I make no claims about their authority; I have found many myself in my reading, gathered many more from a variety of sources whose reliability I cannot evaluate. Any corrections, feel free to Contact me. Especially appreciated would be attributions for those without.

Over 300 of the especially prolific authors have been removed from this list; see their work Here.

10 months after issuance of the National Cyberspace Strategy, all that could be announced in December was neither a plan nor a blueprint, but a plan to create a blueprint.
-- Senator Joe Liebermann

186,000 Miles per Second.
It's not just a good idea.
IT'S THE LAW.

1st graffitiist: QUESTION AUTHORITY!

2nd graffitiist: Why?

42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
-- W. Richard Walton, Sr.

75 Metro buses in our nation's capital are sporting this advertisement -- verbatim: "DC Public Schools Wants You. Go To Class - It a Blast!!!"

A 13-inch wheel on a wheelbarrow warns: 'Not intended for highway use.'
-- www.mlaw.org

A bad marriage is like a horse with a broken leg; you can shoot the horse, but it don't fix the leg.

A basically dishonest man can survive longer in the church or the classroom than he can in the grain exchange or the furniture business.
-- Ben Rogge

A bathroom heater says: 'This product is not to be used in bathrooms.'
-- www.mlaw.org

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.
-- John Henry Newman

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
-- Lou Holtz

A billion seconds ago Harry Truman was president.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.
A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
-- Maya Angelou

A box of birthday cake candles says: 'DO NOT use soft wax as ear plugs or for any other function that involves insertion into a body cavity.'
-- www.mlaw.org

A boy spent years collecting postage stamps. The girl next door bought an album too, and started her own collection.
"Dad, she buys everything I've bought, and it's taken all the fun out of it for me. I'm quitting."
"Don't, son, remember, 'Imitation is the sincerest form of philately.'"

Abstract art is a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
-- Al Capp

A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as afterward.

A can of self-defense pepper spray warns users: 'May irritate eyes.'
-- www.mlaw.org

A cardboard car sunshield warns: 'Do not drive with sunshield in place.'
-- www.mlaw.org

A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings.
-- William Inge

A cat can maintain a position of curled up somnolence on your knee until you are nearly upright. To the last minute she hopes your conscience will get the better of you and you will settle down again.
-- Pam Brown

A cat isn't fussy -- just so long as you remember he likes his milk in the shallow, rose-patterned saucer and his fish on the blue plate. From which he will take it, and eat it off the floor.
-- Arthur Bridges

A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it.
-- Joseph Epstein

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss, in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an ornamental stud."

AC/DC has lived the dumbness that the Ramones have only faked all these years.
-- Chuck Eddy

A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
-- Granville Hicks

A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.
-- Billie Jean King

A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he's supposed to be doing.
-- Anthony Burgess

A chart of numbers that would put an actuary to sleep can be made to dance if you put it on one side of a card and Bombo Rivera's picture on the other.
-- Bill James

A choice gets made and something then occurs
Still it hurts a little less when that choice is yours.
-- Bill Morrissey

A college education shows a man how little other people know.
-- Thomas Haliburton

A comedian does funny things; a good comedian does things funny.
-- Buster Keaton

A commentary on the times is that the word 'honesty' is now preceded by 'old-fashioned.'
-- Larry Wolters

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
-- Sir Barnett Cocks

A committee is a group that keeps the minutes and loses hours.
-- Milton Berle

A committee is an animal with four back legs.
-- John Le Carre

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
-- Mitch Radcliffe

A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard.

A concern for states rights, local self government and regional identity used to be taken for granted everywhere in America. But the United States is no longer, as it once was, a federal union of diverse states and regions. National uniformity is being imposed by the political class that runs Washington, the economic class that owns Wall Street and the cultural class in charge of Hollywood and the Ivy League.
-- Michael Hill

A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.
-- Martin Henry Fischer

A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.
-- Abba Eban

A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.
-- Alfred E. Wiggam

A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.

A country losing touch with its own history is like an old man losing his glasses, a distressing sight, at once vulnerable, unsure, and easily disoriented.
-- George Walden

A couple of months in the laboratory can save a couple of hours in the library.
-- Frank H. Westheimer

A critic is someone who never actually goes to the battle, yet who afterwards comes out shooting the wounded.
-- Tyne Daly

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
-- Immanuel Kant

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

A cynic is just a man who found out when he was ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset.
-- James Gould Cozzens

A day without sunshine is, like, night.
-- Steve Martin

A dead atheist is someone who's all dressed up with no place to go.
-- James Duffey

A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.
-- Admiral Arthur W. Radford

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 Tytler

A dictatorship of relativism is being built that recognizes nothing as definite, and which leaves as the ultimate measure only one's ego and desires ... Having a clear faith, according to the credo of the church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. Yet relativism, that is, letting oneself being carried 'here and there by any wind of doctrine,' appears as the sole attitude good enough for modern times.
-- Pope Benedict XVI

A dog gladly admits the superiority of his master over himself, accepts his judgment as final, but, contrary to what many dog lovers believe, he does not consider himself as a slave. His submission is voluntary, and he expects his own small rights to be respected.
-- Axel Munthe

A drink a day keeps the shrink away.
-- Edward Abbey

A Dublin lawyer died in poverty and many barristers of the city subscribed to a fund for his funeral. The Lord Chief Justice of Orbury was asked to donate a shilling. "Only a shilling?" exclaimed the man. "Only a shilling to bury an attorney? Here's a guinea; go and bury twenty of them."

Adventure is not outside a man; it is within.
-- David Grayson

Adventure is the result of poor planning.
-- Col. Blatchford Snell

Adversity cause some men to break; others to break records.
-- William A. Ward

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
-- Henry Fielding

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
-- Sinclair Lewis

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
-- Stephen Leacock

Advice is one thing that is freely given away, but watch that you take only what is worth having. He who takes advice about his savings from one who is inexperienced in such matters, shall pay with his savings for proving the falsity of their opinions.
-- George Clason

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
-- Erica Jong

Aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds.
-- Ben Shahn

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
-- Edward Teller

A 'fact' merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease.
-- Bliss Carman

A father is a man who expects his children to be as good as he meant to be.
-- Carolyn Coats

A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.
-- Jean Rostand

A few years ago I switched to an entirely different kind of New Year's resolution. Instead of vowing to improve, I pledge to do a better job of accepting my bad habits -- to stop worrying about failing to be the person I used to imagine I could be.
-- Mel White

Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles; but the magnifying of the one is like looking through a telescope at heavenly objects; that of the other, like enlarging monsters with a microscope.
-- Leigh Hunt

Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
-- Wes Izzard

A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting.
-- Abraham Maslow

A flashlight is a case for holding dead batteries.

A flaw in the human character is that everyone wants to build and no one wants to do maintenance.
-- Kurt Vonnegut

A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
-- A.A. Milne

A fool always finds someone more foolish than he is to admire him.
-- Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

A fool may have his coat embroidered with gold, but it is a fool's coat still.
-- Antoine de Rivarol

A free lunch is only found in mousetraps.
-- John Capuzz

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother.

A friend of mine told me to shoot first and ask questions later. I was going to ask him why, but I had to shoot him.
-- John Wayne

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.
-- John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.

After a year in therapy, my psychiatrist said to me, "Maybe life isn't for everyone."
-- Larry Brown

After generations of living under medical tutelage, which provides us with protection (albeit illusory) against "dangerous drugs", we have failed to cultivate the self-reliance and self-discipline we must possess as competent adults surrounded by the fruits of our pharmacological-technological age.
-- Thomas Szasz

After I lost my dad, I realized none of us should take things too seriously, because everything works itself out. Everything. No matter what happens, or how difficult things become, eventually you will feel better.
-- Chris Rock

After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, 'She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!'
-- Ava Gardner

After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.
-- Italian Proverb

After the war in Afghanistan, Anna [Wintour, editor of Vogue], deciding to save the world one hair-roller at a time, thought the best way to help the women in this beleaguered country was to start a small beauty school in Kabul, where aid workers could get their roots done. Vanity Fair, edited by Bush-basher Graydon Carter, cheered her great humanitarian effort.
-- Myrna Blyth

After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said, "No hablo ingles."
-- Ronnie Shakes

After years of research, scientists recently reported that there is, indeed, arroz in Spanish Harlem.

A full tongue and an empty brain are seldom parted.
-- Francis Quarles

Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.
-- Friedrich von Schiller

Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow so.
-- Tryon Edwards

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
-- Jeanne Moreau

Age doesn't matter, unless you're a cheese.
-- Billie Burke

A genius with the IQ of a moron.
-- Gore Vidal (on Andy Warhol)

A gentleman is simply a patient wolf.
-- Lana Turner

Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host.
-- Herbert Spencer

Agitation is the marshaling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws.
-- Sir Robert Peel

Agnosticism is the philosophical, ethical and religious dry-rot of the modern world.
-- F.E. Abbott

Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.
-- Thomas H. Huxley

A good conscience is a soft pillow.

A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.
-- Elsa Schiaparelli

A good name, like good will, is got by many actions and lost by one.
-- Lord Jeffrey

A good offense requires pushing the envelope. A good defense requires enveloping the push.
-- Dennis Ridley

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.
-- Dylan Thomas

A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.
-- Edward Albee

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

A gossip talks about others. A bore talks about himself. A brilliant conversationalist talks about you.

