Category: Quotes (Page 3 of 7)

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” – Winston Churchill

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.” – Winston Churchill

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” – Clarence Darrow

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” – William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” – Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” – Abraham Lincoln

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” – Oscar Wilde

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend…. if you have one.” – George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

“Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.” – Winston Churchill, in response.

“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.” – Stephen Bishop

“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb

“He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.” – Samuel Johnson

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” – Paul Keating

“He had delusions of adequacy.” – Walter Kerr

“There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” – Jack E. Leonard

“He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.” – Robert Redford

“They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” – Thomas Brackett Reed

“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.” – Charles, Count Talleyrand

“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” – Mark Twain

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” – Mae West

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.” – Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx

If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it.  – Art Buchwald

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone. – J.K. Galbraith

The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few but information in the hands of many. – John Naisbitt

As found in Men’s Health, December 2006

1. If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven & earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

2. Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical & immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.

3. There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it;
who feel that they have nothing to lose. People, who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don’t have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.

4. In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

5. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

6. 10 thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while 1 wise man forgets himself into immortality.

7. All progress is precarious, and the solution of 1 problem brings us face to face with another problem.

8. The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents & discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.

9. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles & misguided men.

10. The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort & convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Destiny is no 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.
–illiam Jennings Bryan (1860 – 1925)

“The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.”
–arcus Aurelius

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.”
–Hannah More

“Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.”
–Henry David Thoreau

“vera incessu patuit dea”
(her very walk revealed the goddess)
–Virgil

“Be who you are and say what you feel because the people who mind don’t matter and the people who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss

“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” –Russian dictator Joseph Stalin

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fevered pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar. –
Julius Caesar

Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
— P.J. O’Rourke

While you are away, movie stars are taking your women. Robert Redford is dating your girlfriend, Tom Selleck is kissing your lady, Bart Simpson is making love to your wife.
— Clueless Iraqi radio announcer, Baghdad Betty, trying to demoralize our Gulf War troops.

I want to be reincarnated as your tampon
— Prince Charles, 1991

We may be finding that in some blacks, when the choke hold is applied, the veins or arteries do not open up like in normal people.
— Daryl Gates, former L.A. police chief and complete idiot.

Don’t be humble. You’re not that great.
— Golda Meir

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by resorting to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
— H. L. Mencken

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
— Aristotle

They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist–
— Last words of Union commander General John Sedgwick, spoken as he was watching enemy troops at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

Spatial + temporal ubiquity
(any time-any place)

“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” –Russian dictator Joseph Stalin

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
— H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.”
–Russian dictator Joseph Stalin

I think that the undecideds could go one way or the other.
— George Bush, 1988

Honest businessmen should be protected from the unscrupulous consumer.
— Lester Maddox, then governer of Georgia, on why his state should not create a consumer protection agency.

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
— Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C.

I did what any normal person would do at that age. You call home. You call home to mother and father and say, “I’d like to get into the National Guard.”
— Dan Quayle, vice-presidential hopeful, defending his National Guard service during the Vietnam War.

I’m not against the blacks, and a lot of the good blacks will attest to that. — Evan Mecham, then governor of Arizona

You always write it’s bombing, bombing, bombing. It’s not bombing, it’s air support. — Air Force Colonel David Opfer, complaining to reporters about their coverage of the Vietnam War.

Capital punishment is our societies recognition of the sanctity of human life. — Orrin Hatch, Senator from Utah.

If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war. — Senior Pentagon official, explaining why the U.S. military censored footage showing Iraqi soldiers sliced in two by U.S. helicopter fire.

I love California. I grew up in Phoenix. –Vice-President Dan Quayle

I have no weakness for shoes. I wear very simple shoes which are pump shoes. It is not one of my weaknesses. — Imelda Marcos, owner of 3,400 pairs of shoes.

Facts are stupid things. — Ronald Reagan

Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years, with time off for good behavior? — New York Senator James H. Donovan commenting on capital punishment.

Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind. — General William Westmoreland on why the media should be controlled in wartime.

I stand by all the misstatements. — Dan Quayle, then vice-presidential hopeful, defending his verbal gaffes.

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy. But that could change.– Vice-President Dan Quayle

I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.– Richard Nixon, discussing Watergate in 1978

Casual drug users should be taken out and shot.
— Daryl Gates, Asshole Deluxe.

I didn’t inhale.
— Presidential candidate Bill Clinton