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Quotes (Just the Interesting Stuff)
The following are quotes that particularly interested me. - Jeff "Things are always at their best in their beginning." - Bliase Pascal It you want "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not." - Mark Twain Bibliography -9F "The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." - Harlan Ellison, science fiction author Bibliography -9O (page 22) "History is a race between education and catastrophe." - H.G. Wells Bibliography -34 "...is like trying to nail jelly to a tree." - from an unknown book about the difficulty of learning a computer programming language. "Long ago I learned that to those who mean right and try to do right, there are no such things as real misfortunes. On the other hand, to such persons, all apparent evils are blessings in disguise." - P. T. Barnum Bibliography -101 Starkle, starkle, little twink, Who the heck I am you think? I'm not under the akafluence of incohol, It's just that some thinkle peep I am. - unknown "People with great minds talk about ideas. People with average minds talk about events. People with small minds talk about other people." - Ann Landers Bibliography -39 "The best test of a man is not how well he does the things he likes, but how well he does the things he doesn't like." - Richard Nixon Bibliography -97 (page 328) "Many great civilizations in history have collapsed at the very height of their achievements because they were unable to analyze their basic problems... Today the civilization which is facing such a challenge is not just one small part of mankind - it is mankind as a whole." - UN Secretary General Waldheim Bibliography -97 (page 685) "I believe I've found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us." - Konrad Lorenz Bibliography -9H "I couldn't wait for success, so I went on ahead without it." - Jonathan Winters Bibliography -51 "A man with a million dollars can be as happy nowadays as though he were rich." - Ward McAllister Bibliography -79 "I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it..." -Samuel Goldwyn Bibliography -51 [as a journalist] ..."You are responsible not only for what you do, you are responsible for what you see." - an outspoken Russian journalist Bibliography -57 "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." - Armand Hammer Bibliography -59 "It is better to accomplish perfectly a very small amount of work, than to half do ten times as much." - from the book, Inquire Within, 1858 Bibliography -61 "When we all remember we are mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." -Mark Twain Bibliography -9M "A man with a watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches isn't so sure." - unknown Bibliography -9B This line of poetry was generated by a computer working with random poetry software: "My engine starts to rev when you blow in my beer." Bibliography -9Q "This field of physics is so virginal that no human eyeball has ever set foot in it." - very mixed metaphor by unidentified Ph.D. student Bibliography -9R "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." - Mark Twain Bibliography -9R "We have no system; we have no rules, but we have a big scrap heap." - Thomas Edison (Some of his workers called it the "dungyard.") Bibliography -79 "No other country in the world except South Africa tolerates a system in which the state of a family's health is determined by the size of the family's wealth." - Senator Edward Kennedy Bibliography -9AB "You can observe a lot just by watchin'." - Yogi Berra Bibliography -9S "Someday, composers will write music only computers can sing." - Clifford Pickover, IBM researcher Bibliography -9S "Creative people must entertain lots of silly ideas in order to receive the occasional strokes of genius." - Marshall Cook Bibliography -44A What was this artist trying to say? "In my most recent paintings, I find myself stressing the linear antipathy of massive forms of light in contra-distinction to cattogrammatic and syncogrammatic antipodes of stasis." Bibliography -44A "Procrastination means never having to say you're sorry." - Toni Epstein, New York Bibliography -9T "It's a pity that taxpayers don't read science fiction. They might know about the age they're buying." - unknown Bibliography -9W "Every serving of processed food is treated with one or more dyes, bleaches, emulsifiers, antioxidants, moisturizers, desiccants, extenders, thickeners, disinfectants, defoliants, fungicides, neutralizers, artificial sweeteners, hydrolyzers, anticaking and antifoaming agents, curers, hydrogenators, fortifiers, antibiotics, arsenic, artificial sex hormones, and pesticides." - Joseph Beasley, author of The Impact of Nutrition on the Health of Americans Bibliography -9W "I was afraid that we were at a place where we were no longer going to be inheriting life from our fathers, but we were going to be borrowing it from our children." - Robert Redford Bibliography -9W After Dentist Horace Wells used anesthesia for the first time in history to extract a tooth painlessly (1844), his associates suggested that he get a patent. He said, "Let it be free as the air." Bibliography -48 "Overheard at a perfume counter in a large department store: 'If this stuff really worked, would I be standing here eight hours a day?'" - Ann Landers Bibliography -25C "What we ought to do now, obviously, is suspend all activity until we can hold a plebiscite to select a panel that will appoint a commission authorized to hire a new team of experts to restudy the feasibility of compiling an index of all the committees that have in the past inventoried and cataloged the various studies aimed at finding out what happened to all the policies that were scrapped when new policies were decided on by somebody else. Once that's out of the way, I think we could go full steam ahead with some preliminary plans for a new study with Federal funds of why nothing can be done right now." - North Dakota Senator I.E. Solberg Bibliography -62 "Of course truth is stranger than fiction. We see so much less of it." - Ivern Ball Bibliography -66A "There's no way to rule innocent men." - Ayn Rand Bibliography -72 "I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped." - The Gestalt prayer, by psychologist Fritz Perls Bibliography -69 "As soon as man applies his intelligence and only his intelligence to any object at all, he unfailingly destroys