

When LIFE asked comic Chris Rock if America is ready for an African American president, Rock tells LIFE:

"It's ready for a retarded president, why wouldn't it be ready for an African American president?"

Success Quotes - Motivational, Inspirational

2008-09-08T11:05:00.000+02:00

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes

Four More Years?

2008-09-08T11:04:00.002+02:00

Whats the Difference?

2008-09-08T11:02:00.005+02:00

Barack Obama - Lincoln

2008-09-08T11:02:00.002+02:00

Health Advice ;)

2008-09-08T11:00:00.001+02:00

my favorite sign

2008-09-08T10:54:00.002+02:00

this isn't quotation marks, but I just love this sign. It's in a classroom where I spend a fair amount of time. It's like they consulted the fire or something. Awesome

at the zoo

2008-09-08T10:53:00.001+02:00

while we were at the zoo in Columbia SC, my friend Sonya posed with this sign:

"All Natural"?

2008-09-08T10:52:00.003+02:00

Recently found on my friend Laura's blog:

So does this make it "all natural" peanut butter? Or all natural "peanut butter"?

"sale"

2008-09-08T10:51:00.003+02:00

Jim sent me this photo today. Awesome.

let's "go"!

2008-09-08T10:51:00.001+02:00

this example, submitted by vigilant reader vikkitikkitavi, is priceless. I really have nothing to add to the commentary by the blogger who initially posted it.

"Movers Who Care"

2008-09-08T10:49:00.004+02:00

I got behind a truck on the drive in this morning. This logo was proudly diplayed on the back. It could be worse - it could say ... Movers who "care."

ice age

2008-09-08T10:49:00.002+02:00

thanks to my friend Jon for this photo of a mudblaster manny from ice age two:

I think the quotation marks are actually appropriate here, but it's still funny. I mean, what are those balls REALLY made out of??? (yeah, yeah, plastic. but come on...)

unintentional social commentary?

2008-09-08T10:46:00.002+02:00

reader Megan submitted this fantastic billboard from rural NC.

Maybe we should always put quotes around freedom. Like the president. "they hate our 'freedom'"...

not quotes, still funny

2008-09-08T10:45:00.005+02:00

Jim found this on blogging.la.
I know it's not quotes but I think it's funny, and it's my blog.

found in the Seattle Times:

2008-09-08T10:45:00.002+02:00

maybe if people are going to be xenophobic they should learn to "write" their native language with punctuation that "makes sense."

A Couple from Vancouver

2008-09-08T10:43:00.002+02:00

Well I'm out here in Vancouver right now, and spotted a couple from my friends' theatre.

Not only is there a cuddle room, but apparently there's something called a "Glass Brick" room. This case may have actually worked with the quotes, though, as there were not actually any glass bricks in that room.

I guess that's enough said.

At a Minnesota "fuel" stop

2008-09-08T10:42:00.005+02:00

This begs the question: what are you putting in your truck (or Jetta)?

(My apologies for the finger in the picture - I was trying to shield the camera lens from the deluge attacking southern Minnesota at that point.)

How "special"

2008-09-08T10:42:00.002+02:00

Discovered at dinner at 84 East in Holland, MI

"doing our part making fun of people"

2008-09-08T10:41:00.005+02:00

reader vikkitikkitavi submits this photo and quips, "I forget, who said "Doing our part natural gas vehicle"? Was that Ben Franklin, or Oscar Wilde?"

"pool rules"

2008-09-08T10:41:00.002+02:00

apparently actual cutoffs or diapers that are REALLY exposed are a-ok. (seen at at least 2 Georgia apartment complex swimming pools)

extra punctuation "free of charge"

2008-09-08T10:40:00.002+02:00

Jon and Claude found this one on a Georgia highway. Someone is telling us to buy more for less. someone quoteable. Also, they are not open on any of the days after sunday and before monday. So if it's one of those days, and you want to "buy more for less"... tough luck.

I know a few good "charities"

2008-09-08T10:39:00.005+02:00

thanks to Matt's friend Neal for spotting two hillarious examples, the first in this photo:

I'm going to start the Bethany's vacation "charity" soon... good idea!

The second was described thus:

"Also, this morning we saw a homemade sign (alas I didn't get a
picture) for
The Rub "Doctor" - Massage Therapist
Kind of creepy."

yes.

Hope you don't need to use the facilities...

2008-09-08T10:39:00.003+02:00

On the door at my insurance agent's office:

"No trespassing"

followed by

"No public restrooms"

It almost made me want to go to a new insurance agent.

Homemade

2008-09-08T10:39:00.001+02:00

Spotted when I went out to lunch at Big Apple Bagels the other day:

Babs' "homemade" tuna salad

So canned in other words.

then again, how does one "equip" pants?

2008-09-08T10:37:00.007+02:00

I can't remember what outlet store we took this picture in:

I guess that means they aren't actually that comfortable?

more food you "might" want to eat

2008-09-08T10:37:00.005+02:00

thanks to frequent contributor Hailey who found this in a Great Wraps in San Antonio. I'm disappointed she didn't order it using air quotes.

reader maureen documents an additional case here. I suspect these quotation marks are meaningful, but it is still strange.

We "care" about upholding the bill of rights

2008-09-08T10:37:00.002+02:00

I like to believe the signmakers put those quotes in for sarcasm reasons (spotted by me and Jim atop smoky mountain national park).

the "plus" means their back room business

2008-09-08T10:36:00.002+02:00

wink wink, nudge nudge, saynomore....

what are they really made out of?

2008-09-08T10:35:00.008+02:00

the same restaurant that boasted this sign also had this one. We didn't go there.

mixed" message

2008-09-08T10:35:00.005+02:00

my friend Jon points out the quotation mark spawned ambiguity of this label, found in households across the nation:

what's really wet?

2008-09-08T10:35:00.002+02:00

The person who wrote this sign must have some skepticism about the quality of the construction, if we can only use the term "doors" with irony... nevermind the complete lack of grammatical word order...

speaking of grammatical pet peeves

2008-09-08T10:34:00.005+02:00

this one drives me crazy, and someone made an image to explain why. (Thanks internet!)

AND I just found this site: literally, a weblog which documents abuses of the word "literally" which are, pretty much, as funny as abuses of quotation marks.

what kind of "supplies" would those be?

2008-09-08T10:34:00.002+02:00

Jon is on the lookout even while travelling. He saw this one in the Dallas airport. I can only imagine the things they might need to "supply" the "cabin"...

too much fun in one sign

2008-09-08T10:33:00.001+02:00

We saw this one on our drive from Georgia to Michigan. I don't even know how to begin this snark. But it has a single quotation mark. That's definately inappropriate.

no, really, it NEVER ENDS!