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart that looks at her watch.
-- James Beard

A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.
-- James Reston

A government of laws without men is as visionary as a government of men without laws.
-- Learned Hand

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
-- Barry Goldwater

A government that seizes control of the economy for the good of the people, ends up seizing control of the people for the good of the economy.
-- Bob Dole

A grain of wisdom is worth an ounce of knowledge, which is worth a ton of data.
-- Neil Larson

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
-- Saul Bellow

A great many people fall in love with or feel attracted to a person who offers the least possibility of a harmonious union.
-- Rudolf Dreikurs

A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence.
-- Barbara Walters

A group of protesters who are very unhappy at the rapid expansion of Starbucks have been repeatedly smashing the windows of a Starbucks store in Maine. Customers say it's been really inconvenient because, several times now, they've had to use the Starbucks across the street.
-- Conan O'Brien

A hair dryer label reads, 'Never use hair dryer while sleeping.'
-- www.mlaw.org

A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.
-- Oliver Herford

A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.
-- Ruth Bell Graham

A 'hate crimes' law would expand the law's concern from criminal action to 'criminal thought.' It would institute the premise that the purpose of our legal system is not to defend the rights of the victim, but to punish socially unacceptable ideas.
-- Robert Tracinski

Ah, but a man's grasp should exceed his reach,
Or what's a heaven for?
-- Robert Browning

A healthy adult male bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
-- John Updike

A high-school teacher, after all, is a person deputized by the rest of us to explain to the young what sort of world they are living in, and to defend, if possible, the part their elders are playing in it.
-- Emile Capouya

A hole is nothing at all, but you can break your neck in it.
-- Austin O'Malley

A horse is dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle.
-- Ian Fleming

A household iron warns users: 'Never iron clothes while they are being worn.'
-- www.mlaw.org

Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this our life!
-- George Meredith

Ah, yes, divorce... from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet.
-- Robin Williams

Ah, yes. I remember my first beer.
-- Steve Martin to a heckler

Ah yes, liberal democrats unified as ever in opportunism and in error.
-- Tony Blair

Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself.
-- Joel Hawes

Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.
-- David M. Burns

Ain't no right way to do the wrong thing.
-- Dick Armey

A joke ought to have sheep's teeth, not a dog's.
-- Czech Proverb

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.
-- Ingrid Bergman

A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.

A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
-- Uriel Weinreich

A large majority of Americans claim that family is the most important thing in life, but surveys show that most people will put their jobs, possessions, and personal freedom before family responsibilities. If you watch what Americans do, traditional family relationships are in trouble.
-- American Demographics

A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work by being declared to work.
-- Anatol Holt

Alas! the love of women! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing.
-- Lord Byron

Alcohol is a good preservative for everything but brains.
-- Mary Pettibone Poole

Alcoholism isn't a spectator sport. Eventually the whole family gets to play.
-- Joyce Rebeta-Burditt

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.
-- John C. Maxwell

A leader knows what's best to do; a manager knows merely how best to do it.
-- Ken Adelman

A leader may symbolize and express what is best in people, like Pericles, or what is worst, like Hitler, but he cannot successfully express what is only in his heart and not in theirs.
-- Charles Yost

A letter always seemed to me like immortality...for is it not the mind alone, without corporeal friend?
-- Emily Dickinson

Al Gore announced Tuesday that he plans to launch a 24-hour cable news network for young adults. Gore claims he's been wanting to do this since he invented cable TV in the 1990s.
-- Tina Fey

A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.
-- Aesop

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
-- Barry Goldwater

A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn't own.
-- Frank Dane

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
-- G. Gordon Liddy

A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous.
-- Alfred Adler

Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse.
-- Arthur Baer

All art is a revolt against man's fate.
-- André Malraux

All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
-- Julius Caesar

All calculations based on our experiences elsewhere fail in New Mexico.
-- Lew Wallace, Territorial Governor of New Mexico

All culture corrupts, but French culture corrupts absolutely.
-- Lawrence Durrell

All decent people live beyond their incomes; those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's; a few gifted individuals manage to do both.
-- Saki

All dope can do for you is kill you ... the long hard way. And it can kill the people you love right along with you.
-- Billie Holiday

All enterprise will stop if we were never to act without being able to point to a decidedly successful result of our undertaking.
-- Sir George Nares

[A]ll fiction may be autobiography, but all autobiography is of course fiction.
-- Shirley Abbott

All generalizations are false, including this one.
-- Alexander Chase

All good balls to hit are strikes, though not all strikes are good balls to hit.
-- Dave Winfield

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.
-- Ernest Hemingway

All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
-- Spike Milligan

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned -- the biggest word of all -- LOOK.
-- Robert Fulghum

All I want is an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.
-- Steve Martin, in Sgt. Bilko

All marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.
-- Raymond Hull

All maxims have their antagonist maxims; proverbs should be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half truth.
-- William Mathews

All men are brothers. Hence war.
-- Simon Munnery

All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.
-- Thomas De Quincey

All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner.
-- Red Skelton

All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.
-- John Quincy Adams

All men's gains are the fruit of venturing.
-- Herodotus

All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.
-- Jane Wagner

All night, this soft rain from
The distant past.
No wonder I sometimes
Waken as a child.
-- Ted Kooser

All of the evil that people have thrust upon chocolate is really more deserved by milk chocolate, which is essentially contaminated. The closer you get to a pure chocolate liquor (the chocolate essence ground from roasted cacao beans) the purer it is, the more satisfying it is, the safer it is, and the healthier it is.
-- Arnold Ismach

All of us admire people we don't like and like people we don't admire.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge

All of us are watchers -- of television, of time clocks, of traffic on the freeway -- but few are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are seeing.
-- Peter M. Leschak

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing.
-- Maurice Maeterlinck

All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
-- IBM maintenance manual, 1925

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.
-- Epictetus

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
-- John Arbuthnot

All pop music is about sex. Rock is about wanting to do it, jazz is about doing it, and country and western is about feeling guilty after you've done it.
-- Robert Waldo Brunelle, Jr.

All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency. The people are well cured by then of election fever, during which they think they are choosing Moses. In the third year, they look on the man as a sinner and a bumbler and begin to poke around for rumours of another Messiah.
-- Alistair Cooke

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-- Sir Ernest Rutherford

All societies must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have stringent state government, the more they must have individual self-government... Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them, or by a power without them...
-- Robert C. Winthrop

All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
-- Brian Tracy

All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.
-- David Brower

All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?
-- Nicholas Johnson

All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.
-- J.R.R. Tolkein

All that non-fiction can do is answer questions. It's fiction's business to ask them.
-- Richard Hughes

All that we know is nothing; we are merely crammed wastepaper baskets unless we are in touch with that which laughs at all our knowing.
-- D.H. Lawrence

All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture.
-- On a bumper sticker

All the people I know who are driving for a form of national service, primarily want it to be compulsory. They realize that's a terrible problem politically, so they're not willing to say it. It is endangerment of freedom and the potential for indoctrination that skeptics do not like in the national service concept. However benign the program, some think it will not succeed on any meaningful scale unless is is compulsory.
-- Martin Anderson

All the talk of history is nothing almost, except fighting and killing, and the honor and reknown which are bestowed on the conquerors, who are for the most part, mere butchers of mankind, mislead growing youth, who by these means come to think of slaughter the most laudable business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues.
-- John Locke

All things are possible until proved impossible -- and even the impossible may only be so as of now.
-- Pearl S. Buck

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.
-- Bob Dylan

All weakness tends to corrupt, and impotence corrupts absolutely.
-- Edgar Z. Freidenberg

All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.
-- Juvenal

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.
-- Maria Edgeworth

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing, layout, processes, and procedures.
-- Tom Peters

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.
-- A.A. Milne

Almost everyone who has read history in a more than casual manner knows that when the great figure of God appears in a controversy, the shooting cannot be far off.
-- Stewart H. Holbrook

A lot has been said about politics; some of it complimentary, but most of it accurate.
-- Eric Idle

A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B.
-- Fats Domino

A lot of guys think the larger a woman's breasts are, the less intelligent she is. I don't think it works like that. I think it's the opposite. I think the larger a woman's breasts are, the less intelligent the men become.
-- Anita Wise

A lot of long relievers are ashamed to tell their parents what they do. The only nice thing about it is that you get to wear a uniform like everybody else.
-- Jim Bouton

A lot of people have asked me how short I am. Since my last divorce, I think I'm about $100,000 short.
-- Mickey Rooney

A lot of what passes for depression these days is nothing more than a body saying that it needs work.
-- Geoffrey Norman

Although gold dust is precious, when it gets in your eyes it obstructs your vision.
-- Hsi-Tang

Although there exist many thousands of subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.
-- Chinese Proverb

Although the universe is under no obligation to make sense, students in pursuit of a Ph. D. are.
-- Robert Kirshner

Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping."
-- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)

Although you may be unpopular with some by speaking out for freedom, it is not wise to seek popularity with those who would be slaves.
-- David Dieteman

Always aim for achievement, and forget about success.
-- Helen Hayes

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.
-- Wendell Johnson

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
-- Ernest Hemingway

Always drink upstream from the herd.
-- Too Slim

Always get married in the morning. That way if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted the whole day.
-- Mickey Rooney

Always keep your words soft and sweet. You never know when you'll have to eat them.

