I guess this gets revisited every so often, but I can’t find a generic quotes thread to resurrect.
A few I like:
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. Anais Nin
You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power - he’s free again. Alexander Solzhenitsyn
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. Noam Chomsky
You live and learn. At any rate, you live. Douglas Adams
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi
In every guilty man, there is some innocence. This makes every absolute condemnation revolting. Albert Camus
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. * We have to imagine Sisyphus happy. Albert Camus
The best place to be is here, and the best time to be is now. Bill & Ted
And a bit lighter…
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
My spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling, but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. Winnie the Pooh
Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you. A A Milne
I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later. Miles Davis
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith. Albert Einstein
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. Carl Sagan
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. Woody Allen
When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him. Thomas Szasz
Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others. Groucho Marx
It’s difficult to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious – Henry Ford
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction – St. Exupery
You can be what you want to be if you believe in yourself and you work hard, because anything, and I’m telling you anything, is possible. Don’t feel sorry for yourself if obstacles get in your way. – Kirby Puckett
I admit it: sometimes life seems like a struggle to me. That’s why I keep these inspirational quotes “handy.”
Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus Flytrap. The flytrap can bite and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has little tiny plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen and it could be like ambition.
As the evening sky faded from a salmon color to a sort of flint gray, I thought back to the salmon I caught that morning, and how gray he was, and how I named him Flint.
If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you'll be a mile from them, and you'll have their shoes.
Deep Thoughts, Jack Handy
Carol, it’s because you have a son. That’s why you’re quoting Jack Handy.
This is the quote my 14 year old wants to use in his 8th grade graduation speech: (yeah, he goes to a small school)
“If I could be a bird, I’d be a Flying Purple People Eater because then people would sing about me and I could fly down and eat them because I hate that song.”
My absolute favorite Jack Handy, first seen in a Michael Nesmith film called “Dr. Ducks Super Secret All-Purpose Sauce” –
I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to the old board of his. Then he’d spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he’d yell out, “Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner!” We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do.
Here are some from the land of academe (there are some good ones out there):
“They are not massive enough to be WIMPs.”
“The [B m c² + q phi] part of this should be soothing.”
“Those are very sad universes. There is no Christmas in those universes.”
-Dr. Stephen Hsu
“So it’s like a doctor who does tomography on a patient’s head and finds that, in some region, there is not just nothing but less than nothing!”
-Dr. Lvovsky
“Why is that surprising? I mean, we all know such people.”
-Paul Czonka, responding from the audience
“Fake honesty is the best policy.”
-Dr. Susan Coppersmith
“Her voice sounds as if it were strained between the honeymoon sheets of Bogey and Bacall, and then hosed down with plum brandy”
(Tom Robbins, referring to Debra Winger)
“You can learn everything nowadays – there are even books teaching people how to make love – but there is no school of sensitivity.”
(Henri Cartier-Bresson)
“Stars know just the proper distance to keep from one another.”
(Howard Norman)
“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”
(W.B. Yeats)
“It was the saying of Bion, that though the boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest.”
(Plutarch)
“Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.”
(Diane Ackerman)
“Avoid adjectives of scale; you will love the world more and desire it less.”
(Basho)
“The imagination is the world’s most respected thief.”
(Eilis ni Dhuibhne)