2008-09-08T10:32:00.004+02:00

I don't know if it's not really endless, not really soup and salad, or not really dining...

(found by Jim in Brighton MI)

How about unnecessary apostrophes?

2008-09-08T10:32:00.002+02:00

Which Cub is the official one?

2008-09-08T10:31:00.004+02:00

Someone recently shared with me an auto-email received from a professor who was out-of-town. It included the following sentence:

As I do not have a "laptop" computer, it is very unlikely that I will be reading e-messages during this period.

indeed.

On a baseball roster

2008-09-08T10:31:00.003+02:00

On the Dominican Republic's World Baseball Classic provisional roster:

Wily "Mo" Pena

Don't forget his triplets, Wily "Larry" Pena and Wily "Curly" Pena.

Or perhaps his twin Wily "Less" Pena?

Jewel-Osco Ad

2008-09-08T10:31:00.001+02:00

Copy from a recent newspaper ad:

A Jewel-Osco "EXCLUSIVE" - Enjoy extra savings everytime you shop!

Typos everywhere!

A "Linguist" Talks About Quotation Marks

2008-09-08T10:30:00.000+02:00

There's a post about quotation marks on languagelog.org this morning. Arnold Zwicky rants about a journalist using quotation marks for emphasis.

The article beings:
Gratifying though it is to see myself quoted in print, I'm peeved to see myself represented as using quotation marks for emphasis. Like, 'for emphasis', meaning for emphasis. But that's what happens in Leslie Savan's Slam Dunks and No-Brainers, chapter 2 ("Pop Talk is History"), in the section (pp. 33-4) titled "Who needs Esperanto when you've you got Coca-Cola?" I'm not entirely sure how this happened. More interestingly, this case illustrates an issue in the mention (rather than use) of linguistic material, including quotation: faithfulness vs. well-formedness (shades of OT!).

keep reading

Karaoke

2008-09-08T10:29:00.005+02:00

aKaraoke screen I saw recently proudly announced a song was in the key of "E".
although, come to think of it, this may have been an appropriate use of quotation marks.

"Houston," we have a "problem"

2008-09-08T10:29:00.004+02:00

Found in a freshman English paper about a boy going to space: The "Houston" radioed me and told me to get strapped in because they were going to be "blasting off" in a few minutes.

Donuts

2008-09-08T10:29:00.002+02:00

no quotes here - but fun nontheless. Apparently the difference between "heated" and "warmed" is significant:

superior site

2008-09-08T10:28:00.002+02:00

Kent pointed me to the Gallery of ''Misused'' Quotation Marks which has the same purpose as this site, but more traffic and more examples. In spite of the competition, I shall continue to add to this site when the opportunity arises.

In the Family Fare in Holland MI

2008-09-08T10:28:00.001+02:00

In our deli - lunchmeats with "NO" MSG!

from Istanbul Turkey

2008-09-08T10:27:00.003+02:00

Thanks to Danielle Sundberg who sent me this fantastic photo all the way from Istanbul Turkey. It really brings unneccesary quotation marks to a whole 'nother level. She says she found it "on a bench of sorts".
I don't even know what it means! awesome.

From Burger King

2008-09-08T10:27:00.001+02:00

I went to Burger King one time, and all over their menu they had:

"New" Spicy Chicken
"New" Chicken Tenders
"New" Double Cheesburger

That's not exactly what was on the menu, but you get the point. What that says to me is "By 'new', we mean it's been sitting in the freezer for about 2 years and the health department says we need to get it out of there."

Midterms

2008-09-08T10:26:00.000+02:00

I am in the process of grading ~50 midterm examinations from my Public Speaking class. I have encountered several instances of misplaced quotation marks (as well as other writing errors and general incoherencies) and avoided the impulse to mark off points for such things. But I did appreciate the student who said the speaker in the sample speech might change the "wording" if she were speaking to Congress.

spotted in Indiana

2008-09-08T10:25:00.002+02:00

in a rest area on our trip today, I noted a sign:

rest room "open"

Found on a truck in Holland, MI

2008-09-08T10:23:00.000+02:00

A pest control truck in Holland had the name of the company and, under it, in quotes, "we make mouse calls".

to smoke or not to smoke

2008-09-08T10:22:00.000+02:00

seen at a McDonald's in Everett, Washington last week:

This is a "Non-Smoking" Restaurant

link exchange

2008-09-06T20:50:00.006+02:00

Hi, wanna place your link here.

Just place a link to my blog in your blog or site,notify me, and i'll place your link here.

you can notify me on any one of those emails..

karim_italian_hitman@yahoo.com

, karim_italian_hitman@hotmail.com

, karimelnabawy_1114@yahoo.com

or you can make a comment.....

----------------

links

italian football fans

egypt news

google adsense money

ptc buxy sites

earn money from internet

make your photos for free

self improvement articles

games paradise

www.filgoal.com

www.goal.com

www.yallakora.com

portfolio

2008-09-05T14:10:00.002+02:00

here where you can find all my works in (web designing) and some of my graphic and architecture works...........

first of all.....my blogs and websites.......

1-http://www.italianfootballfans.blogspot.com/

this site is especialist in italian football......coz am a big fan of italian football..i decided to start making a site about italy.....and calcio ,coz i belive it's the best in the world.....although am egyption but i consider italy as my second home....and this blog is special to me as it was the first one of my network....... hope u like it........

2-http://quotes-book.blogspot.com/

quotes book.....wow......i love quotes.....quotes are inspiration to the soul and body.....i can't live without quotes......some of them are funny and others and romantic...and others are about wars ..........i really hope u love quotes like me.......

3-http://google-fund.blogspot.com/

do u know much about google adsense? if u don't know then it's ur place to be......this site can give u tips and tutorials about getting started with google adsense.....if u know google and working with it....then it's ur place too,here i posted some prescious tips and points about google adsense and how u can be a millionir with it.....don't waste your time.......it's a chance.....hold it tightly........

4-http://www.fund-free.blogspot.com/

an arabic form site.....explains how u can make money online with affiliate programes and google adsense and ptc companies.......well it's true u can get money online if u want to do so....but it's little hard to do in the begginning but after that,u gonna be richy......

5-http://ptc-buxy.blogspot.com/

this site is about ptc companies...i managed to collect only truely sites and companies here......it's profity to make and hard to do so....but results are awesome.....belive it or not.....u GONNA BE RICH.........

