Famous quotes, witty quotes, and funny quotations

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)
"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat
"His ignorance is encyclopedic"
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)
"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
"Political correctness is tyranny with manners."
- Charlton Heston (1924-2008)
"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."
- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
"When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity; when many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."
- Robert Pirsig (1948-)
"Sex and religion are closer to each other than either might prefer."
- Saint Thomas More (1478-1535)
"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."
- A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."
- Saint Augustine (354-430)
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
- Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"We are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
- Richard Dawkins (1941-)
"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work."
- Emile Zola (1840-1902)
"This book fills a much-needed gap."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review
"The full use of your powers along lines of excellence."
- definition of "happiness" by John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."
- e e cummings (1894-1962)
"Give me a museum and I'll fill it."
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
"Assassins!"
- Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) to his orchestra
"I'll moider da bum."
- Heavyweight boxer Tony Galento, when asked what he thought of William Shakespeare
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is."
- Yogi Berra
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."
- Rene Descartes (1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
- Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed."
- George Burns (1896-1996)
"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
"There are no facts, only interpretations."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."
- Edsgar Dijkstra (1930-2002)
"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
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
- Paul Erdos (1913-1996)
"Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back."
- Paul Erdos (1913-1996)
"Happiness equals reality minus expectations."
- Tom Magliozzi (1937-2014)
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
"Dancing is silent poetry."
- Simonides (556-468bc)
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."
- Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near."
- Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn."
- Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947-)
"Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain."
- Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805)
"We have art to save ourselves from the truth."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."
- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
"I think 'Hail to the Chief' has a nice ring to it."
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) when asked what is his favorite song
"I have nothing to declare except my genius."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) upon arriving at U.S. customs 1882
"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must."
- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."
- unknown
"Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship."
- Sharon Stone
"If you are going through hell, keep going."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain."
- Vivian Greene
"He who has a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death."
- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them."
- Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
- J. Paul Getty (1892-1976)
"Facts are the enemy of truth."
- Don Quixote - "Man of La Mancha"
"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."
- George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself."
- Anais Nin (1903-1977)
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
"I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right."
- Frederick (II) the Great
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."
- George Eliot (1819-1880)
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
- Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)
"Black holes are where God divided by zero."
- Steven Wright
"I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)
"We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time."
- Vince Lombardi
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."
- James Branch Cabell
"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."
- John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered."
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
- Umberto Eco
"Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down."
- Jimmy Durante
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working."
- Albert Giacometti (sculptor)
"There's a limit to how many times you can read how great you are and what an inspiration you are, but I'm not there yet."
- Randy Pausch (1960-2008)
"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."
- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
- Frank Zappa
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- Antoine de Saint Exupery
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
- Isaac Asimov
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."
- G. B. Burgin
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
- Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger" by Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance"
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
- Jimi Hendrix
"A clever man commits no minor blunders."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
"Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage."
- Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours."
- Richard Bach
"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera."
- James Stephens (1882-1950)
"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault."
- Henry Kissinger (1923-)
"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
- Will Durant
"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
- Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
"It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti
"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means."
- Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
- Warren Zevon (1947-2003)
"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head."
- Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
"Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together."
- Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it"
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"While we are postponing, life speeds by."
- Seneca (3BC - 65AD)
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
- Bumper Sticker
"God, please save me from your followers!"
- Bumper Sticker
"Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches."
- the Duchess of Windsor, when asked what is the secret of a long and happy life
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"Luck is the residue of design."
- Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
- Mel Brooks
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"Wit is educated insolence."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher."
- Socrates (470-399 B.C.)
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't"
- Erica Jong (1942-)
"Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man."
- Erica Jong (1942-)
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
- Maya Angelou (1928-)
"Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
- Gore Vidal
"Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them."
- Samuel Palmer (1805-80)
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny."
- Guy Davenport
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."
- Paul Dirac (1902-1984)
"I would have made a good Pope."
- Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
"In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience."
- W.B. Prescott
"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."
- John von Neumann (1903-1957)
"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."
- chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game's opening position
"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Grove giveth and Gates taketh away."
- Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with software demands
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
"There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult."
- C. A. R. Hoare
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"What do you take me for, an idiot?"
- General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy
"I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon."
- Bill Hirst
"Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do."
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)
"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
"Logic is in the eye of the logician."
- Gloria Steinem
"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."
- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
- Martin Fraquhar Tupper
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
- Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
"In the end, everything is a gag."
- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people."
- Lucille S. Harper
"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
- Yogi Berra
"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known."
- Walt Disney (1901-1966)
"He who hesitates is a damned fool."
- Mae West (1892-1980)
"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater."
- Gail Godwin
"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
- Henry Kissinger (1923-)
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."
- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
"I am not young enough to know everything."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
- General George Patton (1885-1945)
"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking."
- Katherine Cebrian
"I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it."
- Steven Wright
"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."
- Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
"Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure."
- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)
"I have read your book and much like it."
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
"The covers of this book are too far apart."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."
- Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
- Mae West (1892-1980)
"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
"No Sane man will dance."
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
"Hell is a half-filled auditorium."
- Robert Frost (1874-1963)
"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
- Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
"Vote early and vote often."
- Al Capone (1899-1947)
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Hell is other people."
- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
- Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (citing from the Bhagavad Gita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion)
"Happiness is good health and a bad memory."
- Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)
"Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate."
- Thomas Jones
"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
- Al Capone (1899-1947)
"The gods too are fond of a joke."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."
- Gloria Leonard
"It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man."
- Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell
"Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."
- Robert Orben
"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
- Revelation 6:8

"Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"Plato was a bore."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal."
- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
"I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy."
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"Hemingway was a jerk."
- Harold Robbins
"Men are not disturbed by things, but the view they take of things."
- Epictetus (55-135 A.D.)
"What about things like bullets?"
- Herb Kimmel, Behavioralist, Professor of Psychology, upon hearing the above quote (1981)

"How can I lose to such an idiot?"
- A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)
"Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."
- Woody Allen (1935-)
"I don't feel good."
- The last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)
"Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure."
- Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)
"Men have become the tools of their tools."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant."
- Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines
"I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
- Gore Vidal
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
- Woody Allen (1935-)
"Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives."
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)
"A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually."
- Abba Eban (1915-2002)
"To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me."
- Charles William Stubbs
"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
- George Santayana (1863-1952)
"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)
"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
"Why don't you write books people can read?"
- Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
- Tom Stoppard
"Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting."
- Karl Wallenda
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
- Sun Tzu
"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."
- Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)
" The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- Alan Kay
"Never mistake motion for action."
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
- Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)
"Hell is paved with good samaritans."
- William M. Holden
"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Silence is argument carried out by other means."
- Ernesto"Che"Guevara (1928-1967)
"Well done is better than well said."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"The average person thinks he isn't."
- Father Larry Lorenzoni
"Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."
- William Congreve (1670-1729)
"A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted."
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)
"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
- Lewis Perelman
"Dogma is the sacrifice of wisdom to consistency."
- Lewis Perelman
"Sometimes it is not enough that we do our best; we must do what is required."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"There is a country in Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal."
- Sigfried Hulzer
"Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done."
- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), while working, when informed that his wife is dying
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943
"I think it would be a good idea."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" "
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."
- Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
- Irving Kristol
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
- A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- H. M. Warner (1881-1958), founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood."
- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."
- Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)
"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
- last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)
"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)
"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
- Tom Clancy
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"
"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live
"We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees."
- Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks
"Half this game is ninety percent mental."
- Yogi Berra
"There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole."
- Bill Wulf
"There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Write drunk; edit sober."
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"I criticize by creation - not by finding fault."
- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
"Love is friendship set on fire."
- Jeremy Taylor
"God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time."
- Robin Williams, commenting on the Clinton/Lewinsky affair
"My occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate."
- Unibomber Theodore Kaczynski, when asked in court what his current profession was
"Woman was God's second mistake."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"This isn't right, this isn't even wrong."
- Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist's paper
"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
"Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
- Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.
"Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run."
- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
"He would make a lovely corpse."
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
- Irvin S. Cobb
"I worship the quicksand he walks in."
- Art Buchwald
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
- Paul Valery (1871-1945)
"We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction."
- General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil, that takes religion."
- Steven Weinberg (1933-)
"If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?"
- Seymour Cray (1925-1996), father of supercomputing
"#3 pencils and quadrille pads."
- Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer; he also recommended using the back side of the pages so that the grid lines were not so dominant.
"Interesting - I use a Mac to help me design the next Cray."
- Seymoure Cray (1925-1996) when he was told that Apple Inc. had recently bought a Cray supercomputer to help them design the next Mac.
"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.
"I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need."
- Francois-Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"The truth is more important than the facts."
- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)
"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Motivational Quotes That Will Inspire Success

1) “The Way Get Started Is To Quit Talking And Begin Doing.” -Walt Disney

2) “The Pessimist Sees Difficulty In Every Opportunity. The Optimist Sees The Opportunity In Every Difficulty.” -Winston Churchill

3) “Don’t Let Yesterday Take Up Too Much Of Today.” -Will Rogers

4) “You Learn More From Failure Than From Success. Don’t Let It Stop You. Failure Builds Character.”- Unknown

5) “It’s Not Whether You Get Knocked Down, It’s Whether You Get Up.”- Vince Lombardi


Motivational Quotes & Sayings

2. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill
3. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein
4. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.  –Robert Frost
5. I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse. –Florence Nightingale
6. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky
7. I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. –Michael Jordan
8. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. –Amelia Earhart
9. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. –Babe Ruth
10. Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. –W. Clement Stone
11. Life isn’t about getting and having, it’s about giving and being. –Kevin Kruse
12. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon
13. We become what we think about. –Earl Nightingale
14.Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore, Dream, Discover. –Mark Twain
15.Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. –Charles Swindoll
16. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker
17. The mind is everything. What you think you become.  –Buddha
18. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. –Chinese Proverb
19. An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates
20. Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen
21. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. –Steve Jobs
22. Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi
23. I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey
24. Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso
25. You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus
26. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. –Maya Angelou
27. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn
28. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. –Henry Ford
29. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain
30. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
31. The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra
32. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing.  That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar
33. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. –Anais Nin

