This
file is where I collect quotes that I find meaningful, humorous, despicable or
otherwise noteworthy. I started
collecting these in 1990 when I read a despicable quote
from an elected official. Since then, I
just add to the list whenever I run across a good one.
Browse by Category
"Racism is white. There ain't no black racism."
-
U.S. Rep. Gus Savage, D.-Ill.
Responding to accusations that he delivered
an
anti-Semitic speech
Houston Post, Spring of 1990
"When it comes to the public's
well-being, the First Amendment takes
second place."
-
unnamed woman on a national News show
Fall, 1993
"We can't be so fixated on our
desire to preserve the rights of ordinary
Americans ..."
-
Bill Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993,
page 2A)
"Admire
the creator, and all his works, to us incomprehensible, and do all the good you
can upon earth; and take the chance of eternity without dismay."
- Sir William Hamilton, husband of
Admiral Nelson's mistress
"Lord Nelson" by David & Stephen Howarth
Definition
of "impiety" : "Noun, your irreverence toward my deity."
- Ambrose Bierce
quoted in the Houston
Post, November 1990
"Christ
died for our sins. Dare we make his
martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?"
- Jules Feiffer
"If
triangles had a God, He'd have three sides."
- Old Yiddish proverb
"All
religions are cults. Mainstream religions are just cults with tenure."
- Somebody named Scott
"What
really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the
world."
- Albert Einstein
"My
theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed."
- Christopher Morley
"A
tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient."
-
Anonymous
epitaph for Alexander the Great
"Here
lies a man who knew how to enlist in his service better men than himself."
- Andrew Carnegie's tombstone
"Knowledge
will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors
must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
- James Madison
quoted in the Houston Post, July 9, 1990
"Having
the right to do something is not the same as being right in doing it."
- C.K. Chesterson
"The
strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a
last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
- Thomas Jefferson (as quoted on
Usenet, Jan. 1992)
"Government
exists to protect us from each other.
Where Government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us
from ourselves."
- Ronald Reagan - NYT April 13, 1980
"They
[La Prensa] accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them
publish it."
- Nelba Blandon, Interior Ministry
Director of Censorship
Nicaraguan government official talking about the
opposition newspaper.
Attributed to a quote in the New York Times, 1984
Seen second-hand in P.J. O'Rourkes's _Holiday's in Hell_
"Fear
the Government that fears your privacy.
Keep personal cryptography legal."
- Mark Brown (mbrown@austin.ibm.com)
as seen on Usenet 1993-06-02
"It
is a good thing that we do not get as much government as we pay for"
- Will Rogers
"You
do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if
properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms
it would cause if improperly administered."
- Lyndon Johnson
"No
matter what your religion, you should try to become a government program, for
then you will have everlasting life."
-U.S. Representative Lynn Martin
"A
democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist
until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out
of the public treasury."
- Alexander Tyler, eighteenth-century Scottish historian
"Those
who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable."
- John F. Kennedy
"You
can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long."
- Boris Yeltsin
"Mas
male morir a pie que vivir en rodillas"
"It
is better to die on your feet than live on your knees"
- Dolores Ibarruri ("La Pasionaria") circa 1936
"Witness to A Century" by George Seldes
"The
only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there."
- Robert Pirsig
"A
mistake is evidence that somebody has tried to accomplish something"
- John E. Babcock
"It
is much easier to fight for ones principles than it is to live in accordance
with them."
- Alfred Adler
"You
don't stop laughing because you grow old.
You grow old because you stop laughing."
- Michael Pritchard
"Regret
for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we
did not do that is inconsolable."
- Sidney J. Harris.
"It
is always the greatest buildings and tallest trees that get struck by
lightning."
- Herodatus
"Whether
you think you can, or think you can't - you're right."
- Henry Ford
"Don't
be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."
- William Lloyd George
"The
highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they
become by it."
-
John Ruskin
"Go
as far as you can see. When you get there, you will be able to see
further."
- Thomas Carlyle
"An
Investment in Knowledge Pays the Best Interest"
- Benjamin Franklin
"How can you be A good winner if you can't be a good loser?"
- Halle Berry's mom
"Real
courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway
and see it through no matter what."
- Harper Lee
"It's
not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up."
- Vince Lombardi
"Show
me a good loser and I'll show you a loser."
- Vince Lombardi
"Through
this fist art one gains long life and happiness."
- motto of Kajukenbo
"...
it is important to have fervor such that one would be willing to pull out a
fence railing and use that in place of a spear or an extra long sword."
- Miyamoto Musashi, "The Book
of Five Rings"
"Training
is hard so fighting is easy."