6-http://news-egypt.blogspot.com/

news egypt........it's abvious it's about egypt......but also in arabic form.....only this is in arabic and fund-free site......it's all about what is happeing in the streets and how we can overcome our problems.......there is alot of problems in egypt......every thing is getting expensive.....and there is no money.......and there is alot of laws that had to be considered for revising.....but we are talking to our selves....no body hear and see.......that's why i made this one......

7-http://free-image-maker.blogspot.com/

my last one is about------PHOTOSHOP------have u ever dreamed about having your photos been better with some effects and filters....???....well every thing is here for FREE......all u have to do is to give me the link of your photo..and i will make u a superstar......easy and u won't lose anything to do so.....just try it for free.....by the way.....i think u are asking your self now...why i'm doing this for free.....i'll tell u>>>coz i need to train in photoshop as it's my career to be a professional in photoshop and u r gonna help me make ur photos and get bennifit too.......

that's my websites.....but if u wanna know more about my graphic and architecture portfolio >>>>>>>>>>>
that's my account on facebook
facebook: http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?v=feed&id=586282373
coroflot: http://www.coroflot.com/individual/all_portfolio_files.asp

for contact....
karim_italian_hitman@yahoo.com
karimelnabawy_1114@yahoo.com
karim_italian_hitman@hotmail.com

about me

2008-09-05T13:38:00.003+02:00

i'm karim el-nabawy....my birthday is 25/7/1988........... am studing architecture at the faculty of fine arts...........i love computers,internet,graphics and blogging :)i love graphics very much and i really adore adobe photoshop and 3dsmax.i decided to make my own network of blogs and websites......and this is one of them....i really hope your enjoy it and i would really apprciate your comments and preview about my blogs......the design and topics...........feel free to have your opinion...........

.yours, ..........

.karim elnabawy.............

contact

2008-09-05T13:33:00.005+02:00

mobile: 2-012-6041726 / home: 203-5455494

-------------------------------------------

Emails:

karimelnabawy_1114@yahoo.com

karim_italian_hitman@yahoo

.comkarim_italian_hitman@hotmail.com

karimhitman@gmail.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

my accounts and profiles:

facebook: karim_italian_hitman@yahoo.com

myspace:karimelnabawy_1114@yahoo.com

myyearbook:karim_italian_hitman@hotmail.com

flixya:karimhitman@gmail.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

my bank accounts:

alert pay/paypal/moneybookers/egold:

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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

writing / writers quotes

2008-08-15T23:26:00.002+03:00

Albert Camus:

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

Aldous Huxley:

The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.

Aldous Huxley:

A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

Alice Walker:

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Alice Walker:

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Blaise Pascal:

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

David Ben Gurion:

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

Denise Levertov:

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.

E. B. White:

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education -- sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

Elizabeth Drew:

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald:

There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people if he's any good.

Flannery O'Conner:

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Flannery O'Connor:

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Frances Hodgson Burnett:

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.

Gloria Steinem:

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Gracián:

Good things, when short, are twice as good.

Harvey Cox:

All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by ... religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need.
The Seduction of the Spirit, 1973

Isaac Asimov:

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

Jack Lynch:

Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.

Jessamyn West:

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

Kathryn Hughes:

Women do not always have to write about women, or gay men about gay men. Indeed, something good and new might happen if they did not.

Lavina Goodell:

Critics are by no means the end of the law. Do not think all is over with you because you articles are rejected. It may be that the editor has his drawer full, or that he does not know enough to appreciate you, or you have not gained a reputation, or he is not in a mood to be pleased. A critic's judgment is like that of any intelligent person. If he has experience, he is capable of judging whether a book will sell. That is all. junior editor, Harper's Bazaar, 1866

Lillian Hellman:

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Logan Pearsall Smith:

Yes there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

Lord Byron:

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

Manuel Puig:

What's better, a poetic intuition or an intellectual work? I think they complement each other.

Manuel Puig:

I allow my intuition to lead my path.

Mark Twain:

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

Mark Twain:

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.

Mark Twain:

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

Oscar Wilde:

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

Pearl S. Buck:

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

Pearl S. Buck:

In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The reality is more excellent than the report.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

Rita Mae Brown:

Writers will happen in the best of families.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

Sophocles:

A short saying often contains much wisdom.

Stephen King:

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

T. S. Eliot:

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

Thomas Jefferson:

Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well.
to his daughter Martha

Tom Clancy:

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

V. S. Naipaul:

I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.

V. S. Naipaul:

I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

Virginia Woolf:

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.

Virginia Woolf:

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Willa Cather:

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

William Wordsworth:

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart...

Winston Churchill:

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

worth quotes

2008-08-15T23:26:00.001+03:00

Albert Einstein:

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.

Audrey Hepburn:

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

Blaise Pascal:

We are all something, but none of us are everything.

Felix Adler:

The conception of worth, that each person is an end per se, is not a mere abstraction. Our interest in it is not merely academic. Every outcry against the oppression of some people by other people, or against what is morally hideous is the affirmation of the principle that a human being as such is not to be violated. A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered.
An Ethical Philosophy of Life

Felix Adler:

The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear.
An Ethical Philosophy of Life

Goethe:

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Izaak Walton:

The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.

John Dewey:

The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.

Kathleen Norris:

Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.

Margaret Laurence:

Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all your fellow humans everywhere in the world.

Marian Wright Edelman:

No one, Eleanor Roosevelt said, can make you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law, to the strength of the spirit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own.
The Conservative

Robert Louis Stevenson:

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.

Rudyard Kipling:

I always try to believe the best of everybody -- it saves so much trouble.

Sogyal Rinpoche:

...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.

Virginia Satir:

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.

Virginia Woolf:

Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself.

William Ellery Channing:

I have expressed my strong interest in the mass of the people; and this is founded, not on their usefulness to the community, so much as on what they are in themselves.... Indeed every man (sic), in every condition, is great. It is only our own diseased sight which makes him little. A man is great as a man, be he where or what he may. The grandeur of his nature turns to insignificance all outward distinctions.

William Ellery Channing:

I do not look on a human being as a machine, made to be kept in action by a foreign force, to accomplish an unvarying succession of motions, to do a fixed amount of work, and then to fall to pieces at death, but as a being of free spiritual powers; and I place little value on any culture but that which aims to bring out these, and to give them perpetual impulse and expansion.

William Lyon Phelps:

This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.

worship quotes

2008-08-15T23:25:00.002+03:00

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

Let us revere, let us worship, but erect and open-eyed, the highest, not the lowest; the future, not the past!