Always remember, as you go out to seek your fortune, your fame, your fulfillment, always remember that it's not who you know in this world, it's whom.
-- Osborn Elliot

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.
-- Margaret Mead

Always remember this: There are only eighteen inches between a pat on the back and a kick in the rump.
-- Hattie McDaniel

A lynch mob is [unlimited] Majority Rule stripped of its fancy trappings and its facade of respectability.
-- Robert J. Ringer

A man always has two reasons for what he does -- a good one, and the real one.
-- J.P. Morgan

A man can be honest in any sort of skin.
-- Herman Melville

A man can be short and dumpy and getting bald but if he has fire, women will like him.
-- Mae West

A man can build a staunch reputation for honesty by admitting he was in error, especially when he gets caught at it.
-- Robert Ruark

A man can fail many times but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame someone else.
-- Waite Phillips

A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp.
-- Joan Rivers

A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself.
-- W.E.B. Du Bois

A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless. All a woman has to do it put you on hold.
-- Marlo Thomas

A man is more faithful and true to another person's secret than his own; a woman, on the contrary, keeps her own secret better than another person's.
-- Jean de La Bruyère

A man is never astonished that he doesn't know what another does, but he is surprised at the gross ignorance of the other in not knowing what he does.
-- Thomas Haliburton

A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.
-- Nicolas Chamfort

A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.
-- English Proverb

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
-- Sir Nathan Meyer Rothschild

A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.
-- Gabriel García Márquez

A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it.
-- Israel Zangwill

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.
-- John C. Maxwell

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's.
-- Jean Paul Richter

A man on a date wonders if he'll get lucky. The woman already knows.
-- Monica Piper

A man's best friends are his ten fingers.
-- Robert Collyer

A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.
-- George William Curtis

A man's errors are his portals of discovery.
-- James Joyce

A man's house is his hassle.

A man's illness is his private territory and, no matter how much he loves you and how close you are, you stay an outsider. You are healthy.
-- Lauren Bacall

A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.
-- Euripides

A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
-- Thomas H. Huxley

A man that would expect to train lobsters to fly in a year is called a lunatic; but a man that thinks men can be turned into angels by an election is a reformer and remains at large.
-- Finley Peter Dunne

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
-- Herman Melville

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
-- George Moore

A man who has a million dollars is as well off as if he were rich.
-- John Jacob Astor

A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth.
-- Jacques Barzun

A man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.
-- Louis Nizer

A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
-- Segal's Law

A man with no regrets has no decency.
-- Thomas McCormack

Ambition has but one reward for all: a little power, a little transient fame, a grave to rest in, and a fading name.
-- William Winter

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.
-- William Lilly

Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.
-- Thomas Otway

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
-- Thomas Dunn English

A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.
-- Mary Kay Ash

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
-- Dean Acheson

America believes in education. The average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
-- Evan Esar

America has meant to the world a land in which the common man who means well and is willing to do his part has access to all the necessary means of a good life.
-- Alvin Saunders Johnson

America is a country where, thanks to Congress, there are 40 million laws to enforce 10 commandments.

America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair.
-- Arnold Toynbee

America is a lot like a computer. It's powerful, it's made up of myriad complex components, and it is considered scary and threatening by those who don't understand how it works. It is also upgradeable in the face of change and is able to foster great diversity, from C to shining C++.
-- Rami Genauer

America is a willingness of the heart.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

America is not like a blanket -- one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt -- many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.
-- Henry M. Jackson

America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true, and the opposite is probably equally true.
-- James T. Farell

America is the best half-educated country in the world.
-- Nicholas Murray Butler

America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one dollar and use it up in two weeks.
-- John Barrymore

America is the nearest thing to a microcosm of world society, with every people represented in its vast democracy. This is why I regard anti-Americanism as racism; it, in effect, amounts to a hatred of humanity itself. No nation has more right to speak, and act, on behalf of the human race than (America).
-- Paul Johnson

America . . . is the only country where the failure to promote yourself is widely considered arrogant.
-- Garry Trudeau

America is the only nation in history which has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual intervention of civilization.
-- Georges Clemenceau

America... It is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.
-- Thomas Wolfe

American federalism was the embodiment of political tolerance and decentralization -- the expression of the liberal conviction that society can manage itself and needs no central plan.
-- Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Americans are becoming increasingly addicted to government, and politicians are becoming the dealers of the drug named 'dependency'.
-- Rep. Jim DeMint

Americans are broad-minded people. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there is something wrong with him.
-- Art Buchwald

Americans are people who laugh at African witch doctors and spend 100 million dollars on fake reducing systems.
-- L.L. Levinson

Americans' greatest fear is that America will turn out to have been a phenomenon, not a civilization.
-- Shirley Hazzard

Americans never quit.
-- General Douglas MacArthur

Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security.
-- Norman Vincent Peale

Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
-- Dan Rather

Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty -- as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.
-- Florence King

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.
-- Marshall McLuhan

America's most dangerous export was, is and always will be our fast-food outlets.
-- Anthony Boudain

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
-- Rabindranath Tagore

A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself.
-- Louis L'Amour

Am I self-righteous? Why not? It's not like I can count on you to be righteous for me.
-- Henry Rollins

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Among all human constructions the only ones that avoid the dissolving hands of time are castles in the air.
-- Frederico de Roberto

A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.
-- Tenneva Jordan

A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.
-- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
-- Sir Thomas Beecham

An actor's a guy who if you ain't talkin' about him, ain't listening.
-- Marlon Brando

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
-- James Michener

An agnostic found himself in trouble, and a friend suggested that he pray. "How can I pray when I do not know whether or not there is a God?" he asked. "If you are lost in the forest," his friend replied, "you do not wait until you find someone before shouting for help."
-- Dan Plies

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.
-- Erasmus

An "Aim-n-Flame" fireplace lighter cautions, 'Do not use near fire, flame or sparks.'
-- www.mlaw.org

An amendment to a motion may be amended, but an amendment to an amendment to a motion may not be amended. However, a substitute for an amendment to an amendment to a motion may be adopted and the substitute may be amended.
-- The Montana Legislature

An angry man opens his mouth and shuts up his eyes.
-- Cato

An archeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.
-- Agatha Christie

Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them.
-- John Milton

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
-- Gore Vidal

An audience is in many respects no more than a mob under loose control.
-- Artie Shaw

Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves.
-- Louis L'Amour

And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports on it, you know they are just evil lies.
-- Linus Torvalds

And all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won't have to bother doing it themselves.
-- Beth Henley

And almost every one when age,
Disease, or sorrows strike him,
Inclines to think there is a God,
Or something very like Him.
-- Arthur Hugh Clough

And if you think labeling our spruces and firs 'holiday trees' is the solution to the season's wars, just wait until the ACLU realizes what the dictionary already makes clear: That the word 'holiday' itself comes from the Old English 'holy day'.
-- The Wall Street Journal

And I will do all these good works, and I will do them for free! My only reward will be a tombstone that says "Here lies Gomez Addams -- he was good for nothing".
-- The Addams Family

And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.
-- Grandma Moses

And now the sequence of events in no particular order.
-- Dan Rather

And so your ignorant newbie status shows through like a carbuncle under a silk blouse.
-- Jon Parry-McCulloch

And that's the world in a nutshell, an appropriate receptacle.
-- Stan Dunn

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
-- Anaïs Nin

And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
-- Evan Esar

An economist is someone who sees something working in practice and asks whether it would work in principle.
-- Stephen M. Goldfeld

An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he has someone to look up to.
-- Gene Fowler

An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.

An Englishman thinks seated; a Frenchman, standing; an American, pacing; an Irishman, afterward.
-- Austin O'Malley

An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
-- Orlando A. Battista

An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
-- John Cage

A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.
-- Jerome Lawrence

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die out, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
-- Max Planck

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.
-- Henry Fielding

An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly, but he always decides.
-- John H. Patterson

An expert is an ordinary fellow from another town.
-- J. Vernon McGee

[An expert is] somebody who is more than 50 miles from home, has no responsibility for implementing the advice he gives, and shows slides.
-- Edwin Meese

Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
-- Jean Cocteau

Anger as soon as fed is dead
'Tis starving makes it fat.
-- Emily Dickinson

Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.
-- H.G. Bohn

Anger is seldom without argument but seldom with a good one.
-- George Savile, Marquess de Halifax

Animals feed; man eats. Only the man of intellect and judgment knows how to eat.
-- Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

An inch of time is an inch of gold.
-- Pavan's Fortune Cookie

An incompetent lawyer can delay a trial for months or years. A competent lawyer can delay one even longer.
-- Evelle Younger

An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.
-- Konrad Adenauer

An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.
-- Dan Rather

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
-- Ernest Hemingway

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
-- Pliny the Younger

An open mind, like an open window, should be screened to keep the bugs out.
-- Virginia Hutchinson

An optimist see a glass half full, a pessimist sees it half empty ... a Cub fan wonders when it's gonna spill.
-- Mike Royko

A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side.
-- Anne Morrow Lindberg

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
-- Edith Warton

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.
-- Lewis Thomas

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.
-- John Marshall

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
-- Gore Vidal

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.
-- Alice Walker

Anybody can win unless there happens to be a second entry.
-- George Ade

Anybody tells you that money is the root of all evil doesn't have any.
-- Ben Affleck, Boiler Room

Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography.
-- Robert Byrne

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
-- Charles McCabe

Any discipline with the name "-- Studies" is the abode of charlatans.
-- Gerry Harbison

Any doctrine that weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state.
-- John Dewey

Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.
-- Lee Simonson

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.
-- Sam Rayburn

Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment -- the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
-- Jorge Luis Borges

Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.
-- Leonard Woolf

Anyone can be elected governor. I'm proof of that.
-- Joe Frank Harris, two-term Georgia Governor

Anyone can say 'no'. It is the first word a child learns and often the first word he speaks. It is a cheap word because it requires no explanation, and many men and women have acquired a reputation for intelligence who know only this word and have used it in place of thought on every occasion.
-- Chuck Jones

Anyone can sit down and write some boring artistic song. Pop music is the hardest [stuff] to write.
-- Britney Spears

Anyone who by his actions and thoughts -- yes, his thoughts -- encroaches on the unity of the socialist state, we will destroy them and their kin.
-- Josef Stalin

Anyone who can walk to the welfare office can walk to work.
-- Al Capp

Anyone who eats three meals a day should understand why cookbooks outsell sex books three to one.
-- L.M. Boyd

Any party which takes credit for the rain must not be surprised if its opponents blame it for the drought.
-- Dwight Morrow

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.
-- Epictetus

Any programming language is at its best before it is implemented and used.