Motivational Quotes for When You Need Inspiration Most

Some days are easy--energy is high, the sun is shining, everything seems possible. But there will always be times when the storms come. Things go wrong, people let you down, and pressure is high. Those are the times when you need some inspiration.
Here's some collected wisdom to help motivate you when you need it the most.
  1. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. --Napoleon Hill
  2. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. --Steve Jobs
  3. If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on. --Sheryl Sandberg
  4. Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. --Harriet Tubman
  5. Challenges are what make life interesting, and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. --Joshua J. Marine
  6. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. --Les Brown
  7. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. --Albert Einstein
  8. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. --Alice Walker
  9. If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it. --Elon Musk
  10. Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. --Indian Proverb
  11. I never dreamt of success. I worked for it. --Estee Lauder
  12. When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. --Helen Keller
  13. I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples. --Mother Teresa
  14. People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. --George Bernard Shaw
  15. If you look at what you have in life, you'll always have more. If you look at what you don't have in life, you'll never have enough. --Oprah Winfrey
  16. Believe you can and you're halfway there. --Theodore Roosevelt
  17. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. --Amelia Earhart
  18. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. --The Dalai Lama
  19. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. --Anne Frank
  20. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
  21. What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. --Plutarch
  22. I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. --Jimmy Dean
  23. Change your thoughts and you change your world. --Norman Vincent Peale
  24. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. --Leonardo da Vinci
  25. Eighty percent of success is showing up. --Woody Allen
  26. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. --Jim Rohn
  27. The best revenge is massive success. --Frank Sinatra
  28. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. --Walt Disney
  29. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. --Maya Angelou
  30. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. --Babe Ruth
  31. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. --Albert Einstein
  32. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. --Confucius
  33. We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone. --Ronald Reagan
  34. Nothing will work unless you do. --Maya Angelou
  35. Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. --Charles Swindoll
  36. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. --Arthur Ashe
  37. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. --Lao Tzu
  38. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. --Marie Curie
  39. To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. --Eleanor Roosevelt
  40. People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing. That's why we recommend it daily. --Zig Ziglar
  41. When you look at people who are successful, you will find that they aren't the people who are motivated, but the ones who have consistency in their motivation. --Arsene Wenger

Selected Best Famous Quotes

Wisdom Quotes

1. You can do anything, but not everything.
—David Allen
2. Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
3. The richest man is not he who has the most, but he who needs the least.
—Unknown Author
4. You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
—Wayne Gretzky
5. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
—Ambrose Redmoon
6. You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
—Gandhi
7. When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men will know what I mean.
—Lin-Chi
8. The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
—A. A. Milne
9. To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.
—Abraham Maslow
10. We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
—Aristotle
11. A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
—Baltasar Gracian
12. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.
—Basho
13. Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
—Lao-Tze
14. Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
15. What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
—John Ruskin
16. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.
—Marcel Proust
17. Work like you don’t need money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s watching
—Unknown Author
18. Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.
—Virgil Garnett Thomson
19. Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
—Will Rogers
20. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
—Zig Ziglar

Funny Quotes

21. Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.
—John Wilmot
22. What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
—Oscar Levant
23. Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
—Oscar Wilde
24. I’ve gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller’s parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.
—New York City detective
25. When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.
—Norm Crosby
26. Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
—Kurt Vonnegut
27. Just the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
—Carl Sagan
28. My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
—Jean Rostand
29. Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
—Lily Tomlin
30. I quit therapy because my analyst was trying to help me behind my back.
—Richard Lewis
31. We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
—Robert Wilensky
32. If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
—Scott Adams
33. If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
—Anon
34. When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I’m beginning to believe it.
—Clarence Darrow
35. Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else’s can shorten it.
—Cullen Hightower
36. There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.
—Cyril Connolly
37. There’s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
—Dick Cavett
38. All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
—H. L. Mencken
39. I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.
—Victor Hugo
40. I took a speed reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
—Woody Allen

Otherwise Intelligent Quotes

41. The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking.
—Albert Einstein
42. Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
—André Gide
43. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
—Aristotle
44. I’d rather live with a good question than a bad answer.
—Aryeh Frimer
45. We learn something every day, and lots of times it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong.
—Bill Vaughan
46. I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
—Blaise Pascal
47. Don’t ever wrestle with a pig. You’ll both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it.
—Cale Yarborough
48. An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.
—Charles F. Kettering
49. Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
—Christopher Hampton
50. Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
—Cyril Connolly
51. Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.
—Dame Edna Everage
52. I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
—Edith Sitwell
53. Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
—Ellen Goodman
54. The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
—Ellen Parr
55. Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
—Erica Jong
56. Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
—Gordon R. Dickson
57. The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.
—Lily Tomlin
58. Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
—Napoleon (Hanlon’s Razor)
59. Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
—Oscar Wilde
60. When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
—Thomas Szasz