Dorothy Thompson:

The instinct to worship is hardly less strong than the instinct to eat.

Isocrates:

The noblest worship is to make yourself as good and as just as you can.

Mohandas Gandhi:

The Roots of Violence:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.

Richard Francis Burton:

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

Sarah Ban Breathnach:

An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer.

Thomas Jefferson:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.
letter to Connecticut Baptists

worry quotes

2008-08-15T23:25:00.001+03:00

M. Scott Peck:

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

Rumi:

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded.
Someone sober will worry about events going badly.
Let the lover be.

Stanley C. Allyn:

There is no use worrying about things over which you have no control, and if you have control, you can do something about them instead of worrying.

Swedish proverb:

Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.

Unknown:

Symptoms of Inner Peace

work quotes

2008-08-15T23:24:00.004+03:00

Anna Garlin Spencer:

No book has yet been written in praise of a woman who let her husband and children starve or suffer while she invented even the most useful things, or wrote books, or expressed herself in art, or evolved philosophic systems.
Woman's Share in Social Culture, 1912

Barbara Ehrenreich:

Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an "ethic."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society -- more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.

Colleen C. Barrett:

Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.

Colleen C. Barrett:

When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.

Danilo Dolci:

It's important to know that words don't move mountains. Work, exacting work moves mountains.

Edward Kennedy:

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.

Emily Dickinson:

What is—"Paradise"—
Who live there—
Are they "Farmers"—
Do they "hoe"—
Do they know that this is "Amherst"—
And that I—am coming—too—

This entry continued ...
Francoise de Motteville:

The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure.

Frank Lloyd Wright:

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

Gloria Steinem:

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

Helen Keller:

I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Henri Frederic Amiel:

Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.

Henry David Thoreau:

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

The heights by great men reached and kept / Were not attained by sudden flight, / But they, while their companions slept, / Were toiling upward in the night.

John W. Gardner:

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

Jonas Salk:

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.

Lane Kirkland:

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.

Lena Horne:

Always be smarter than the people who hire you.

Lou Erickson:

Gardening requires lots of water -- most of it in the form of perspiration.

Lya Sorano:

When we talk about equal pay for equal work, women in the workplace are beginning to catch up. If we keep going at this current rate, we will achieve full equality in about 475 years. I don't know about you, but I can't wait that long.

Marian Wright Edelman:

Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.

Mark Twain:

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, "Blessed is the man who has found his work"? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work--not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.

Mohandas Gandhi:

The Roots of Violence:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles.

Orson Scott Card:

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

Pearl S. Buck:

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

Pearl S. Buck:
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
Phyllis McGinley:

The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

Rita Mae Brown:

I believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten bargain.

Rita Mae Brown:

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

Rudyard Kipling:

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing: -- "Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade.

Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn:

The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
[from "Through the Needle's Eye," 1916]

Stephen Jay Gould:

I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

Thomas Alva Edison:

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Thomas Alva Edison:

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Thomas Alva Edison:

Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas Jefferson:

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

Vaclav Havel:

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Victor Hugo:

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

Vince Lombardi:

Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price.

Vince Lombardi:

Leaders aren't born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.

Winston Churchill:

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

wonder quotes

2008-08-15T23:24:00.003+03:00

Albert Einstein:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

Amy Bloom:

Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.

Anais Nin:

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.

Anais Nin:

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

Bill Cosby:

For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked.

Buddha:

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

Emily Dickinson:

Before the ice is in the pools,
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow,
Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!

Maureen Hawkins:

Before you were conceived I wanted you
Before you were born I loved you
Before you were here an hour I would die for you
This is the miracle of life.

Monica Baldwin:

The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there.

Rachel Carson:

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.

Rachel Carson:

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.

Rachel Carson:

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

Ralph Sockman:

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.

Thich Nhat Hanh:

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

Thomas Carlyle:

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

Willa Cather:

The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always. (Death Comes for the Archbishop, 1927)

women quotes

2008-08-15T23:24:00.001+03:00

Abigail Adams:

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

Adrienne Rich:

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Adrienne Rich:

Life on the planet is born of woman.

Amy Johnson:

Had I been a man, I might have explored the Poles or climbed Mount Everest, but as it was, my spirit found outlet in the air.
aviator

Anna Garlin Spencer:

The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement in a manner that would be amusingly absurd were it not so monstrously unjust and socially harmful.
Woman's Share in Social Culture, 1912

Anna Garlin Spencer:

The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed. Perhaps it should be added that either the man or the woman thus deeply bound in lifelong friendship who seeks marriage must find a still rarer man or woman to wed, to make such a three cornered comradeship a permanent success.

Anna Garlin Spencer:

A successful woman preacher was once asked "what special obstacles have you met as a woman in the ministry?" "Not one," she answered, "except the lack of a minister's wife."

Anna Garlin Spencer:

No book has yet been written in praise of a woman who let her husband and children starve or suffer while she invented even the most useful things, or wrote books, or expressed herself in art, or evolved philosophic systems.
Woman's Share in Social Culture, 1912

Anna Quindlen:

Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

"A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband."
(on the term "housewife")

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

The original necessity for the ceaseless presence of the woman to maintain the altar fire -- and it was an altar fire in very truth at one period -- has passed with the means of prompt ignition; the matchbox has freed the housewife from that incessant service, but the feeling that women should stay at home is with us yet.

Charlotte Whitton:

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.

Coco Chanel:

A woman has the age she deserves.

Dorothy Thompson:

A little more matriarchy is what the world needs, and I know it. Period. Paragraph.

Eleanor Roosevelt:

Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

Elizabeth Dole:

Women share with men the need for personal success, even the taste of power, and no longer are we willing to satisfy those needs through the achievements of surrogates, whether husbands, children, or merely role models.

Emma Goldman:

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.

Erma Bombeck:

We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.

Faith Whittlesey:
Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.
Faith Whittlesey:

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.

George Carlin:

Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.

George Santayana:

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different.
Persons and Places: The Middle Span, 1945

George Santayana:

The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend.
The Life of Reason, 1905-1906

Gloria Steinem:

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

Harriet Beecher Stowe:

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis:

I am a woman above everything else.

Jane Austen:

History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all - it is very tiresome. (spoken by Catherine Morland in 'Northanger Abbey')

Katharine Hepburn:

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

Kathryn Hughes:

Women do not always have to write about women, or gay men about gay men. Indeed, something good and new might happen if they did not.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich:

Well behaved women rarely make history.

Louisa May Alcott:
When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do; then they act upon it, and if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it; if it fails, they generously give her the whole.
in Little Women

Louise Otto:

The history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that ... women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves.