Anything is possible, anything can happen. On a flimsy ground of reality, imagination spins marvelous patterns.
-- August Strindberg

Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.
-- Max Beerbohm

Any time not spent on love is wasted.
-- Torquato Tasso

Anytime you see a Hungarian, kick him. He'll know why.

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Any young person who has studied Heidegger; or seen Ionesco's 'plays'; or listened to the 'music' of John Cage; or looked at Andy Warhol's 'paintings'- has experienced that feeling of incredulous puzzlement: But this is nonsense! Can I really be expected to take this seriously?

In fact, of course, it is necessary for it to be nonsense; if it made sense, it could be evaluated. The essence of modern intellectual snobbery is the 'emperor's new cloths' approach. Teachers, critics, our self-appointed intellectual elite, make it quite clear to us that if we cannot see the superlative nature of this 'art'- why, it merely shows our ignorance, our lack of sophistication and insight. Of course, they go beyond the storybook emperor's tailors, who dressed their victim in nothing and called it fine garments. The modern tailors dress the emperor in garbage.
-- Ron Merrill

Apathy is a sort of living oblivion.
-- Horace Greeley

Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.
-- Bodie Thoene

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
-- Edward Abbey

A penny will hide the biggest star in the universe if you hold it close enough to your eye.
-- Samuel Grafton

APHORISM, n. A concise, clever statement.
AFTERISM, n. A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.
-- James Alexander Thom

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
-- Diane Arbus

A plumber never bites his nails.

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
-- Randall Jarrell

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.
-- Edmond de Goncourt

A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's statesman.
-- David Lloyd George

A politician thinks of the next election -- a statesman, of the next generation.
-- James Freeman Clarke

A politician will always tip off his true belief by stating the opposite at the beginning of the sentence. For maximum comprehension, do not start listening until the first clause is concluded. Begin instead at the word "but" which begins the second, or active, clause. This is the way to tell a liberal from a conservative -- before they tell you. Thus: "I have always believed in a strong national defense, second to none, but ... " (a liberal, about to propose a $20 billion defense cut).
-- Frank Mankiewicz

A politician will do anything to keep his job -- even become a patriot.
-- William Randolph Hearst

A politician wouldn't dream of being allowed to call a columnist the things a columnist is allowed to call a politician.
-- Max Lerner

A poor idea well written is more likely to be accepted than a good idea poorly written.
-- Isaac Asimov

A popular manufactured fireplace log warns: 'Caution -- Risk of Fire.'
-- www.mlaw.org

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
-- Herm Albright

A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!
-- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Summatra"

Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench to pound in the correct screw.

A prescription of sleeping pills says, 'Warning: May cause drowsiness.'
-- www.mlaw.org

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
-- Duke Ellington

A problem is something you have hopes of changing. Anything else is a fact of life.
-- C.R. Smith

A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.
-- Alistair Cooke

A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing.
-- Joey Adams

A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that your wife will give you for free.
-- Tom Antion

Aquavit is also considered useful for medicinal purposes, an essential ingredient in what I was once told is the Norwegian cure for the common cold. You get a bottle, a poster bed, and the brightest colored stocking cap you can find. You put the cap on the post at the foot of the bed, then get into bed and drink aquavit until you can't see the cap. I've never tried this, but it sounds as though it should work.
-- Peter Nelson

[Arabs] never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
-- Abba Eban

A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives.

A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor recorded the following on the patient's chart: "Patient failed to fulfill his wellness potential.
-- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)

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.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel

A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.
-- Joseph Hall

Are we almost done with entertainment based on humiliation, teenage girl singers, prefab boy bands and rap, or is this an eternal punishment?
-- Chuck Lorre, TV producer

"Are you lost, daddy?" I asked tenderly. "Shut up," he explained.
-- Ring Lardner

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.
-- Richard Bach

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark

A right without an attendant responsibility is as unreal as a sheet of paper which has only one side.
-- Felix Morley

A=r+p (Adventure equals risk plus purpose)
-- Robert McClure

Artificial intelligence has the same relation to intelligence as artificial flowers have to flowers.
-- David Parnas

Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched.
-- Maria Edgeworth

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.
-- Pablo Picasso

Art is a service, not a product. Created beauty is a relationship, and a relationship with the Holy at that. Reducing such work to 'content' is like praying in swear words. End of Sermon. Back to business.
-- John Perry Barlow

Art is either plagiarism or revolution
-- Paul Gauguin

Art is like a shipwreck; it's every man for himself.
-- Marcel Duchamp

Art is man's expression of his joy in labour.
-- William Morris

Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.
-- Rita Mae Brown

Art is not going to change anybody's life or change society. Art is just a form of very high-class entertainment.
-- Robert Rosenblum

Art is the signature of civilization.
-- Beverly Sills

Artists -- by definition innocent -- don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.
-- Ned Rorem

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid.
-- Jules Feiffer

Artists like cats; soldiers like dogs.
-- Desmond Morris

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
-- Jean Cocteau

As a general rule of thumb, never trust anybody who's been in therapy for more than 15 percent of their life span. The words "I am sorry" and "I am wrong" will have totally disappeared from their vocabulary. They will stab you, shoot you, break things in your apartment, say horrible things to your friends and family, and then justify this abhorrent behavior by saying: "Sure, I put your dog in the microwave. But I feel *better* for doing it."
-- Bruce Feirstein

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
-- Matt Cartmill

As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman.
-- Adam Michnik

As a rule, there is no surer way to the dislike of men than to behave well where they have behaved badly.
-- Lew Wallace

A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people.
-- Peter McArthur

A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation.
-- Max Gluckman

ASCII, n The control code for all beginning programmers and those who would become computer literate. Etymologically, the term has come down as a contraction of the often-repeated phrase "ascii and you shall receive."
-- Robb Russon

A seminar on time travel will be held two weeks ago.
-- Tom Antion

As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
-- Joseph Brodsky

As for geopolitical concerns that we shouldn't be dependent for our energy on people who hate us, that sword has two edges. The producing countries need oil revenues at least as much as we need oil. If they stop pumping, we would carpool, but they would starve.
-- Stephen J. Entin

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
-- John A. Shedd

A side benefit of the new and developing technologies is that soon we won't have to feel guilty about the suffering and denigration of the animals because we will have made them up.
-- Joy Williams

A sine curve goes off to infinity, or at least the end of the blackboard.
-- Professor Steiner

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
-- Josef Stalin

A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world.
-- Leo Buscaglia

As in the case of many misanthropes, his disdain for people led him into a profession designed to serve them.
-- Toni Morrison

As I said before, I never repeat myself.
-- Tom Antion

Asking an incumbent member of Congress to vote for term limits is a bit like asking a chicken to vote for Colonel Sanders.
-- Bob Inglis

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.
-- John Osborn

Ask not what your teammates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your teammates.
-- Magic Johnson

Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are like us.' Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are not like us.' Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.
-- Professor Charles R. Magel

A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit.
-- August 1993 issue, page 9, of PS magazine, the Army's magazine of preventive maintenance

As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure.
-- John Dewey

As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.
-- Beaumarchais

As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to 'do what the people want,' instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically.
-- Antonin Scalia

As long as men are liable to die and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he will be well paid.
-- Jean de La Bruyère

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.
-- Dick Cavett

As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.
-- Eugene McCarthy

As long as the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader...If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.
-- Samuel Adams

As long as there are two nations, two parties, two sexes or even two people there are going to be divisions. And all the talk in the world isn't going to change that. Thank goodness!
-- Lyn Nofziger

As long as we're going to reinvent the wheel again, we might as well try making it round this time.
-- Mike Dennison

[A]s long as you're comfortable it feels like freedom.
-- Billy Bragg

A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy.
-- Publilius Syrus

A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
-- American Proverb

A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.
-- Henry de Jouvenel

As of December 2002, translation software is almost good enough to turn grammatically correct, slang-free text from one language into grammatically incorrect, barely readable approximations in another.
-- Carl Tashian

As one goes through life one learns that if you don't paddle your own canoe, you don't move.
-- Katherine Hepburn

As one grows older one becomes more critical of oneself and less of other people.
-- Basil Rathbone

As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs; a process that traditionally requires some debugging.
-- USA Today describing the IRS conversion to a new computer system

A speculator is a man who observes the future, and acts before it occurs.
-- Bernard M. Baruch

A speech is a solemn responsibility. The man who makes a bad thirty-minute speech to two hundred people wastes only a half hour of his own time. But he wastes one hundred hours of the audience's time -- more than four days -- which should be a hanging offense.
-- Jenkin Lloyd Jones

As she lay there dozing next to me, one voice inside my head kept saying, "Relax...you are not the first doctor to sleep with one of his patients," but another kept reminding me, 'Howard, you are a veterinarian.'"
-- Dick Wilson

As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.
-- Maurice Wilkes, 1949

A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service.
-- Georges Pompidou

As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.
-- Jack Handey

As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.
-- Richard E. Burton

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
-- Socrates

Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology, phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of distant planets. This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway.
-- James J. Kilpatrick