the object." - Leo Tolstoy Bibliography -9X "If I had to choose between pain and nothing I would always choose pain." - William Faulkner Bibliography -9AA "When we first look straight on at all this [American industrial and personal waste], it's easy to fall into despair, overwhelmed at the picture of Yankee know-how run amok, chopping up mountains and rivers to produce Barbie Dolls and Screaming Yellow Zonkers. But before you crumple up in a heap, notice the critical link in this awesome chain of industrialism. The reason for overconsumption is overconsumers. If the consumer refuses to be manipulated and makes wise choices that are not based on advertising, he - she - we! - can save the planet." - Laurel Robertson, in her book Laurel's Kitchen Bibliography -74 "Feminine Beauty. Female pulchritude, being qualitative rather than quantitative, does not lend itself to records. It has been suggested that if the face of Helen of Troy (c.1200 BC) was capable of launching 1,000 ships, then a unit of beauty sufficient to launch one ship should be called a millihellen." - from the Guiness Book of World Records, 1988 Bibliography -4A "To punish me for my contempt for authority, Fate made me an authority myself." - Albert Einstein Bibliography -93 (page 24) "When I was in the seventh grade at the Luitpold Gymnasium I was summoned by my home-room teacher who expressed the wish that I leave the schoool. My remark that I had done nothing amiss he replied only 'Your mere presence spoils the respect of the class for me.' "I myself, to be sure, wanted to leave school and follow my parents to Italy. But the main reason for me was the dull, mechanized method of teaching. Because of my poor memory for words, this presented me with great difficulties that it seemed senseless for me to overcome. I preferred, therefore, to endure all sorts of punishments rather than learn to gabble by rote." - Albert Einstein Bibliography -93 "Light waves are electromagnetic waves whose frequencies, or rates of oscillation, lie within a quite narrow range, the colors depending of the frequencies. Outside this narrow range of frequencies electromagnetic radiation is not directly visible. At higher frequencies it is what we call ultraviolet radiation; and at yet higher, X-radiation and gamma radiation. At lower frequencies it is infrared and heat radiation; and at yet lower, radio waves. This is a notable unification. Diverse radiations, here linked together are seen as members of a large family of electromagnetic phenomena..." - Albert Einstein Bibliography -93 "One has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists. If such humility could be conveyed to everybody, the world of human activities would be more appealing." - Albert Einstein Bibliography -77 "I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy." - Albert Einstein Bibliography -87 Famous last words: The last thing Albert Einstein said was in German, but the only person in the room, a nurse, didn't speak German, so she couldn't recall for the world what he said. Bibliography -0 "It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember." - Eugene McCarthy "The believer is happy - the doubter is wise." - unknown I don't know a lot about poetry, but the following line written by Julia A. Moore gets my vote for worst published poem I have ever read: While eating dinner, This dear little child Choked on a piece of beef. Bibliography -94 (page 17) Do you know the meaning of the word spoonerism? According to Funk & Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary it means: "The unintentional transposition of sounds or of parts of words in speaking, as in 'half-warmed fish' for 'half-formed wish.'" This word was named after Reverend William A. Spooner (1884-1930) who was the dean of New College, in Oxford. He evidently had a sort of speaking dyslexia and became famous for many entertaining tangled sentences. For example, he told a groom at a wedding, "It is kisstomary to cuss the bride." Another time, he referred to Queen Victoria as "the queer old dean." Bibliography -94 (page 24) "Years ago my mother used to say to me, 'In this world you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.' For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant." - James Stewart in Harvey James Stewart wore the same hat in many different movies as a good luck charm. If you look closely, in his younger days, he wore a very sharp hat, but in later movies, the hat becomes more worn out. Epitaph: "Here lies an atheist - all dressed up and no place to go." When Lavinia Warren, who was less than 3 feet tall and weighed less than 30 pounds, along with her husband General Tom Thumb, who was only slightly larger, visited Abe Lincoln, who always considered himself too tall, President Lincoln proclaimed, "God likes to do funny things - here you have the long and the short of it." Bibliography -97, Bibliography -101 "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." - Abe Lincoln, 1858 (At first Lincoln was in favor of slavery, and later changed his mind.) Bibliography -90 "Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow." - Abraham Lincoln, 1865 (the year of his death) Bibliography -90 "If they kill me the next man will be just as bad for them. In a country like this, where our habits are simple, and must be, assassination is always possible, and will come if they are determined upon it." -Abraham Lincoln, 1865 (the year of his death) Bibliography -90 "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise." - Dr. Scholl of Dr. Scholl's Foot Aids Bibliography -97 (page 355) One of the most helpful people mankind has ever seen was Emile Coue (1857-1926) of France. He told people to say to themselves 20 times in a row, twice a day: "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better." This actually cured thousands of people of an assortment of minor and major ills. In French if you prefer, "Tous les jours, a tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux." Try it, it can't hurt you (unless somebody overhears, but then you can do it silently), and it might just work to get you over the flu, a toothache, cancer, whatever is bothering you. This is a serious suggestion. Scientists have proven beyond doubt that people can improve their health with a positive mental attitude. In many hospitals, cancer patients are now being taught to mentally picture (or actually draw pictures of) their cells