Margaret Atwood:

Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it's the latter, so I sign up.

Margaret Mead:

Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.

Margaret Sanger:

A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.

Margaret Thatcher:

If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.

Mary Wollstonecraft:

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

Maureen Reagan:

I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

There is no occasion for women to consider themselves subordinate or inferior to men.

Pat Schroeder:

When people ask me why I am running as a woman, I always answer, "What choice do I have?"

Pearl S. Buck:

The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and its women.

Robert A. Heinlein:

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

Robert Frost:

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

Sarah Grimke:

It would be as wise to set up an accomplished lawyer to saw wood as a business as to condemn an educated and sensible woman to spend all her time boiling potatoes and patching old garments. Yet this is the lot of many a one who incessantly stitches and boils and bakes, compelled to thrust back out of sight the aspirations which fill her soul.

Sigmund Freud:

Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not been able to answer... the great question that has never been answered: what does a woman want?

Simone de Beauvoir:

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Susan B. Anthony:

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

Tennesse Claflin:

The history of woman is the history of the continued and universal oppression of one sex by the other. The emancipation of woman is her restoration to equal rights and privileges with man.

Unknown:

Some leaders are born women.

Virginia Woolf:

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Virginia Woolf:

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Virginia Woolf:

Why are women ... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

Vita Sackville-West:

I worshipped dead men for their strength,
Forgetting I was strong.

Walt Whitman:

In the faces of men and women I see God.

wisdom quotes

2008-08-15T23:23:00.001+03:00

Alex Noble:

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.

Andre Gide:

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

Baltasar Gracian:

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.

Cicero:

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.

Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman:

It is no longer enough to be smart -- all the technological tools in the world add meaning and value only if they enhance our core values, the deepest part of our heart. Acquiring knowledge is no guarantee of practical, useful application. Wisdom implies a mature integration of appropriate knowledge, a seasoned ability to filter the inessential from the essential.

Edith Wharton:

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.

Elbert Hubbard:

To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

The truest greatness lies in being kind, the truest wisdom in a happy mind.

Georg C. Lichtenberg:

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

George Bernard Shaw:

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

George Bernard Shaw:

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

George Burns:

Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.

George Santayana:

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

Groucho Marx:

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

Helen Keller:

I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

Henry David Thoreau:

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.

Henry David Thoreau:

It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Immanuel Kant:

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant:

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Isaac D'Israeli:

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations.

J. Michael Straczynski:

The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language.

John Naisbitt:

Strategic planning is worthless -- unless there is first a strategic vision.

Jonathan Kozol:

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. On Being a Teacher

Kalidasa:

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Lin Yutang:

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Marcel Proust:

The stellar universe is not so difficult of comprehension as the real actions of other people.

Mark Twain:

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

Mark Twain - attributed in error:

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Marlene Dietrich:

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognizably wiser than oneself.

Martin Fischer:

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

Mary Catherine Bateson:

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

Norman Cousins:

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

Norman Cousins:

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

Oprah Winfrey:

Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself.

Pierre Abelard:

The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.

Proverbs 17:28:

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

Rachel Carson:

If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.

Robert Green Ingersoll:

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

Robert Heinlein:

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.

Robert Louis Stevenson:

Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.

Sam Levenson:

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.

Sam Levenson:

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it.

Samuel Johnson:

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

Samuel Smiles :

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Sophocles:

A short saying often contains much wisdom.

Sophocles:

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Stephen Covey:

Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.

Stephen Sigmund:

Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations will never become a strong productive plant.

Stephen Vincent Benét:

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.

Sydney J. Harris:

An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

Theodore Roosevelt:

Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.

Theodore Rubin:

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.

Thomas Jefferson:

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Tryon Edwards:

He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.

Umberto Eco:

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

Vernon Cooper:

These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

Wallace Stegner:

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

William Golding:

Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.

William Menninger:

Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity.

William Saroyan:

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

winning quotes

2008-08-15T23:22:00.003+03:00

Dianne Feinstein:

Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.

Harriet Woods:

You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

If I am not worth the wooing, I am surely not worth the winning.

John Kenneth Galbraith:

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Jonathan Kozol:

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. On Being a Teacher

Marian Wright Edelman:

You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.

Marie Ebner von Eschenbach:

Conquer, but don't triumph.

Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

wealth quotes

2008-08-15T23:22:00.001+03:00

Aeschylus:

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.

Anne Bradstreet:

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

Benjamin Jowett:

We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.

Henry David Thoreau:

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?

Henry David Thoreau:

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.

Kin Hubbard:

It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty an' wealth have both failed.

Lane Kirkland:

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.

Maimonides:

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow man, either by a considerable gift or a sum of money or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. This is the highest step and summit of charity's golden ladder.

Mark Twain:

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

Michael Harrington:

That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen.

Mohammed:

Our true wealth is the good we do in this world. None of us has faith unless we desire for our neighbors what we desire for ourselves.

Mother Teresa:

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

Norman Thomas:

After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement.

Samuel Adams:

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Sarah Bernhardt:

Life begets life. Energy becomes energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

Thornton Wilder:

Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.
from "The Matchmaker"

Wendell Phillips:

Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.

Winston Churchill:

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

washington quotes

2008-08-15T23:21:00.004+03:00

John F. Kennedy:

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

From Washington, proverbially "the city of distances," through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations.

war quotes

2008-08-15T23:21:00.003+03:00

Albert Camus:

[I]n such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.

Aldous Huxley:

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

Alfred Tennyson:

Till the war-drum throbb`d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl`d; In the parliament of man; the Federation of the world.

Annie Dillard:

"One of the main reasons that it is so easy to march men off to war," says Ernest Becker, is that "each of them feels sorry for the man next to him who will die."

Aristotle:

We make war that we may live in peace.

Barbara Kingsolver:

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

Barbara Kingsolver:

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

Benjamin Franklin:

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

Blaise Pascal:

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Colman McCarthy:

Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals.

Croesus:

In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.

David Friedman:

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

Dorothy Thompson:

They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war -- as though the absence of war was the same as peace.

Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. [1953]

Dwight Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
April 16, 1953

Ecclesiastes:

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Eleanor Roosevelt:

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

General Douglas MacArthur:

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

George Bernard Shaw:

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

George W. Bush:

No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace.

George W. Bush:

I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war.

George Washington:

There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.

George Washington:

I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward.

Georges Clemenceau:

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

Gertrude Stein:

A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war.
1943

Harry Emerson Fosdick:

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it. I hate war, and never again will I sanction or support another.