A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: Duh.
-- Conan O'Brien

A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything is last year.
-- Marty Allen

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.
-- Sidney Greenberg

A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.
-- Bette Davis

A sweetheart is a bottle of wine; a wife is a wine bottle.
-- Charles Baudelaire

As your attorney, I advise you to not listen to reason.
-- Wiley Miller, in Non Sequitur

At 38 years, I finally got me the woman that said those six words I wanted all my life to hear: "My dad owns a liquor store."
-- Mark Klein

A taste for Ingmar Bergman films is the modern substitute for attending hangings.
-- John McCarthy

At dinner time he would sit in a corner, concentrating, and suddenly they would say, "Time to feed the cat," as if it were their own idea.
-- Lillian Jackson Braun

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on a cold iron.
-- Horace Mann

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.
-- Mickey Mantle

At first glance, there's a lot of sex on the Internet. Or not at first glance: nobody can find anything on the Internet at first glance.
-- Senator Patrick Leahy

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done -- then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.
-- Frances Hodgson Burnett

Atheism requires too much faith.
-- Andrew C. Bulhak

Athens built the Acropolis. Corinth was a commercial city, interested in purely materialistic things. Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth.
-- Dr. Harold Urey

A thick skin is a gift from God.
-- Konrad Adenauer

A thousand dollars invested at just 8% for 400 years grows to $23 quadrillion. But the first 100 years are the hardest.
-- Sidney Homer

a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me.
-- John Wesley

At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.
-- Eric Idle

At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer.
-- Marshall Lumsden

At one point, the Model A Ford looked great, right? But as times changed, engineers figured out ways to make it better. They don't do that in Washington, and that's sad.
-- Ross Perot

A toy car is a projection of a real car, made small enough for a child's hand and imagination to grasp. A real car is a projection of a toy car, made large enough for an adult's hand and imagination to grasp.
-- Michael Frayn

Attempts by some teachers to adjust school curricula to incorporate programs that children watch on television suggest a new means of 'leading' children by running after them as quickly as possible.
-- Joel Meyrowitz

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.
-- Salvador Dali

At the end of Bach's religious works appears the phrase Soli Deo Gloria -- to God alone the glory. Even in his secular music he often wrote at the head the letters I.N.J., meaning In Nomine Jesu. Bach's music constitute the most profound and magnificent body of work by a single mind, in any field, in the long human chronicle. Bach exhausted the possibilities of music in his time with a brilliance that exhausts superlatives. In him, as with few other artists of awesome fertility, ones sees the closest humanity can come to the boundless fecundity of nature, which generates forms and glories and tragedies beyond measure.
-- Jan Swafford

At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when He brought some people into being.
-- Friedrich Otto Hertz

At the risk of some oversimplification, if the skill composition of our work force meshed fully with the needs of our increasingly complex capital-stock, wage-skill differentials would be stable, and the percentage changes in wage rates would be the same for all job grades.
-- Alan Greenspan

At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.
-- Erica Jong

A tulip doesn't strive to impress anyone. It doesn't struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn't have to. It is different. And there's room in the garden for every flower.
-- Marianne Williamson

At what engine RPM should I be concerned about causing damage?
Anything above 0. We've found that at an RPM of 0, engine damage is extremely rare -- though not unheard of if my brother is working on the car.
-- Tom Magliozzi

A typical day in the life of a heavy metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting.
-- Billy Joel

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
-- John Ciardi

Authority without wisdom is like a heavy ax without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
-- Anne Bradstreet

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
-- Tennessee Williams

Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.
-- Brian Eno

A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything that can have children.
-- David Brenner

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.
-- Paul Dudley White

A violinist had a violin, a painer his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for.
-- Josephine Baker

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
-- Colin Powell

A war undertaken without sufficient monies has but a wisp of force. Coins are the very sinews of battles.
-- François Rabelais

A website about coffee is a bit like a radio show about ventriloquism. Undeterred, we thought we'd have a go anyway.
-- www.matthew-algie.co.uk

A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance, and tenacity. The order varies for any given year.
-- Paul Sweeney

A wedding is just like a funeral except that you get to smell your own flowers.
-- Grace Hansen

Aw, how could he (Jorge Orta) lose the ball in the sun, he's from Mexico?
-- Harry Caray

A wife lasts only for the length of the marriage, but an ex-wife is there for the rest of your life.
-- Jim Samuels

A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.
-- Thomas à Kempis

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything.
-- African Proverb

A wise man seeks much counsel...a fool listens to all of it.
-- Larry Burkett

A wise man will keep his suspicions muzzled, but he will keep them awake.
-- George Savile, Marquess de Halifax

A wise man will not communicate his differing thoughts to unprepared minds, or in a disorderly manner.
-- Benjamin Whichcote

A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed.
-- Coco Chanel

A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times over for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride -- for the opening or the shutting of a door.
-- Stendhal

A woman's life is a history of the affections.
-- Washington Irving

A wonderful discovery -- psychoanalysis. Makes quite simple people feel they're complex.
-- Samuel N. Behrman

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.
-- Jean Paul Sartre

A year from now you will wish you had started today.
-- Karen Lamb

Aye, fight! But not your neighbor. Fight rather all the things that cause you and your neighbor to fight.
-- Mikhail Naim

Baby stroller warning label: to 'Remove child before folding.'
-- www.mlaw.org

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.
-- Socrates

Bad music disturbs me, but wonderful music disturbs me even more.
-- Arturo Benedetti Michelangelli

Bad news isn't wine. It doesn't improve with age.
-- Colin Powell

Bart, with $10,000, we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like...love!
-- Homer Simpson

Base 8 is just like base 10, if you are missing two fingers.
-- Tom Lehrer

Baseball has done more to move America in the right direction than all of the professional patriots with all their cheap words.
-- Monte Irvin

Baseball hasn't been the national pastime for many years now -- no sport is. The national pastime, like it or not, is watching television.
-- Bob Greene

Baseball is all individual. If you've got nine guys doing their jobs, you've got a team. The only thing I can do when Harold Baines is at the plate is to root for him. There's no chemistry for me because I'm not at the plate. Chemistry is not the right word. I don't know what the right word is, but chemistry is not it.
-- Eric Davis

Baseball is a lot like life. The line drives are caught, the squibbers go for base hits. It's an unfair game.
-- Rod Kanehl

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants to quit when you're ahead.
-- Jackie Robinson

Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?
-- Jim Bouton

Basic research is like shooting an arrow into the air and where it lands, painting a target.
-- Homer Adkins

December 32, 1999:
We're pleased to report no Y2K failures!

Be alert to the beginnings of evil. It never comes under the appearance of evil, but always under the appearance of the beautiful, the promising, the idealistic, the pleasant...The fatal mistake often comes as a result of unexamined moral sentiments: affects and feelings that serve as moral guideposts without submitting to interrogation by reason.
-- Michael Novak

Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away.
-- George Brossin Mére

Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
-- Redd Foxx

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
-- Epictetus

Because I'm fat, people believe I'm somehow vulnerable and easy to handle in a negotiation. Ever try to negotiate with a fat guy? We can be mean: Marvin Davis, Harvey Weinstein, Hermann Goering. No one screws around with us for long.
-- Bernie Brillstein

Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.
-- John R. Searle

Be ever questioning. Ignorance is not bliss. It is oblivion. You don't go to heaven if you die dumb. Become better informed. Lean from others' mistakes. You could not live long enough to make them all yourself.
-- Admiral Hyman Rickover

Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need more.
-- Addison H. Hallock

Before I was married, I had a hundred theories about raising children and no children. Now, I have three children and no theories.
-- John Wilmot

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.
-- Marilyn Monroe

Before most people start boasting about their family tree, they usually do a good pruning job.
-- Orlando A. Battista

Before the college football season...Kansas had to rebuild a defense that couldn't stop a pack of sousaphone players.
-- Sam Walker

Before we work on artificial intelligence why don't we do something about natural stupidity?
-- Steve Polyak

Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers.
-- Gene Wolfe

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
-- Og Mandino

Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.
-- Scottish Proverb

Behavioral psychology is the science of pulling habits out of rats.
-- Dr. Douglas Busch

Behind every successful man is a surprised mother-in-law.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey

Being a newspaper columnist is like being married to a nymphomaniac. It's great for the first two weeks.
-- Lewis Grizzard

Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to get insulted.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.
-- Lawrence Kasdan

Being defeated is often only a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
-- Marilyn vos Savant

Being Gray Davis is like owning a cemetery, you've got a lot of people under you but nobody's listening.
-- Argus Hamilton

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important.
-- Eugene McCarthy

Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.
-- Karl Wallenda

Being politically correct means always having to say you're sorry.