surrounding and eating tumors. Bibliography -97 (page 525) "Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half-shut afterwards." - Ben Franklin "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face - forever." - George Orwell "Knowledge isn't power until it's applied." - Dale Carnegie When asked about the possibility of an alien race taking over our world by force, Isaac Asimov answered: "The nearest intelligence to us is likely to be as much as 50 light-years away, and that is not an easy distance to cross. If a people could cross it, they would be extremely advanced, and I think that a race far in advance of ourselves would probably also have advanced in humanity and would be unlikely to act like barbarians." "...there are only two ways in which [population] growth can stop. Either the death rate goes up to match the birth rate, or the birth rate comes down to match the death rate." - Isaac Asimov "Man is born to live and not to prepare to live." - Boris Pasternak, from the book, "Doctor Zhivago" "I'm seventy percent accurate 40 percent of the time." - Weatherman Willard Scott. Undoubtedly, Henry Kissinger is more familiar with foreign policy and foreign geography than American geography. When invited to do the weather report one day on the "CBS This Morning" tv show, he presented a reasonable report, but had some difficulties pointing to the unmarked cities he was mentioning on a USA map. After awhile, he told the TV audience, "I'm not pointing anymore, you figure it out." You'll never guess who said this: "I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social or political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion that I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position that the Negro should be denied everything." Here's a clue, he also said this: "My policy is to have no policy." Give up? It was President Abraham Lincoln! Bibliography -97 (page 289) "I fired MacArthur because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail." - Harry S Truman Bibliography -97 (page 309) "All the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway." - Harry S Truman Bibliography -97 (page 309) Mozart composed a very popular opera called "All Women Behave Thus." A Conan Doyle never wrote, "Elementary, my dear Watson!" James Cagney never said, "You dirty rat." Humphrey Bogart never said, "Play it again, Sam." P. T. Barnum never said, "There's a sucker born every minute." Bibliography -101 "The frustrating reality, as far as medical researchers are concerned, is that we already know that the living body is the best pharmacy ever devised. It produces diuretics, painkillers, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, antibiotics, and indeed everything manufactured by the drug companies, but it makes them much, much better. The dosage is always right and given on time; side effects are minimal or nonexistent; and the directions for using the drug are included in the drug itself, as part of its built-in intelligence." - Dr. Deepak Chopra "It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars." - Arthur C Clarke "The reason that the all-American boy prefers beauty to brains is that he can see better than he can think." - Farrah Fawcett-Majors "The best way out is always through." - Robert Frost "When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us; Power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health and our happiness." - Dale Carnegie "I do not sleep eight hours a night. If you sleep eight hours and live sixty years, that's twenty years of sleep!" - Nikita Khrushchev "I trained as a surgeon. I found that the saying about surgeons is true: 'If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.' That's why surgeons always recommend surgery - what other tools do they have for making you well?" - Dr. Julian Whitaker "Remember, most of the paths you will be offered are totally inappropriate for you. At every turn give yourself five good reasons for saying no. And while walking into a relationship or project look for the exit!" - Stuart Wilde "Few things are more debilitating than a toxic metaphor." - anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson "All perception of truth is the detection on an analogy." - Thoreau "One of my friends who obviously doesn't have kids used to call them "barfers." As long as he held that metaphor, can you imagine how kids responded to him? Recently, though, he filled in for Santa Claus at a department store - several of us set him up so he had to do it - and he got to have hundreds of "barfers" come and sit on his lap. Well, that one experience gave him a totally new view of children and changed his metaphor forever. Now he calls them "cuddlies"! - Anthony Robbins in Awaken the Giant Within. "If the doctors threw all their medicine into the sea, it would be a horrible day for the fish." - unknown author "A dog likes people who pat him on the head. That's because his thinking isn't complicated by knowledge and education." - Arthur Hailey, from the book, "Hotel." "When elephants clash, the grass gets trampled." - unknown Bibliography -20 People were more aware of preventive medicine through nutrition in the past than today. I found these quotes in a book 131 years old: "Better pay the cook than the doctor." "Tbe best physicians are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman." -Inquire Within, (by Garrett?) published: Dick & Fitzgerald, N.Y. 1858 Bibliography -61 "If you can count your millions, you are not a billionaire." - Jean Paul Getty (1892-1976) Bibliography -4A "This is a trading world and men, women and children, who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the Author of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain." - P. T. Barnum, Nineteenth Century producer of shows, museums and circuses. Bibliography -101 "My wife used to ask me to bring home flowers. Once I even said to her, 'You're going to the store - why don't you buy them?' She didn't get mad at me for not 'getting it'... she was willing to explain the obvious - 'It's so much more romantic when you buy them for me.' "Now, I usually remember to buy flowers. But when I forget, my wife has a friendly, nonjudgmental way of reminding me - she sets out empty vases." - John Gray, PhD, author of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" Bibliography -100A "A great artist is one who doesn't have to explain his work." - Jeff |