Hermann Goering:

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. quote verified at snopes.com

Howard Nemerov:

Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.

Howard Thurman:

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

Isaac Asimov:

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Isaac Asimov:

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

James Russell Lowell:

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.

Jeanette Rankin:

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

John Adams:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

John F. Kennedy:

The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

John F. Kennedy:

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.

John F. Kennedy:

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer be of concern to great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by winds and waters and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.

John Stuart Mill:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Martha Gelhorn:

War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it
causes is beyond telling or meaning; but war was our condition
and our history, the place we had to live in.

Omar N. Bradley:

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.

Patrick Henry:

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! March 23, 1775

R. Buckminster Fuller:

Either war is obsolete or men are.

Ralph Bunche:

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Robert E. Lee:

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

Ronald Reagan:

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

Simone Weil:

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.

Spinoza:

Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.

Theodore Roosevelt:

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. (1918)

Thomas Jefferson:

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Thomas Paine:

If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

Will Rogers:

You can't say civilization don't advance -- for in every war, they kill you in a new way.

vision quotes

2008-08-15T23:21:00.001+03:00

Peter F. Drucker:

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Albert Einstein:

The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavour -- property, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

Arthur Schopenhauer:

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Audre Lorde:

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Carl Jung:

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

Donald Williams:

For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.

Eugene V. Debs:

Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.

Helen Keller:

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

High Eagle:

In life, many thoughts are born in the course of a moment, an hour, a day. Some are dreams, some visions. Often, we are unable to distinguish between them. To some, they are the same; however, not all dreams are visions. Much energy is lost in fanciful dreams that never bear fruit. But visions are messages from the Great Spirit, each for a different purpose in life. Consequently, one person's vision may not be that of another. To have a vision, one must be prepared to receive it, and when it comes, to accept it. Thus when these inner urges become reality, only then can visions be fulfilled. The spiritual side of life knows everyone's heart and who to trust. How could a vision ever be given to someone to harbor if that person could not be trusted to carry it out. The message is simple: commitment precedes vision.

High Eagle:

The mere possession of a vision is not the same as living it, nor can we encourage others with it if we do not, ourselves, understand and follow its truths. The pattern of the Great Spirit is over us all, but if we follow our own spirits from within, our pattern becomes clearer. For centuries, others have sought their visions. They prepare themselves, so that if the Creator desires them to know their life's purpose, then a vision would be revealed. To be blessed with visions is not enough...we must live them!

John Naisbitt:

Strategic planning is worthless -- unless there is first a strategic vision.

Jonathan Swift:

Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.

Kalidasa:

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Steven Foster:

You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old?' The answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the 'same old thing.' What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered. You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you left behind. The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same river. [The Book of the Vision Quest]

Theodore Hesburgh:

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.

virtue quotes

2008-08-15T23:20:00.002+03:00

Alexander Pope:

In lazy Apathy let Stoics boast,
Their Virtue fix'd, 'tis fixed as in a frost.

Aristotle:

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

Aristotle:

The excess of virtue is a vice.

Aristotle:

In justice is all virtues found in sum.

Cato the Elder:

I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

There was a time when Patience ceased to be a virtue. It was long ago.

Cicero:

It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity.

Cicero:

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Clare Booth Luce:

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.

Confucius:

Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.

E.Y. Harburn:

Virtue is its own revenge.

Erik H. Erikson:

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.

Francis Bacon:

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Friedrich Nietzsche:

Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself.

George Bernard Shaw:

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

George Bernard Shaw:

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

George Orwell:

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

Horace Mann:

Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.

John Locke:

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

Lyndon B. Johnson:

We preach the virtues of democracy abroad. We must practice its duties here at home. Voting is the first duty of democracy.

Maya Angelou :

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Mohandas Gandhi:

The Roots of Violence:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles.

Oscar Wilde:

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Rene Dubos:

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.
Celebrations of Life, 1981

Robert S. Lynd:

Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us.

Sam Adams:

It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue.

Spinoza:

Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.

Sydney J. Harris:

Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest," but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.

Theodore M. Hesburgh:

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.

Thomas Jefferson:

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson:

All ... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.

Voltaire:

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

violence quotes

2008-08-15T23:20:00.001+03:00

A. J. Muste:

The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.

Andre Trocme:

All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence...the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rather they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history.

Bishop Desmond Tutu:

We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose.

Colman McCarthy:

Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals.

Isaac Asimov:

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Jean Goss:

All ideologies end up killing people. If you separate love from nonviolence you turn nonviolence into an ideology, a gimmick. Structures that are not inhabited by justice and love have no liberating or reconciling force, and are never sources of life.

Joan Baez:

I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.

John Ruskin:

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

John Ruskin:

All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.

Mohandas Gandhi:

An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.

Mohandas Gandhi:

The Roots of Violence:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles.

Unitarian Universalism Quotes

2008-08-15T23:19:00.002+03:00

Adlai Stevenson:

I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian [Universalist], but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination.

L. B. Fisher:

Universalists are often asked where they stand. The only true answer to give to this question is that we do not stand at all, we move.

William Schulz:

Unitarian Universalism affirms:

That Creation is too grand, complex, and mysterious to be captured in a narrow creed. That is why we cherish individual freedom of belief. At the same time our convictions lead us to other affirmations . . .

truth quotes

2008-08-15T23:19:00.001+03:00

Abraham Lincoln:

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

Abraham Lincoln:

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away."

Abraham Lincoln:

Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.

Abraham Lincoln (attributed):

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

Adrienne Rich:

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Adrienne Rich:

False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news.

Albert Einstein:

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

Albert Einstein:

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Albert Einstein:

The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavour -- property, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

Alfred North Whitehead:

There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

Anais Nin:

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

Anais Nin:

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.

Andre Gide:

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

Arthur Conan Doyle:

Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Benjamin Disraeli:

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

Bertrand Russell:

What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Blaise Pascal:

You always admire what you really don't understand.

Blaise Pascal:

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

Blaise Pascal:

There are truths on this side of the Pyranees, which are falsehoods on the other.

Blaise Pascal:

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.

Brad Holland:

Postmodernists believe that truth is myth, and myth, truth. This equation has its roots in pop psychology. The same people also believe that emotions are a form of reality. There used to be another name for this state of mind. It used to be called psychosis.

Buddha:

Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true. [paraphrased]

Christopher Morley:

There is no squabbling so violent as that between people who accepted an idea yesterday and those who will accept the same idea tomorrow.

Clarence Darrow:

Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails.

Corliss Lamont:

The intuition of free will gives us the truth.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

David Hume:

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

Demosthenes:

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Dorothy Thompson:

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light.