Believe me, the power and pleasure and the emotion of this moment is a constant speed of light.
-- Tom Hanks (on receiving the Best Actor for Forrest Gump)

Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.
-- Dinah Mulock Craik

Believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts.
-- F.F. Bosworth

Believing is seeing. It's much more effective than the old notion that seeing is believing.
-- Terrence Deal

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
-- John Wooden

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
-- Thomas à Kempis

Be not anxious about what you have, but about what you are.
-- Pope Gregory I

Besides, government workers can't seem to run a railroad, count the votes or deliver my monthly copy of Swank, so what makes everybody think they're so skilled at this whole determine-who-should-live-and-die thing?
-- Bob Van Voris

Besides, once you give storms rednecky names like Charley and Earl, they're bound to make landfall *somewhere* in the south.
-- Rick MacKinnon

Best player ever? I'd have to go with the immoral Babe Ruth.
-- Johnny Logan, Baseball Player

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.
-- Oprah Winfrey

Be the second to go in the water. That way, the alligator will eat the first guy in, and you can know what to avoid.
-- Chug

Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad.
-- Christina Rossetti

Better not take a dog on the space shuttle, because if he sticks his head out when you're coming home his face might burn up.
-- Jack Handey

Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare.
-- John Dryden

Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.
-- B.C. Forbes

Between the great things we cannot do, and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing.
-- Adolph Monod

Be virtuous and you'll be happy? Nonsense! Be happy and you'll begin to be virtuous.
-- James Gould Cozzens

Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.
-- Demosthenes

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
-- Donald Knuth

Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
-- Leonard Brandwein

Beware of substituting reading for thinking. Reading about the thoughts of others is not the same as having thoughts of your own. To be sure, to engage in thinking you need some acquaintance with the thoughts of others. The great thinkers inspire, provoke, confirm, and in other ways help you do your own thinking. But to think you must a some point lay down the book and strike out on your own.
-- Glenn Tinder

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
-- Kurt Vonnegut

Beware, o wanderer, the road is walking too.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Beware prejudices. They are like rats, and men's minds are like traps; prejudices get in easily, but it is doubtful if they ever get out.
-- Lord Jeffrey

Beware the lollipop of mediocrity; lick it once and you'll suck forever.
-- Brian Wilson

Be wary of puppy love; it can lead to a dog's life.
-- Gladiola Montana

Be who you are, say what you think, people that matter don't care, and people that care don't matter.
-- Dr. Seuss

Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the Ready-Aim-Aim-Aim Syndrome. You must be willing to fire.
-- T. Boone Pickens

Beyond its entertainment value, Baywatch has enriched and, in many ways, helped save lives. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to continue with a project which has such significance for so many.
-- David Hasselhoff

Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space.
-- Diana Black

Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand
With a grip that kills it.
-- Rabindranath Tagore

Bill Clinton...has not a creative bone in his body. Therefore he's a bore and will always be a bore.
-- David Brinkley

Bill Clinton's book has already sold more than 600,000 copies. All of them to women who want to see if their name is mentioned.
-- Craig Kilborn

Blame is a neat little device that you can use whenever you don't want to take responsibility for something in your life. Use it and you will avoid all risks and impede your own growth.
-- Wayne Dyer

Blessed is he who expects no gratitude, for he shall not be disappointed.
-- W.C. Bennett

Blutarsky's Axiom: Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason.

Bob Gibson is the luckiest pitcher I ever saw. He always pitches when the other team doesn't score any runs.
-- Tim McCarver

Bodies devoid of mind are as statues in the market place.
-- Euripides

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
-- Plato

Boredom is the keynote of poverty ... for when there is no money there is no change of any kind, not of scene or of routine.
-- Moss Hart

Born? Hell, Babe Ruth wasn't born. He fell from a tree.
-- Joe Dugan

Bosses tend to get the workers they deserve.
-- Martin Wiener

Boston's freeway system was clearly designed by someone who spent his entire life crashing trains.
-- Bill Bryson

Boy, I feel safer now that [Martha Stewart]'s behind bars. O.J. & Kobe are walking around free, Kenneth Lay of Enron is still walking free; Osama Bin Laden too. BUT they take the one woman in America willing to cook, clean and work in the yard and haul her ass to jail.
-- Tim Allen

Brains are still unfashionable for women to wear, and it has always been proof of women's superiority that the more intelligent a man is, the more women admire him, while the bigger fool a woman is, the more men run after her.
-- Dorothea Dix

Brandy and water spoils two good things.
-- Charles Lamb

BROKEE, n. Someone who buys stocks on the advice of a broker.

Bruce Sutter has been around for a while and he's pretty old. He's thirty-five years old, that will give you some idea of how old he is.
-- Ron Fairly, Baseball Announcer

Brutes gaze on sights, they are arrested by sounds; and what they see and what they hear are sights and sounds only. The intellect of man, on the contrary, energises as well as his eye or ear, and perceives in sights or sounds something beyond them.
-- John Henry Newman

Bryant Gumbel's ego has applied for statehood. And if it's accepted, it will be the fifth-largest.
-- Willard Scott

BUG, n. An elusive creature living in a program that makes it incorrect. The activity of "debugging", or removing bugs from a program, ends when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed.
-- Datamation, January 15, 1984

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
-- Terry Pratchett

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.
-- Mary McCarthy

Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness.
-- Stanislaw Lem

But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow... Like a Coach and six -- the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.
-- John Quincy Adams

But I don't like Spam!!!!
-- Monty Python

But make no mistake: the weeds will win; nature bats last.
-- Robert M. Pyle

But never forget that you can only stumble if you're moving.
-- Richard P. Carlton

[B]ut when he [the people's champion] has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
-- Plato

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you -- and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.
-- Newton Minow

Buy straw hats in the wintertime. Summer will surely come.
-- Bernard M. Baruch

By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
-- Claude Adrien Helvétius

By any measure, 2002 was a difficult year for Westar Energy. The company recorded a loss of $793.4 million, 45 percent of book value; the share price dropped to a low of $8.50 from $17.20 at its close December 31,2001; the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the U.S. Attorney's Office commenced investigations of various aspects of past business practices; relations with the Kansas Corporation Commission were severely strained; and liquidity issues became a concern by mid-2002.
-- 2002 Westar Energy Annual report, opening sentence

By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.
-- George Bancroft

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.
-- Vernon Howard

By studying the masters and not their pupils.
-- Niels H. Abel, in reply to a question about how he acquired his expertise

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
-- Charles Wadsworth

By the time you kill and mount what you catch, it has lost that very thing that made it worth having. I knew this only as a vague sense of disappointment at age 10; not until later did I recognize it as a metaphor for much of life.
-- Anna Quindlen (on collecting butterflies)

Called up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms regional office and asked, "What wine goes best with an M-16?" The guy who answered did his best to be helpful: "That depends. What are you smoking?
-- Michael Maciolek

Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder.
-- Nikita Khrushchev

Calm and order can be just as dangerous to democracy as uneasiness and disorder.
-- Hildegard Hamm-Bruecher

Can a course labeled visual literacy enhance anyone's appreciation of the English language?....The best way to protect children from being misled by television or newspapers or politicians for corporations is to broaden their knowledge. As a start they might be taught to read well enough to recognize the ignorance behind a phrase like 'visual literacy.'
-- Walter Goodman

Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It's 2 cents for postage and 30 cents for storage.
-- Gerald Regan

Can you buy friendship? You not only can, you must. It's the only way to obtain friends. Everything worthwhile has a price.
-- Robert J. Ringer

Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this: The communist, seeing the rich man and his fine home, says: "No man should have so much." The capitalist, seeing the same thing, says: "All men should have so much."
-- Phelps Adams

Capitalists are motivated not chiefly by the desire to consume wealth or indulge their appetites, but by the freedom and power to consummate their entrepreneurial ideas.
-- George Gilder

Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.
-- Sarah Orne Jewett

Caramels are only a fad. Chocolate is a permanent thing.
-- Milton Hershey

Careers, like rockets, don't always take off on schedule. The key is to keep working on the engines.
-- Gary Sinise

Carob is a brown powder made from the pulverized fruit of a Mediterranean evergreen. Some consider carob an adequate substitute for chocolate because it has some similar nutrients (calcium, phosphorus), and because it can, when combined with vegetable fat and sugar, be made to approximate the color and consistency of chocolate. Of course, the same arguments can as persuasively be made in favor of dirt.
-- Sandra Boynton

CARPERPETUATION, n. The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

Cartridge for a laser printer warns, 'Do not eat toner.'
-- www.mlaw.org

Catching a flyball is a pleasure, but knowing what to do with it after you catch it is a business.
-- Tommy Henrich

Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.
-- John Wesley

Cats always know whether people like or dislike them. They do not always care enough to do anything about it.
-- Winifred Carriere

Cats are kindly masters, just so long as you remember your place.
-- Paul Gray

Cats are notoriously sore losers. Coming in second best, especially to someone as poorly coordinated as a human being, grates their sensibility.
-- Stephen Baker

Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
-- Jeff Valdez

Cats can't help being curious; it's in their genes. I realize that. But if curiosity killed the cat, this one is asking for it. Other cats are curious -- this cat is downright nosy. What's inside the sink cupboards? Behind the refrigerator? Down the hot-air registers? On top of the television? Beneath the papers on my desk?
-- Maynard Good Stoddard

Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause the most inconvenience.
-- Pam Brown

Cats do not need to be shown how to have a good time, for they are unfailingly ingenious in that respect.
-- James Mason

Cats don't caress us -- they caress themselves on us.
-- Antoine de Rivarol

Celebrity testimonials may help [sell] erectile-dysfunction products, but in politics, they're mainly eye candy for the media.
-- Marty Kaplan

Certain folks are intolerant to the point where hearing others express their faith fills them with outrage and bitterness. But that's a topic for their therapist, not for our school board meetings and town hall hearings.
-- Jim Geraghty

Certainly, it is a world of scarcity. But the scarcity is not confined to iron ore and arable land. The most constricting scarcities are those of character and personality.
-- William R. Allen

Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny
Did you ever try buying them without money?
-- Ogden Nash

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.
-- Simone Signoret

Chance favors the prepared mind.
-- Louis Pasteur

Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.
-- Henry Steele Commager

Change is an easy panacea. It takes character to stay in one place and be happy there.
-- Elizabeth Clarke Dunn

Change is the process by which the future invades our lives.
-- Alvin Toffler

Changing someone's life is not the best, is not wanting to change the other life. It is being who you are that changes another's life. Do you understand?
-- Juliette Binoche

Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero even in the country of his victims.
-- Alan Barth

Character does count. For too long we have gotten along in a society that says the only thing right is to get by and the only thing wrong is to get caught. For me character is simple. Character is doing what's right when nobody is looking.
-- J.C. Watts

Character is made by what you stand for; reputation by what you fall for.
-- Alexander Woollcott

Character is not made in a crisis -- it is only exhibited.
-- Robert Freeman

Character is what you do on the third and fourth tries.
-- James Michener

Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.
-- Phillips Brooks

Charity gives itself rich; covetousness hoards itself poor.
-- German Proverb

Charity is taking an ugly girl to lunch.
-- Warren Beatty

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
-- Napoleon Hill

Children are gutted on my show from stem to stern, but I couldn't have a serial killer say the word 'retard' because that would have been insensitive.
-- Tim Minear (About his show The Inside)

Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
-- Neil Postman

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
-- James Baldwin

Children, like animals, use all their senses to discover the world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way all over again.
-- Eudora Welty

Children who are pushed into adult experience do not become precociously mature. On the contrary, they cling to childhood longer, perhaps all their lives.
-- Peter Neubauer

Chocolate causes certain endocrine glands to secrete hormones that affect your feelings and behavior by making you happy. Therefore, it counteracts depression, in turn reducing the stress of depression. Your stress-free life helps you maintain a youthful disposition, both physically and mentally. So, eat lots of chocolate!
-- Elaine Sherman

Chocolate is cheaper than therapy and you don't need an appointment.

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded
That all of the Apostles would have done as they did.
-- Lord Byron

CIA Director George Tenet briefed a Senate panel ... about the current situation in Iraq. He described how cash was being stolen and women were being assaulted with impunity. Senators love to attend these continuing education seminars.
-- Argus Hamilton

Civility costs nothing and buys everything.
-- Susannah Centlivre

Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.
-- Herbert Spencer

Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort.
-- José Ortega y Gasset

Classical music is at odds with contemporary culture precisely because of its insistence on the tension between the bodily and intellectual, the material and the spiritual, the thinglike and its transcendence in thought. A culture that is merely sensuous and that denies the activity of the mind within sensuous materials risks becoming pornographic.
-- Julian Johnson

Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.
-- Jean Francois Revel

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
-- Amiel

Climbers aim for the summit because it is there. Bungee jumpers dive off the top because they aren't all there.
-- Jessica Seigel

Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.
-- Barbara Bush

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup

Coach: Can I draw you a beer, Norm?
Norm: No, I know what they look like. Just pour me one.
-- Cheers

Coach: How's a beer sound, Norm?
Norm: I dunno. I usually finish them before they get a word in.
-- Cheers

Collective judgement of new ideas is so often wrong that it is arguable that progress depends on individuals being free to back their own judgement despite collective disapproval.
-- W.A. Lewis

Collectivism takes on many guises and seldom uses its own real name. Words like 'community' and 'social' soothe us into thinking that collectivist decision-making is somehow higher and nobler than individual or 'selfish' decision-making. But the cold fact is that communities do not make decisions. Individuals who claim to speak for the community impose their decisions on us all.
-- Doug Bandow

Colleges don't make fools. They only develop them.
-- George H. Lorimer

College students are the worst consumers in the world; they want the least, not the most, for their money.
-- Walter J. Hipple

Comedy is a man in trouble. And without it, there's no humor.
-- Jerry Lewis

Comedy is tragedy... plus time.
-- Carol Burnett

Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are.
Come, my friend, and remember that the rich have butlers and no friends,
And we have friends and no butlers.
-- Ezra Pound

Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare.
-- Blair Houghton

Committing to a lifetime of wellness is not a luxury -- it's a necessity. You'll never have enough time; you have to make the time.
-- Oprah Winfrey

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
-- Clive James

Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule.
-- David Guaspari

Competition brings out the best in products, and the worst in people.
-- David Sarnoff

Complete equality isn't compatible with democracy, but it is a agreeable to totalitarianism. After all the only way to ensure the equality of the slothful, the inept and the immoral is to suppress everyone else.
-- Iain Benson

Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line -- and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?
-- Jesse Helms

Computer Science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes.
-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

Computer scientists are smarter than mathematicians. It took computer scientists only 30 years to do what it took mathematicians 300 years to do. Become irrelevant.
-- David Kuck

Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.
-- Nikita Khrushchev

Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.
-- Martial

Concentration is the ability to think about absolutely nothing when it is absolutely necessary.
-- Ray Knight

Concentration-wise, we're having trouble crossing the line mentally from a toughness standpoint.
-- Bill Parcells, after a loss

Conflict acting on intelligence creates imagination. Faced with conflict, creatures are forced to imagine what will happen, where the next threat will come from. If there has never been conflict, imagination never develops. Wits arise in answer to danger, to pain, to tragedy. No one ever got smarter eating easy apples.
-- Sheri S. Tepper

Conformists look around and follow closely; Nonconformists look around and do the opposite. Individualists don't look around a lot.
-- Eromon D'Alyzala

Confound these ancestors... They've stolen our best ideas!
-- Ben Jonson

Congratulations on breaking my record. I always thought the record would stand until it was broken.
-- Yogi Berra

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens -- and then everybody disagrees.
-- Boris Marshalov

Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Consideration touches more deeply and longer than passion.
-- James Crumley

Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.
-- Jacob Braude

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.
-- Gertrude Stein

Consider the following axioms carefully:
"Everything's better when it sits on a Ritz."
and
"Everything's better with Blue Bonnet on it."
What happens if one spreads Blue Bonnet margarine on a Ritz cracker? The thought is frightening. Is this how God came into being? Try not to consider the fact that "Things go better with Coke".

Consistency is a human word, but it certainly expresses nothing human.
-- Letitia E. Landon

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
-- Bernard Berenson

Constancy, far from being a virtue, seems often to be the besetting sin of the human race, daughter of laziness and self-sufficiency, sister of sleep, the cause of most wars and practically all persecutions.
-- Freya Stark

Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.
-- William Howard Taft

Container of underarm deodorant says, 'Caution: Do not spray in eyes.'
-- www.mlaw.org

Contemporary Democrats are people who can't stand the idea that someone, somewhere is experiencing good news.
-- Rich Lowry

Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.
-- Thomas Haliburton

Continuity does not rule out fresh approaches to fresh situations.
-- Dean Rusk

Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion.
-- Dwight Macdonald

Corduroy pillows: They're making headlines!

Corporate socialism -- the privatization of profit and the socialization of risks and misconduct -- is displacing capitalist canons. This condition prevents an adaptable capitalism, served by equal justice under law, from delivering higher standards of living and enlarging its absorptive capacity for broader community and environmental values. Civic and political talent must call for a decent separation of corporation and state.
-- Ralph Nader

Could anything be absurder than a man? The animal who knows everything about himself -- except why he was born and the meaning of his unique existence.
-- Storm Jameson

Could I climb to the highest place in Athens, I would lift my voice and proclaim -- fellow-citizens, why do ye turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth, and take so little care of your children, to whom one day you must relinquish it all?
-- Socrates

Could you tell night from day?
No, I regard all such distinctions as logically impossible.
-- Heraclitus

Country music is three chords and the truth.
-- Harlan Howard

Courage comes and goes. Hold on for the next supply.
-- Thomas Merton

Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.
-- Eddie Rickenbacker

Courage is more than standing for a firm conviction. It includes the risk of questioning that conviction.
-- Julian Weber Gordon

Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things.
-- Amelia Earhart

Courage... is when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.
-- Harper Lee

Cowardice ... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
-- Ernest Hemingway

Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
-- Wernher von Braun

Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time when people finally realize you were right, they'll say it was obvious all along.
-- Alan Ashley-Pitt

Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.
-- Clarence Day

Credit cards are like mosquitoes. You can keep them away for a while, but sooner or later they will be back to suck your blood.
-- Ted Steckley

Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
-- Charles Lamb

Crime expands according to our willingness to put up with it.
-- Barry Farber

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They're there every night, they see it done every night, they see how it should be done every night, but they can't do it themselves.
-- Brendan Behan

Critics? I love every bone in their heads.
-- Eugene O'Neill

Cucifixes are sexy because they've got a naked man on the front.
-- Madonna

Culture is about making meaning as much as it is about making money. In the West, we don't make meaning anymore -- we make poisonously unsatisfying replicas of meaning -- brand names, Mickey Mouse, TV celebrities. If you give people no opportunity to create meaning in their lives, you can sell them ersatz pseudo-meaning over and over forever. They'll never be satisfied, they'll always be desperate to buy more. The more they eat, the hungrier they'll be.
-- Mark McDonough

Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who when their turn comes, will manufacture professors.
-- Simone Weil

Curious things, habits. People themselves never know they have them.
-- Agatha Christie

Curmudgeons never watch "Must See TV" -- and they know the very term is a contradiction.
-- Jon Winkour

Cutting corners no doubt makes the job easier for the government, but making the government's job easier is rarely a priority. Preserving the Constitution, fighting off the nibblers and chippers, even nibblers and chippers with good intentions, was once regarded by conservatives as the first duty of the citizen. It still is.
-- Wesley Pruden

Cynicism is a cheap substitute for sophistication. You don't actually have to learn anything.
-- John McCarthy

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. It is the dishonest businessman's substitute for conscience. It is the communicator's substitute, whether he is advertising man or editor or writer, for self-respect.
-- Russell Lynes

Dad gave me two pieces of advice. One was, "No matter how good you think you are, there are people better than you." But he was an optimist too; his other advice: "Never worry about rejection. Every day is a new beginning."
-- John Ritter

Dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn't teach me everything he knows.
-- Al Unser, Jr

Data, data everywhere, but no one knows a thing.
-- Roger Kimball

David Cone is in a class by himself with three or four other players.
-- George Steinbrenner

Dear Lord: The gods have been good to me. For the first time in my life, everything is absolutely perfect just the way it is. So here's the deal: You freeze everything the way it is, and I won't ask for anything more. If that is OK, please give me absolutely no sign. OK, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, give me no sign. Thy will be done.
-- Homer Simpson

Dear Mr Noman, does it ever strike you,
The more we see of you, the less we like you?
-- Hilaire Belloc

Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.
-- Margaret Mitchell

Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.
-- John Dryden

Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.
-- A. Sachs

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
-- Rabindranath Tagore

Death is only a state of mind. Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else.

