Quotes for February

"Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion." Robertson Davies

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." Edward Abbey

"Everyone rises to their level of incompetence." Laurence J. Peter, "The Peter Principle"

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." George Bernard Shaw

"Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away." Robert Orben

"Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body." Aldous Huxley

"You're never too old to become younger." Mae West

"A cult is a religion with no political power." Tom Wolfe

"They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse." Emily Dickinson

"No good deed goes unpunished." Clare Booth Luce

"It is bad luck to be superstitious." Andrew W. Mathis

"Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind." Evan Esar

"Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people." Kin Hubbard

"If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." Peter Ustinov

"Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars." Fred Allen

"Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf." Lewis Mumford

"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." Wernher von Braun

"Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work." Robert Orben

"The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection. " Henry Ward Beecher, "Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit", 1887

"Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others." Samuel Johnson

"No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other." Jascha Heifetz

"Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm." John F. Kennedy

"Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." H. Mumford Jones

"Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be." Jim Horning

"A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation." Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 10

"Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand." Mark Twain

"Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution yet." Mae West

"Realize that if you have time to whine and complain about something then you have the time to do something about it." Anthony J. D'Angelo

"Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." George Bernard Shaw

"Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one." Bill Bradley

"I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so." Stephen Leacock

"Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance." William Shakespeare

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible." Albert Einstein

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." Abraham Lincoln

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress." John Adams

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." Friedrich Nietzsche

"Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!" Henry David Thoreau

"I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back." Henny Youngman

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will." Vince Lombardi

"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense." Carl Sagan

"Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man." J. Robert Oppenheimer, speaking of Albert Einstein

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." Oscar Wilde

"Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows." David T. Wolf

"Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying." Ronald Reagan

"Your ability to communicate is an important tool in your pursuit of your goals, whether it is with your family, your co-workers or your clients and customers." Les Brown

"Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone." Hodding Carter

"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault." Henry Kissinger

"If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me." Alice Roosevelt Longworth

"To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend." Jacques Derrida

"Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life." Herbert Henry Asquith

"The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher." Thomas Huxley

"Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles." Pat Paulsen

"The great thing about television is that if something important happens anywhere in the world, day or night, you can always change the channel." From "Taxi"

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." E. F. Schumacher

"When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest." William Hazlitt

"Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth." Rex Stout

"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function." Unknown

"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none." Thomas Carlyle

"Adventure is just bad planning." Roald Amundsen

"It's not living alone if you keep a rifle under the bed." Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters, 1999

"You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance." Franklin P. Jones

"Stuffed deer heads on walls are bad enough, but it's worse when they are wearing dark glasses and have streamers in their antlers because then you know they were enjoying themselves at a party when they were shot." Ellen DeGeneres