- attributed to the Russian general
that defeated Napolean
"The
world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but
because of the people who don't do anything about it."
- Albert Einstein
"The
only thing worse than war is losing one."
- Winston Churchill
"He
who desires peace should prepare for war."
- Vegitius (Roman general)
"We
will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail."
- George W. Bush, September 2001
"You can no more win a war than you can win an
earthquake."
- Jeannette
Rankin, first woman member of U.S. House of Representatives
It is
necessary for us to learn from others' mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself.
- Hyman Rickover, U.S. Navy admiral
"For
the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn only by doing
them."
- Aristotle
"I
hate quotations. Tell me what you
know."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"When
you want to see, see right at once.
When you begin to think, you miss the point."
- Ancient Zen master Tojo (sp?)
"Knowledge
does not come to us by details but in flashes of light from Heaven."
- Henry Thoreau
"If God wanted Man to become a spacefaring species, He would
have given Man a Moon."
- Krafft Ehrick
"If it is important to God or to aliens that I believe in
them, then they must make themselves better known to me than they have done to
date."
- "UFOs and
Alien Contact" by Bartholemew & Howard
"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space
program."
- Larry Niven
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
- Donald Knuth
"The UNIX Programming Environment"
by Kernighan & Pike
"Many of a system administrator's problems can be traced to
an unwarranted anthropomorphizing of the user."
- unattributed
article on Usenet, January, 1992
"Software development is 10% science, 25% ingenuity and 65%
getting the ingenuity to work with the science."
- Mark A. Feit
(as quoted on Usenet, Apr. 1992)
"... re-invented wheels are often square."
- "How to
Steal Code" by Henry Spencer
"A system admin's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over Emergency
Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients
installing new versions of their own innards!"
- Michael O'Brien
As seen on Usenet 1992-09-23
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it
correct, not tried it."
- Donald Knuth
"Any object, capable of any behavior, is capable of
unexpected behavior."
- Dick Mills
(comp.risks March, 1996)
"I'm a very poor mathematician, but I guess that's better
than not being one at all."
- Bjarne
Strostrup (C/C++ Users Journal, Oct
1996)
"The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around
it."
- John Gilmore
(wrt rec.humor.funny)
"Never ask a droid to exceed its programming; it wastes your
time and annoys the droid."
- Eric S. Raymond
(as quoted on Usenet, Mar. 1992)
"Heisenberg
might have been here"
- old physics joke
"Diplomacy:
The art of saying 'nice doggy', until you can find a big rock."
- Will Rogers
"Eagles
soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines."
- anonymous
"Ain't
nothin' in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos."
- Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim
Hightower
"She
would hold a grudge until it died of old age. Then she would have it stuffed
and mounted."
- Fictional character in a David Weber
novel
"An
astrophysicist is someone who sees something working in practice, and
wonders whether it will work in
principle."
- Harvey Liszt
"There's
so much comedy on television. Does that
cause comedy in the streets?"
-
Dick Cavett, mocking the TV-violence debate
"The
gene pool needs some chlorine."
- anonymous via the web, January
1997
"Writing
like you talk doesn't work if you talk funny."
- attributed to an anonymous USAF
Colonel
"Never
express yourself more clearly than you think."
- N. Bohr (quoted on Usenet, Jan 1994)
"The
difference between genius and stupidity is that there is a limit to
genius."
- anonymous
"You
have to regard everything I say with suspicion - I may be trying to bullshit
you, or I may just be bullshitting you inadvertently."
- J. Wainwright; Mathematics
Professor at University of Waterloo
"What
separates the competent from the incompetent is the ability to cover up
mistakes."
- Rinaldo's laws of organizations
"If
you can persuade your customer to tattoo your name on their chest, they probably
will not switch brands."
- Indiana U. professor re:
Harley-Davidson owners
"Upon
careful examination, Nostradamus will be found to have predicted EVERY
significant event. However, the prediction itself cannot be understood, or even
recognized, until after the event has occurred."
- Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus
Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
As seen on Usenet 1992-09-15
"Speak
up! It is better to be heard and wrong
than silent and right."
- unnamed Rockwell manager
"It
is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and
remove all doubt."
- someone who didn't work for
Rockwell
"Always
do right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
- Mark Twain
"It's
not the world that's got so much worse but the news coverage that's got so much
better."
- G.K. Chesterton
"I
hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I
am."
- Samuel Johnson
"Every
normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag,
and begin slitting throats."
- H.L. Mencken
"What
is the use of running when we are not on the right road?"
- anonymous
"Even
if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
- Will Rogers
"Don't
be humble, you're not that great."
- Golda Meir