Dorothy Thompson:

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings.

E. L. Doctorow:

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.

Edward R. Murrow:

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton:

Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.

Elizabeth Kenny:

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

Emily Dickinson:

Truth is such a rare thing, it is delighted to tell it.

Felix Adler:

The truth which has made us free will in the end make us glad also.

Friedrich Nietzsche:

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

Galileo:

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

George Bernard Shaw:

New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths.

George Eliot:

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

George Eliot:

[I]t is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

George Orwell:

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

George Orwell:

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

Gloria Steinem:

The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.

Harry Emerson Fosdick:

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth. The Living of These Days, 1956

Henri Frederic Amiel:

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

Henry David Thoreau:

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

Henry David Thoreau:

Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.

Henry Ward Beecher:

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.

Heraklietos of Ephesos:

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.
Knowledge is not intelligence.
In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected.
Change alone is unchanging.
The same road goes both up and down.
The beginning of a circle is also its end.
Not I, but the world says it: all is one.
And yet everything comes in season.

Isaac Asimov:

[W]hen people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

Isaac Asimov:

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

Jean-Paul Sartre:

Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.

Joan of Arc:

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

John F. Kennedy:

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic

John Locke:

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth.

John Trapp:

Unity without verity is no better than conspiracy.

Josh Billings:

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

Leonardo da Vinci:

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

Marcus Aurelius:

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Margaret Mead:

I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

Mark Twain:

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.

Mark Twain:

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.
1908, notebook

Mark Twain:

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

Mark Twain:

A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.

Mark Twain:

If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.

Mark Twain:

The old saw says, "Let a sleeping dog lie." Right. Still, when there is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it.

Mark Twain:

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
Autobiography, 1959

Mark Twain:

Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said.

Mark Twain:

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.

Mark Twain:

When in doubt, tell the truth.

Martin Luther King, jr.:

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Max Planck:

It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.

Maya Angelou :

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Michael Friedlander:

There are many more wrong answers than right ones, and they are easier to find.

Molly Ivins:

I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.

Noam Chomsky:

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.:

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.

Pearl S. Buck:

The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.

Peter F. Drucker:

There are no creeds in mathematics.

Pierre Abelard:

The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.

Rabindranath Tagore:

Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend.

Rabindranath Tagore:

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.
Stray Birds

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Truth is our element.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.
The Conservative

Richard Avedon:

There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

Sam Rayburn:

Son, always tell the truth. Then you'll never have to remember what you said the last time.

Soren Kierkegaard:

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion—and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority.

Stephen King:

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Thomas Jefferson:

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

Thomas Jefferson:

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

Umberto Eco:

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

Virginia Woolf:

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Virginia Woolfe:

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

Voltaire:

As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.

Wilfred Owen:

All the poet can do today is warn.
That is why true Poets must be truthful.

Will Rogers:

I guess truth can hurt you worse in an election than about anything that can happen to you.

Will Rogers:

I have always noticed that people will never laugh at anything that is not based on truth.

William James:

Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
Pragmatism (1907)

William James:

[T]he true is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the right is only the expedient in the way of our thinking.

William James:

Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.

William James:

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

William Sloane Coffin:

The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.

trust quotes

2008-08-15T23:18:00.005+03:00

Agatha Christie:

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

Alfred Adler:

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.

Arthur Eddington:

Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

Benjamin Spock:

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

Booker T. Washington:

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

Cardinal De Retz:

A man who doesn't trust himself can never really trust anyone else.

Cicero:

Trust no one unless you have eaten much salt with him.

Demosthenes:

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.

E.M. Forster:

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

Eliza Cook:

Who would not rather trust and be deceived?

Elizabeth Gilbert:

To sit patiently with a yearning that has not yet been fulfilled, and to trust that, that fulfillment will come, is quite possibly one of the most powerful "magic skills" that human beings are capable of. It has been noted by almost every ancient wisdom tradition.

Elizabeth Gilbert:

The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.

Erik H. Erikson:

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.

Finley Peter Dunne:

Trust everybody, but cut the cards.

Frank Crane:

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough.

George MacDonald:

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.

Helen Rowland:

Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.

Henry David Thoreau:

I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.

Indira Gandhi:

You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.

Ingrid Bergman:

You must train your intuition -- you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide.

Johann Kaspar Lavater:

Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.

John Adams:

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John F. Kennedy:

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Margaret Mead:

We will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance from the legal structure of their country.

Nanette Newman:

A good marriage is at least 80 percent good luck in finding the right person at the right time. The rest is trust.

Norman Mailer:

He got a corporation mind. He don't believe in nature; he puts his trust and distrust in man.

Peter Drucker:

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Our distrust is very expensive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Self-trust is the first secret of success.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, adapted:

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 you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.

Rita Mae Brown:

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

Samuel Johnson:

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Thomas Jefferson:

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

Thomas Jefferson:

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

William Shakespeare:

Love all, trust a few.

trees quotes

2008-08-15T23:18:00.003+03:00

Albert Camus:

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

Rabindranath Tagore:

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

travel quotes

2008-08-15T23:18:00.001+03:00

Aldous Huxley:

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

Katharine Butler Hathaway:

A person needs at intervals to separate from family and companions and go to new places. One must go without familiars in order to be open to influences, to change.

Katherine Mansfield:

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order.

Margaret Mead:

As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

Mark Twain:

Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell & I have only a vague curiosity about one of those.

Robert Frost:

I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Robert Louis Stevenson:

We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

Sam Keen:

To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions.

Steven Foster:

You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old?' The answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the 'same old thing.' What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered. You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you left behind. The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same river. [The Book of the Vision Quest]

tolerance quotes

2008-08-15T23:15:00.002+03:00

Abraham Joshua Heschel:

The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.

Abraham Lincoln:

Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict [slavery] might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

Bertrand Russell:

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

Eleanor Holmes Norton:

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

Eric Hoffer:

The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.

Eric Hoffer:

The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. (paraphrasing Voltaire)

George Washington Carver:

How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.

Jerome Nathanson:

The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.

John Godfrey Saxe:

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
1887: referring to the Buddhist fable of the Blind Sages and the Elephant, found in the Udana, chapter 6, section 4

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

It is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others' religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly study of the world's religions is a sacred duty.

Paul McCartney:

I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.

Paul Ricoeur :

If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal.

Rene Dubos:

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.
Celebrations of Life, 1981

Robert F. Kennedy:

Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.

Robert Louis Stevenson:

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.