Debts make free men slaves.
-- Menander

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
-- Brian W. Kernighan

"Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah, those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly blessed.
-- Randy Davis

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.
-- George E. Woodberry

Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it.
-- Josephus Daniels

Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.
-- Evan Esar

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.
-- Charles Hole

Democracies don't prepare well for things that have never happened before.
-- Richard A. Clarke

Democracy can learn some things from Communism: for example, when a Communist politician is through, he is through.

Democracy cannot be forced upon a society, neither is it a gift that can be held forever. It has to be struggled hard for and defended everyday anew.
-- Heinz Galinski

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.
-- Alan Coren

Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
-- Irving Kristol

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.
-- John Simon

Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.
-- Plato

Democracy ... is a system of self-determination. It's the right to make the wrong choice.
-- John Patrick

Democracy is based on the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
-- Robert Byrne

Democracy is messy. It is messy whether you've been doing it since 1789 or whether you're going to do it for the first time in 2005. The trouble with Democracy is, you hold elections. The trouble with dictatorships is...you don't.
-- Rich Galen

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles.
-- Abbie Hoffman

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.
-- Clement Atlee

Democracy means having the choice. Dictatorship means being given the choice.
-- Jeannine Luczak

Democracy means: Sticking to the rules of the game, even when the referee is not looking.
-- Manfred Hausmann

Democracy without morality is impossible.
-- Jack Kemp

Democrats may be in the minority in Congress, but we speak for the majority of Americans.
-- Ted Kennedy

Demythologized, we might say that our idolatrous tendency consists in thinking that our own estimation of our own worth and value can be the main or exclusive criterion by which we judge the worth and value of all other species.
-- Reverend Andrew Linzey

Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember, it didn't help the rabbit.
-- R.E. Shay

Designing an object to be simple and clear takes at least twice as long as the usual way. It requires concentration at the outset on how a clear and simple system would work, followed by the steps required to make it come out that way -- steps which are often much harder and more complex than the ordinary ones. It also requires relentless pursuit of that simplicity even when obstacles appear which would seem to stand in the way of that simplicity.
-- T.H. Nelson

Despair is like forward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness. It grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head.
-- Pierre Charron

Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief or dogma. It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is counterfeit and what is genuine. And a recognition of how costly it may be to fail to do so. To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own allegiances. To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim.
-- Robert S. DeBear

Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of freedom.
-- Walter Savage Landor

Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.
-- Joseph Heller

Destiny is an invention of the cowardly and the resigned.
-- Ignazio Silone

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
-- William Jennings Bryan

Development is when you know the answer, but not how to get there. Applied research is when you know the question, but not the answer. Pure research is when you don't know the question.
-- Nick MacLaren

Deviants are sacrificed to increase group solidarity
-- Jenny Holzer

Diamonds are a girl's best friend. Dogs are a man's best friend. Now you know which sex is smarter.
-- Tom Antion

Dictators are rulers who always look good until the last ten minutes.
-- Jan Masaryk

Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.
-- Alberto Moravia

Dictum on television scripts: We don't want it good -- we want it Tuesday.
-- Dennis Norden

Didja ever notice that a dead high school jock is a "tragedy," but a dead high school geek is just dead?
-- David Rosenfeld

Did nothing in particular, and did it very well.
-- W.S. Gilbert

Did you ever notice they never take any fat hostages? You never see a guy coming out of Lebanon going: I was held hostage for seven months and I lost 175 pounds, I feel good and I look good and I learned self-discipline. That's the important thing.
-- Dennis Leary

Did you ever walk in a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives.
-- Sue Murphy

Did you hear that there's a group of South American Indians that worship the number zero?
Is nothing sacred?

Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
-- John Barrymore (Last words)

different schools of physics can quarrel for years with no firm resolution on either side? If this is so then how is it fair to imprison a person in a mental hospital for life with no trial and no jury and no parole for failing to understand reality? By this criterion should not all but a handful of the world's most advanced physicists be locked up for life? Who is crazy here and who is sane?
-- Robert Pirsig

Diplomacy is the art of letting the other party have things your way.
-- Daniele Vare

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
-- Wynn Catlin

Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.
-- Frederick the Great

Discipline yourself and others won't have to.
-- John Wooden

Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
-- Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi

Dishonesty, cowardice and duplicity are never impulsive.
-- George A. Knight

Dissatisfaction with possession and achievement is one of the requisites to further achievement.
-- John Hope

Distance is a great promoter of admiration!
-- Denis Diderot

Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep and with great sacrifice to their first wives.
-- Roy Blount, Jr.

Doctors are busy playing God when so few of us have the qualifications. And besides, the job is taken.
-- Bernie S. Siegel

Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
-- Dick Brandon

DOE is updating a policy to prevent the unauthorized use of US nuclear weapons and explosives.
-- Tri-Valley Herald newspaper

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

Does the restaurant that invented the fried Twinkie have a hostess?
-- Bob Kevoian

Dogs often remind us of the human, all-too human. Cats, never.
-- Mason Cooley

Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then I contradict myself,
I am large, I contain multitudes.
-- Walt Whitman

Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.
-- Steuart H. Britt

Dollars cannot buy yesterday.
-- Admiral Harold R. Stark

Dollars have never been known to produce character, and character will never by produced by money.
-- W.K. Kellogg

Do not attempt to do a thing unless you are sure of yourself; but do not relinquish it simply because someone else is not sure of you.
-- Stewart E. White

Do not chose to be wrong for the sake of being different.
-- Herbert Samuel

Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon.

Do not go from the slavery of the Communist regime to the slavery of consumerism.
-- Pope John Paul II

Do not imagine that art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French for life-jacket.
-- Julian Barnes

Do not join encounter groups. If you enjoy being made to feel inadequate, call your mother.
-- Liz Smith

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
-- John Wooden

Do not look directly into laser beam with remaining eye.
-- Sign in Sandia Labs

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.
-- Phillips Brooks

Do not seek death; death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
-- Dag Hammarskjold

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.
-- Horace Mann

Do not trust governments more than governments trust their own people.
-- Andrei Sakharov

Do not trust the cheering, for those persons would cheer just as much if you and I were going to be hanged.
-- Oliver Cromwell

Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either. Just leave me alone.

Do not worry about which side your bread is buttered on: you eat BOTH sides.

Don't approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.
-- Jewish Proverb

Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut.
-- Daniel Greenberg

Don't bargain for fish which are still in the water.
-- Indian Proverb

Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
-- David Lloyd George

Don't be too sweet lest you be eaten up; don't be too bitter lest you be spewed out.
-- Jewish Proverb

Don't call me son unless you're going to include me in your will.
-- Al McGuire

Don't cling to fame. You're just borrowing it. It's like money. You're going to die, and somebody else is going to get it.
-- Sonny Bono

Don't come to me with your troubles. I have to work for my money and you are young enough to work too. If you can't make enough money to live on you can jump out of the window or drown yourself.
-- Maria Callas (To her mother)

Don't dare to be different, dare to be yourself -- if that doesn't make you different then something is wrong.
-- Laura Baker

Don't dig your grave with your own knife and fork.
-- English Proverb

Don't ever have two dogs. That way you won't know which one to blame.
-- Bob Newhart

Don't get a job in an abattoir. Don't be a butcher. The idea that people have to do these jobs for a livelihood is ridiculous. They can get other jobs. Shoplift, man. Better to be a prostitute than cut an animal's head off for a living.
-- Chrissie Hynde

Don't just learn the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade.
-- James Bennis

Don't look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes, you'll know you're dead.
-- Tennessee Williams

Don't marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper.
-- Scottish Proverb

Don't place too much confidence in the man who boasts of being as honest as the day is long. Wait until you meet him at night.
-- Robert C. Edwards

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.
-- Miles Davis

Don't say "yes" until I finish talking.
-- Darryl F. Zanuck

Don't smoke too much, drink too much, eat too much or work too much. We're all on the road to the grave -- but there's no need to be in the passing lane.
-- Robert Orben

Don't spend your precious time asking 'Why isn't the world a better place?' It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is 'How can I make it better?' To that there is an answer.
-- Leo Buscaglia

Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
-- Walt Kelly

Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do -- do it and let it speak for itself.
-- Martin Vanbee

Don't talk to me about atrocities in war; all war is an atrocity.
-- Lord Kitchener

Don't tell me how talented you are. Tell me how hard you work.
-- Artur Rubenstein

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.
-- Ray Bradbury

Don't trust the heart, it wants your blood.
-- Stanislaw Lem

Don't use time or words carelessly. Neither can be retrieved.
-- Brian Dyson

Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.
-- The Old Farmer's Almanac

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
-- Charles Schulz

Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty. Chocolate isn't like premarital sex. It will not make you pregnant. And it always