Susan B. Anthony:

I tell them I have worked 40 years to make the W.S. platform broad enough for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight the next 40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox religionist to speak or pray and count her beads upon.
on the Women's Suffrage platform

Thomas Jefferson:

Difference of opinion is helpful in religion.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson:

All ... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.

Voltaire:

Monsieur l'abbe, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.

Voltaire:

What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature.

Voltaire:

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.

time quotes

2008-08-15T23:15:00.001+03:00

Andy Warhol:

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Annie Dillard:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Benjamin Franklin:

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that the stuff life is made of.

Brian Tracy:

There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.

C. S. Lewis:

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard:

Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived.
played by Patrick Stewart, from the film "Star Trek: Generations"

Colette:

Time spent with cats is never wasted.

Douglas Adams:

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Ecclesiastes:

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Emily Dickinson:

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Eudora Welty:

Events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.

Henry David Thoreau:

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

Horace Mann:

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between Sunrise and Sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

Jane Welsh Carlyle:

Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.

Jesse Jackson:

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.

Kenneth Patton:

By labor we can find food and water, but all of our labor will not find for us another hour.

Mark Twain:

Time and tide wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb, and was true for a billion years; but in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide.

Mark Twain:

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

Mary Parrish:

Love vanquishes time. To lovers, a moment can be eternity, eternity can be the tick of a clock.

Mrs. Manley:

No time like the present.

Paul Bowles:

... we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

Rumi:

Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love.

Salman Rushdie:

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems -- but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible.

Thomas Paine:

Time makes more converts than reason.

Thomas Paine:

If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

W. Somerset Maugham:

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

Will Rogers:

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.

texas quotes

2008-08-15T23:14:00.003+03:00

A. J. Foyt:

I feel safer on a racetrack than I do on Houston's freeways.

Aggie Pate:

I didn't know Onward Christian Soldiers was a Christian song.
at a non-denominational mayor's breakfast, Fort Worth, Texas

Ann Richards:

I am delighted to be here with you this evening because after listening to George Bush all these years, I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like. [1988 keynote address, Democratic Natinal Convention]

Ann Richards:

I thought I knew Texas pretty well, but I had no notion of its size until I campaigned it.

Ann Richards:

Poor George. He can't help it - he was born with a silver foot in his mouth. [1988 keynote address, Democratic Natinal Convention]

Butch Hancock:

Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.

George W. Bush:

As governor of Texas, I have set high standards for our public schools, and I have met those standards.

George W. Bush:

There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee...that says, fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again. [9/17/2002]

Ma Ferguson:

If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!
Governor of Texas (circa 1920)

Molly Ivins:

Good thing we've still got politics in Texas -- finest form of free entertainment ever invented.

Molly Ivins:

Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?

Oh, it's just that your life is at stake.

Molly Ivins:

As a veteran of many an electoral defeat at the polls, may I remind you of the proper Texan attitude toward slaughter at the polls?

A few years before Billie Carr died this September at age 74, a friend called to ask how she was doing. "Well," she said, "They just impeached my boy up in Washington, there's not a Democrat left in statewide office in Texas, the Republicans have taken every judgeship in Harris County, and yesterday I found out I have cancer."

Pause.

"I think I'll go out and get a pregnancy test because with my luck, it'll come back positive."

Molly Ivins:

In Texas, we do not hold high expectations for the [governor's] office; it's mostly been occupied by crooks, dorks and the comatose.

Molly Ivins:

I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.

Tom DeLay:

Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills. [on causes of the Columbine High School massacre, 1999]

team work quotes

2008-08-15T23:14:00.001+03:00

Ernest Becker:

It is not so much that man is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief.

Mohandas Gandhi:

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

Peter Drucker:

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

Sandra Day O'Connor:

We don't accomplish anything in this world alone ... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.

talent quotes

2008-08-15T23:13:00.004+03:00

H. Jackson Brown:

Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece -- by thought, choice, courage, and determination.

Sophia Loren:

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent.

tact quotes

2008-08-15T23:13:00.003+03:00

Abraham Lincoln:

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Eleanor Chaffee:

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Kahlil Gibran:

If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.

Margaret Chase Smith:

One of the basic causes for all the trouble in the world today is that people talk too much and think too little. They act impulsively without thinking. I always try to think before I talk.

P.G. Wodehouse:

The trouble with cats is that they've got no tact.

Pearl S. Buck:

Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame

suffering quotes

2008-08-15T23:13:00.001+03:00

Abraham Joshua Heschel:

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair. [New York Journal-American, April 5, 1963]

Albert Camus:

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer.

Aldous Huxley:

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

Benjamin Disraeli:

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence.

Corita Kent:

Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

David Halverstam:

Bart Giamatti did not grow up (as he had dreamed) to play second base for the Red Sox. He became a professor at Yale, and then, in time . . . president of the National Baseball League. He never lost his love for the Boston Red Sox. It was as a Red Sox fan, he later realized that human beings are fallen, and that life is filled with disappointment. The path to comprehending Calvinism in modern America, he decided, begins at Fenway Park.

Elie Wiesel:

I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

Emily Dickinson:

Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson:

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Ernest Becker:

I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise it is false. Whatever is achieved must be achieved with the full exercise of passion, of vision, of pain, of fear, and of sorrow. How do we know ... that our part of the meaning of the universe might not be a rhythm in sorrow?

Felix Adler:

We stand, as it were, on the shore, and see multitudes of our fellow beings struggling in the water, stretching forth their arms, sinking, drowning, and we are powerless to assist them.

Fritz Williams:

Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them, how to make the leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of another person. ln those transparent moments we know other people's joys and sorrows, and we care about their concerns as if they were our own.

George Eliot:

Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

H.H. the Dalai Lama:

The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.

Helen Keller:

The world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.

Helen Keller:

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Hermann Hesse:

You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.

James Russell Lowell:

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

Jane Austen:

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering.

John Milton:

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.

Marcel Proust:

We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.

Marcel Proust:

In reality, in love there is a permanent suffering which joy neutralizes, renders virtual, delays, but which can at any moment become what it would have become long earlier if one had not obtained what one wanted, atrocious.

Marcus Aurelius:

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marshall Rosenberg:

All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.

Naomi Wolf:

Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.

Paulo Coelho:

But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.

Peter Singer:

All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.

Rabindranath Tagore:

Power takes as ingratitude the writhing of its victims.

Samuel Johnson:

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Simone Weil:

The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.

Sogyal Rinpoche:

...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.

Spanish proverb:

Where there is love, there is pain.

Victor Frankl:

We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering.

Victor Frankl:

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

Wallace Stegner:

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.